As the moment with Darren Tinzler receded, it became less real, and finally it simply turned into an anecdote that Greer deconstructed more than once with a few girls in her dorm, all of them standing around the common bathroom carrying the plastic shower pails that their mothers had bought them to take to college, so that they resembled a coalition of children meeting at a sandbox. Everyone knew by now to keep their distance from the odious Darren Tinzler, and finally the topic exhausted itself, and exhausted the people thinking about it. It wasn’t rape, Greer had pointed out; not even close. Already it felt much less important than what was apparently going on right now at other colleges: the rugby-playing roofie-givers, the police reports, the outrage.
But over the next couple of weeks, half a dozen other female Ryland students had their own Darren Tinzler encounters. They didn’t even necessarily know his name at first; he was just described as a male wearing a baseball cap and having “eyes like a carp,” as someone said. One night in the dining hall Darren sat with his friends and watched a sophomore for a long, unhurried amount of time; he gazed across the crowded space at her while she raised a spoon of fat-free something or other to her mouth. Another night he was in the reading room of the library, slouched at one of the butterscotch tables staring at a student as she forged her way through Mankiw’s Principles of Microeconomics.
And then, when she stood up to talk to a friend or to bus her plate or to get some supposedly UTI-curative cranberry juice from the spigots with their miraculous free-flow that defined college life, or simply to stretch a little, joints going pop-pop-pop, he stood up, too, and strode toward her with resolve, making sure that they had cruised into a side-by-side position.
When they were together in an alcove or hidden behind a wall or otherwise away from all onlookers, he started a conversation. And then he perceived her politeness or kindness or even her vague responsiveness as interest, and maybe sometimes it was. But then he always made it physical, a hand up a shirt, or on a crotch, or even, once, a finger swiped fast across a mouth. And when she recoiled he became angry and squeezed her hard so she cried out, and then reeled her in, saying some version of, “Oh, like you’re so shocked. Give me a fucking break. You’re such a little whore.”
In every case she jolted back from him, saying, “Get away,” or simply storming off, saying, “You sick fuck,” or saying nothing and later telling her roommate what had happened, or maybe telling no one, or else worriedly polling all her friends that night, asking them, “I don’t look like a whore, do I?” and having them gather round her and say, “No, Emily, you look incredible. I love your look, it’s so free.”
But then one night in Havermeyer, which was still known as the “new” dorm, though it had been built in 1980 and had a Soviet style amid all the eclectic architectural overreach that defined the Ryland campus, a sophomore named Ariel Diski returned very late to her room to find a boy waiting in the fourth-floor hallway’s defunct phone booth. There was no longer a phone in the booth, just a series of chewing-gum-plugged holes where the pay phone had been ripped out, and a wooden seat to sit on in this useless little chamber. He opened the squeaking glass accordion door and stepped toward her, detaining her, talking to her, and even saying something that amused her. But soon he had touched her rudely and was edging her into her room; she pulled away from him, at which point he got mad and reined her in by her belt loops.
But Ariel Diski had studied Krav Maga in high school with the Israeli gym teacher, and she got Darren in the center of his chest with a perfectly executed elbow strike. He brayed in pain, doors opened up and down the hall, people appeared in various states of undress and standing-up hair, and finally Security lumbered into the building with their sizzling, muttering walkie-talkies. And though Darren Tinzler was gone by that time, he was easily identified and apprehended back in Theta Gamma Psi, where he was pretending to be deep in a one-person round of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.
Soon the other girls rallied and came forward, and while the college initially tried to avoid any kind of public airing, under pressure officials agreed to hold a disciplinary hearing. It took place in a biology lab in the pale, leaking light of a Friday afternoon, when everyone was already thinking about the weekend ahead. Greer, when it was her turn to speak, stood in front of a glossy black table lined with Bunsen burners, and half-whispered what Darren Tinzler had said and done to her that night at the party. She was sure she had a fever from testifying, a wild and inflamed fever. Scarlet fever, maybe.
Darren was without his usual baseball cap; his flat, fair hair looked like a circle of lawn that had been trapped and left to die under a kiddie pool. Finally he read a prepared statement: “I’d just like to say that I, Darren Scott Tinzler, class of 2007, a communications major from Kissimmee, Florida, am apparently kind of bad at reading signals from the opposite sex. I’m very ashamed right now, and I apologize for my own repeated misunderstanding of social cues.”
A decision was handed down within an hour. The head of the disciplinary committee, a young, female assistant dean, announced that Darren would be allowed to stay on campus if he agreed to undergo three counseling sessions with a local behavioral therapist, Melanie Stapp, MSW, whose website said her specialty was impulse control. An illustration showed a man frantically puffing away at a cigarette, and an unhappy woman eating a doughnut.
There was a strong but diffuse outcry on campus. “This is misogyny in action,” said a senior when they were all sitting in the Woolley lounge late one night.
“And it’s just amazing that the head of the committee apparently had no sympathy for the victims,” said a sophomore.
“She’s probably one of those women who hates women,” said Zee. “A total cunt.” Then she began to sing her own version of a song from a musical that her parents used to like: “Women . . . women who hate women . . . are the cuntiest women . . . in the world . . .”
Greer said, “That’s terrible! You shouldn’t say cunt.”
Zee said, “Cunt,” and everyone laughed. “Oh, come on,” Zee went on. “I can say what I want. That’s having agency.”
“You shouldn’t say agency,” said Greer. “That’s worse.”
Greer and Zee were part of long conversations about Darren with other people in the dining hall; they stayed until the food service workers kicked them out. Anger was hard to sustain, and despite these conversations and a tightly reasoned op-ed by a senior in the Ryland Clarion, two of the girls involved said they didn’t want the case to drag on any longer.
Still Greer kept thinking about him. It wasn’t the actual encounter that remained—that was almost gone except for a trace memory—but instead she fixed on how unfair it was that he was tolerated there. Unfair: the word sounded like a child’s complaint hollered bitterly to a parent.
“Sorry, I am done with thinking about him,” Ariel Diski said one morning in the student union, after Greer tentatively approached her. “I’m super-busy,” said Ariel, “and he’s just a dick.”
“I know he is,” said Greer. “But maybe there’s more to do. My friend Zee thinks there is.”
“Look, I know you’re still invested in this,” said Ariel, “but no offense, I’m pre-law, and I can’t get stressed. Sorry, Greer, I’m done.”
That night, Zee and Greer and Chloe sat in Zee’s room, painting their toenails the brownish green of army fatigues. The room gave off a fermented chemical smell that made them all feel a little sick and a little wild. “You could go to the Women’s Alliance,” Zee offered. “They might have some advice.”
“Or not. My roommate went to one of their meetings,” Chloe said. “She said all they do is bake brownies against genital mutilation.”