“Nope. She said for reasons of privacy she couldn’t. So I said, ‘But if it has to do with my case, don’t I have the right to know?’ and she said his withdrawal was a private action. She said it was not a sanction resulting from the investigation.”
“Complete horseshit,” Gail bursts out. “Why else would he suddenly leave?”
“But technically that might be true,” Mona says. “He’s left before it’s over. It’s not even at the committee stage yet. Right, Jen?”
“It’s not at any stage anymore,” Jenny says. “Carole says they only investigate claims against students. Since he’s not a student here anymore, the claim is dropped.”
Her tone jolts Haley. She sounds devastated. Looks devastated. She’s acting as if they found him innocent. But he’s gone. Out of her life, probably forever.
Why isn’t she relieved?
If Jenny looks wrecked, then Carrie looks furious.
“There must be some way to find out what’s going on,” Carrie says.
Mona chimes in. “No way. FERPA.” Everyone looks at her like she’s lost her mind. “Wait. You guys don’t know about FERPA?”
“Translate, Ms. Pre--law,” Gail says.
Delight on Mona’s face. “I actually know something Carrie doesn’t. Wait. Just . . . let me revel in this for a second.”
Carrie rolls her eyes.
“So FERPA,” Mona explains, “is the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. It protects everything from disciplinary hearings to academic records. It’s why your parents can’t access your grades unless you give them your password. It’s why the results of judicial proceedings on campus aren’t publicized. Carole couldn’t tell Jenny what’s going on even if she wanted to.”
“Kind of just one big ‘FERP you,’”Haley says. Instantly horrified by her own joke. Everyone stares; then, to her relief, they laugh. A little.
“The thing is,” Jenny continues when they stop laughing, “I’m really, really . . . mad.” Her face crumples when she says this. Tears slip down her cheeks. One fist rhythmically pounds the pillow alongside her. “I mean, all this, for what? Nothing? He gets off, with nothing?”
No one speaks at first.
“It would appear that way,” Carrie finally says. Her words short, clipped.
Haley can’t help herself. “No, not nothing! He’s gone. For whatever reason. You can walk around here feeling safe again. Wasn’t that the point? I mean, the most the college was ever going to do was throw him out.”
“She just. Doesn’t. Get it.” Carrie says this to the window, her voice dripping with contempt.
“Well, why don’t you educate me?” Haley demands. “Since you seem to know so much.”
“You know, I don’t think this is what Jenny needs right now,” Gail says, jumping in.
But it’s too late. Carrie whips her head around and stares at Haley. “One,” she says, holding up a finger, “there’s no closure. Not for Jenny or anyone on this campus. It’s like smoke: just drifts off and disappears. And eventually it will be forgotten. Until it happens to another woman. Two: no consequences for him. He rides off into the sunset like some happy transfer student. Three: he’s free to do it again because there’s nothing on his record and the next college that takes him will be clueless. Four . . . do you really want me to keep going?”
“Okay, how about this,” Haley says. “One: he looks guilty because he’s dropping out. Two: it won’t be forgotten! We just did this big education thing on campus. Everybody knows tons more about this issue. Three: he’s gone! The point was to get him out of here, right?”
Carrie looks at Gail and throws up her hands. Help me out here, her expression seems to say.
“Actually, Haley,” Gail says quietly, “the point was accountability. The point was for Jordan to face up to what he did. For Jenny to have made that happen.”
“Which would only have happened if the committee decided he was guilty,” Mona adds. “Sorry, but I’m going to get all pre--law on you again. Yeah, getting him out of here, making him accountable, having him suffer consequences, all of it was ‘the point.’ But none of it would have happened if the committee let him off. And Jen?” She turns and looks directly at Jenny when she says this. “It wasn’t looking so good. Was it?”
Jenny stares at Mona, her face blank. She seems to be thinking, hard. Eventually, though, her expression changes. Relaxes. As if she’s come to some realization.
“The last few days,” Jenny says, “I’ve been reading the witness statements. It wasn’t like getting raped all over again. But it came close.”
Carrie puts her hand on Jen’s arm, briefly, and squeezes.
Jenny looks directly at Haley. “No one stood up for me,” she says. “T and the girls? They wouldn’t admit they left; they said I ‘disappeared.’ No one saw me with Jordan. Brandon Exley said I was having fun dancing. Hardly anyone saw me drink. You’d think I was invisible. Or making the whole thing up. Even the investigator. You were there. He thought I was crazy, didn’t he?”