I was surprised that Margaret herself answered.
“Kristin,” she said.
I was startled for a minute and then realized our names displayed on the phone in the campus system. Margaret must have been waiting for my call.
“Margaret. I talked to Ah-seong Kim. She just left. I think you’d better look into this student group she belongs to.”
“The Korean Students Christian Association?” Margaret sounded surprised.
“Yes. My best guess is that she’s got a boyfriend who is knocking her around, or worse, and the student group is encouraging her to keep dating him so that her turn-the-other-cheek Christianity will convert his rotten little heart.”
“Wait a minute.” Margaret’s disbelief come through loud and clear. “Run that by me again. You’re saying a student group knows she’s being hit and is encouraging it?”
“No, not exactly, and look, she really didn’t tell me all that much. I’m guessing here, but my best guess is that a guy she is dating, probably not a member of the group, is being rough with her. Date battering is not uncommon you know, Margaret. Another guess is that he’s a scholarship student on the football team, at least she admitted that he has one of the few sports scholarships, and I think he’s hitting her to let off steam, feel manly, who knows? Maybe she got the most recent bruises because she was trying to break it off. Anyway, the student group is praying for him and I think that adds up to a lot of secondary gain for them. Do they think he’s a guy in need of salvation? I really don’t know, but I don’t like the sound of what I think I heard.”
“Slow down, slow down. How do you know whosever hitting her is a football player?”
Margaret’s voice was sharp. How administrators hate to go after the athletes, even here.
“Ah-seong told me whoever made the bruises on her is frustrated by keeping his grades up so he can stay on the team. I think that sounds like someone who needs to keep his scholarship, and practically no sport here has scholarship money for players except football.”
“Well, perhaps.”
Margaret’s voice was toneless. Bad sign. She was going to fob me off. It was so damned irritating. I hadn’t asked to talk to this student. She’d begged me to do it.
“Now, what’s this about the KSCA being involved? I find that very hard to believe. I know Professor Lee, their advisor, and I can’t believe he’d condone something like this.”
I could almost understand why Margaret was so anxious to play down these unpleasant facts. Almost. Sports were always politically important because the alums liked them and that caused them to open their pockets and donate. And the Korean student group was another politically hot item. The University needed intelligent students whose families could afford the more than $50,000 in yearly tuition (not counting room and board). Parents could spend more than a quarter of a million dollars sending one child to college for four years. Yes, a lot went into debt and there were scholarships, but the university needed the cash flow of tuition. There was active recruitment around the world in fast-growing economies, including Asian economies. And wealthy graduates became wealthy donors.
I tried for patience.
“Listen, Margaret, Lee might not necessarily know about these special prayers. Or, he could know they were praying for someone without knowing the specifics of what was going on.”
But my patience goes only so far.
“This student group, though. Isn’t it a little, well, narrow for a university group?”
Margaret sighed.
“Kristin, come off it. There are nearly 400 student groups and many of them are racially, ethnically and religiously specific. That’s what students want.”
“Yeah, it’s what students want, Margaret, but didn’t I just see a idiotic memo about the fact that we don’t do ‘safe spaces’ here any more?”
She paused.
I waited. That memo was a bunch of legal malarkey and Margaret knew it and I knew it too.
“I think you probably misunderstood Ah-seong, that’s all. You said she spoke very little. I think it’s likely there’s no connection here with the student group and that she’s having some trouble with someone she’s dating.”
Okay. Patience gone, waiting over. I sharpened my voice.
“Look, Margaret. What is going on here is dangerous. Very dangerous. What I know for sure is that it is best to assume the worst. I have seen the bruises around her neck, so has the roommate and the RA. Are you really going to brush this aside as ‘boyfriend troubles’? She has certainly been physically assaulted. That we can see with our own eyes. Keep that in mind. I think there’s a good chance she’s been sexually assaulted as well. Remember what the roommate said about the torn clothing.”
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone, but Margaret didn’t speak.
My voice rose.
“You twisted my arm to look into this thing. I didn’t volunteer. And now when I tell you what I think is going on, you’re trying to minimize it.”
I gripped the phone hard.
“Assume the worst, Margaret. You must assume the worst and you have to do that even if it pisses off some alumni or faculty or students or recruiters or coaches or whatever.
“It will accelerate, you know. If there’s no intervention the odds are she’ll be assaulted again. Probably hurt even worse. That’s the normal trajectory of these things. They. Get. Worse.”
I waited. When she didn’t respond, I changed tactics. If a frightened and abused woman student didn’t move her, investigations and lawsuits might. And no memo about the purity of intellectual freedom would protect us from that.
“Margaret, don’t you realize there are now nearly 100 pending Title IX investigations of colleges for mishandling sexual assault and sexual misconduct pending? Our university is currently not on that list. Do you want it to be? Anti-rape activism is on the rise on college campuses. Remember earlier this year when that guy, you know the one who was after Clinton for so long, Starr, got fired at Baylor? He and the football coach were axed because they failed to help victims of sexual assault. And don’t count on a misogynist climate in Washington D.C. to slow down the campus protests. Women’s activism is increasing, not decreasing.
“Just get off the dime and start the administrative wheels rolling. We have enough for an initial complaint. I’ll make it, for Christ’s sake. I talked to her. I saw the bruises. I heard enough to alarm me as to her safety and well being.
“In fact, consider this phone call the initial complaint. I’ll follow up in writing and have it to you by tomorrow.”
I was breathing heavily. There was silence on the other end of the phone. This time I would wait.
Margaret finally spoke.
“Thanks for talking to her, Kristin. I’ll talk to her again myself.”
And she hung up.
Great. The full administrative brush-off. Well, Margaret would soon realize that not only would I summarize my conversation with Ah-seong Kim in the complaint, I would summarize this conversation as well. If she didn’t shape up and do her job right, she could end up needing legal counsel.
But I realized I couldn’t write a complaint feeling like this. I had to get a grip first. I was vibrating with anger. This was far too close to what police work had been like for me. The kind of work I thought I’d left behind when I quit the force. Well, not all that close since now I was bringing