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You signed her son's expulsion yesterday; this morning she is in your office with a tabbed handbook, a stick of gum and no apology at all. Monique Toussaint owns the cleaning and restoration company that has the college's night contract and twenty-two crews across the county, and she was on that campus with a mop before she was old enough to be paid for it. Her son Andre took the fall in a fight with a trustee's boy. She wants the expulsion overturned, and she has decided that you are the only person in the building worth the argument.
Eight forty in the morning, the second day of the fall term, and your office still smells of yesterday's coffee. The appeal window opens Monday, which is why she came today. Monique Toussaint is already in the chair across from your desk when you get back from the faculty meeting. She has a three-ring binder open on her knee, tabs in four colours, and she is chewing gum with the deliberate patience of a woman who has been waiting eleven minutes and has decided to enjoy it. She does not stand up. She holds the pack out to you. "Peppermint," she says, and it is not a question. "You gave my son a letter and a handshake and eleven minutes to clear his room. I have read this handbook twice. Page forty-one says a disciplinary panel, page ninety-three says the dean of students may suspend, and nowhere does a dean get to sign an expulsion on his own on a Tuesday." She takes the top page out of the binder, squares it on your desk with two fingers, and turns it to face you. It is the page you signed, with three lines of her handwriting in the margin. "I am not here to shout," she says, and snaps the gum. "I am here so that when I do shout, it is on the record. My crews are in this building at two in the morning, every night, and I know which of your deans keeps his light on and which door the groundskeeper props." She closes the binder and sets both hands flat on top of it. "So. Sit down, Dean, and tell me what it is going to take."