Joseph Delaney - The Hole Truth

Illustration by Arthur George

Dean Connors office was like another world, and seemed awkwardly out of place with the rest of the campus. It was ornate, and pretentious, and it smelled musty, as though it meant to emulate the precincts of some enormously more prestigious Ivy League university.

Dr. Bryant, having been summarily summoned, entered it with enormous trepidation, with a feeling of foreboding, a portent of impending doom.

Sit down, Connor muttered, barely looking up from a crisp, new Wall Street Journal. From his right hand a felt marker dangled, and on a pad next to the phone Bryant noted what he took to be a brokers number and a list of stock market symbols.

Some time passed, during which Bryants nerves continued to rasp away, but finally Connor put the paper down, capped the marker, and pushed both it and the pad to the side of his otherwise totally uncluttered desk.

I think its time for you to tell me all about this test, Bryant.

Bryants first impulse was to gasp, though he fortunately had retained the control needed to mask that. How did you know about that?

Ive gotten several complaints about it, Bryant. Thats how. Believe me, I dont appreciate criticism from the parents of our students, especially when theyre on the alumni advisory board. Youve been violating the first rule of academia, Bryant, I thought you had better sense.

Bryant was completely baffled. Complaints from parentsabout a simple intelligence test? I dont understand. It isnt even a part of the curriculum, Ive been developing it with my grant.

And using your students as guinea pigs. Just where do you think you are, Bryant? This isnt Harvard, or some other school people are scared of getting thrown out of, this is Weybellowe College, the bottom of the barrel, the pits, the last resort of desperate wealthy parents and poor kids who cant afford to go anyplace else. He glared at Bryant, temper slowly building up in pitch and intensity.

Bryant was familiar with the process. So was everybody else on the faculty. With the advent of every crisis there were betting pools whose objective was to predict the exact time that Connor would stroke out.

Bryant reluctantly launched his defense. I asked for volunteers to try it out, he said. It was a blind study of the comparative accuracy of my test and the old standbys. The results were strictly confidential

You werent quite careful enough then, Bryant, because you had a leak.

Who?

How should I know? The point is that because of your bungling I had to spend an hour on the phone apologizing to that insufferable oaf, Frederick Van Vogt.

I see. Well, his son was one of the volunteers, and he did miserably on all the tests, but

And his father endowed this college handsomely just so he could get in. Bryant, this family is important to WeybelloweVogt has three more sons, all of them as dumb as or dumber than this one. If you dont care about anything else you should at least be cognizant of where the money comes from that pays your salary.

Bryant was temptedbut only justto tell Connor just how pitiful that salary was. Bryant wasnt knocking down anywhere near what Connor got. Like most of the professors here, he used his credentials at Weybellowe to get at grant money, which was what he really lived on.

Bryants defensive posture stiffened at that thought, he was good at getting grants, and he had earned a solid reputation for delivering positive and useful results from his sideline research, so that with every successfully completed project he became a better risk and his personal academic stature grew in spite of his humble surroundings. That, he knew, was why Connor had called him in for this relatively cordial chat instead of just kicking him out.

I dont intend to let this institution slide back into its mediocre past, Connor continued. Ive built it up to what it is today. Twenty years ago, when 1 came here all it was a normal school, cranking out elementary school teachers with no more imagination than sheep. Today were a four year institution, with chairs in all the liberal arts, and some of the sciences. Thats no small feat, Bryant, and I dont mind telling you that I look on anything and anybody who impugns it with a very jaundiced eye.

Now, Bryant was getting a little angry himself. I didnt do anything to the Vogt kid. He volunteered, and he took the tests like all the other volunteers. He was in the active group and he scored on the low end of the bell

In your new test?

Well, yes, but

And did very much better in the others?

Again, yes, he did. Butthe other tests are old tests, which have been around for generations. Most students take them several times before they even reach college, and do better every time they repeat. In fact, thats the trouble with these old-fashioned tests, they dont test elemental intelligence except maybe on the first try, after that, theyre basically memory tests. Besides, I know Vogt cheated.

What?!

He wasnt the only one. Over half of each group cheated on the standard tests.

You allowed this?!

Of course. I couldnt ask for a better control. Knowing this gave me a statistical spread, a small one, certainly, but its existence provided the equivalent of a third control group, because its impossible to cheat on my test. Having established culpability on the part of the complaining student Bryant felt a little more secure.

Theres still the matter of the leak.

Bradford and I graded the tests personally, Bryant countered. No scores were disclosed except to the student himself. The records were then encoded blind as a part of the project data. Even if somebody got into the data file there wouldnt be any way for him to tell who scored what. No, Dean, the leak, if there was one, was a cooperative thing. The students must have compared their grades. Id be interested to see who else you got complaints from. Ill bet itll match my list of those who cheated.

I thought you said there werent any identifiers, Bryant.

Im speaking of my recollections. My memory is pretty reliable.

Connor produced a list from his desk drawer.

Bryant perused it, nodded, and replied, Yes, I thought so. He replaced the list on Connors desk.

You can see these are all children of people important to this institution, Bryant. The loss of their financial support could seriously imperil its future, as well as yours. He stared blankly at Bryant.

Bryant stared calmly back.

Youre going to have to change those scores, Bryant.

You know I cant do that, Dean. If I did a thing like that and anybody found out Id never get another grant. Andwould you want anybody on the faculty who would do that? Connor was caught in his bluff. Now he had to squirm out of it. Uhwhat I meant, Bryant, was that since you know they cheated you also know your data is faulty. Id think youd want to retest all these people and set the record straight.

I see, Bryant replied, now convinced the suggestion had been a trap for him. Just as he was determined not to fudge his results he was equally set against retesting, which would cast similar aspersions on it. And, there was no need to. The trouble with that idea is that it wont work, Dean. I know exactly what would happen, the scores on the old tests would improve by a predictable increment because of the past experience and the results of my test wouldnt change one iota. As I said, its impossible to cheat on my test.

Thats a smug answer, Bryant. Connor was getting steamed again, he didnt like being told he couldnt have what he wanted.

You say that because you dont know anything about the test, Dean. I meant it in the same sense that its impossible to cheat in an open textbook exam. If you can legitimately go to the book and get the right answer its not cheating.