Break the Glass, page 2
I needed an internship to graduate. Any internship as long as it somehow related to my field of study, business administration. When I was a freshman, this didn’t seem like a big deal. It felt light-years away in the future. However, three years later, the closer I got to the requirement, the bigger deal I realized it was. More specifically, how expensive getting an internship can be.
Something no one tells you when you’re a wide-eyed freshman is that most internships expect you to work for free. And most internships are likely in a city far from campus. So you not only have to work for free, but you also have to pay moving expenses and rent in a city that is not yours.
So when I saw the internship for the athletic department on the school’s job board last spring, I knew that I had to get it. Even if I didn’t care about sports, I wanted the internship. I needed the internship. It was paid. It was within walking distance of my apartment. And I wouldn’t have to wear khakis. It checked all my boxes. Win-win-win.
I, of course, didn’t mention my lack of fan affiliation during the interview. When they called to offer me the position, the woman from HR informed me that the fact that I wasn’t a sports management major would bring a needed level of diversity to their team and that they particularly loved my attention to detail. This led me to believe that most people applying only wanted the job because it was in the athletic department and they liked sports. They probably didn’t have business administration experience, and they probably didn’t come to the interview equipped with ideas to improve the department’s data and information management. I tried to focus on my business skills and not their comment about diversifying their team. No matter the industry, the nuances of business administration remain the same.
There was no time to overthink their decision to hire me now. I gave myself another once-over in my mirror before heading to the kitchen.
“Are you already on cup number two?” my roommate Noel asked, gesturing toward the full coffee cup I was holding. She daintily sipped an herbal tea. She was the one college-age person I knew to have resisted a caffeine addiction.
“Oh my gosh, you scared me.” I hadn’t noticed her as I walked into the kitchen.
“I’m sure that has something to do with the unnatural amount of caffeine currently in your bloodstream.”
“Yeah, yeah, but I need it. I was up most of the night panicking about this job.”
“Relax. It’s just an internship. No one takes these things seriously.”
Noel’s parents had paid her tuition in cash. She had the freedom to not take these things seriously. Not that she had taken advantage of her privilege; she took school more seriously than any of our friends. And not because her parents put extra pressure on her. On the contrary, when her mother visited, she always told Noel that she was working too hard and that she should enjoy her college years. Her mother seemed convinced that Noel would just marry rich, eliminating her need to make an effort in her classes.
This was in stark contrast to any advice my parents had given me. In their eyes, I never worked hard enough. They constantly reminded me of the value of a dollar and what was at stake. They were convinced that years from now, prospective employers would ask about a stats class that I got a B- in. Being around Noel’s family was refreshing. That was why after I met her our first year, I clung to her. I needed someone like her in my life. She, like me, viewed college as a magical door that would open up all future opportunities, just as long as you worked hard enough, and we both tried desperately to tune out our parents’ voices.
“Okay, but last night I had the realization that I should probably know something about the athletic department, so I spent hours googling information instead of sleeping. I mean, I know nothing about sports. I think I went to like one football game freshman year? I can’t be the one ignorant person in the office. I want to make a good impression.”
“What happened to business is business no matter the business?” she asked. I glared as she poured herself another cup of tea. “Okay, what did you learn about the athletic department?”
“A whole lot of nothing. But I now have enough base knowledge to at least fake my way through a conversation. Like, I know the major highs and lows, so I won’t smile or frown at the wrong moment. And my boss, Sal, seems nice. My late-night internet search had nothing but good things to say about him. He coached for a few years before moving his family here.” I had stayed up until almost 2:00 a.m. researching the school’s history. Most of the recent articles were about predictions for the upcoming season and reporters praising off-season choices made by the football coaching staff.
“All good signs then! You know that interning for an athletic director is a big deal, right? Like, this is going to look so good on your résumé!”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I know! It’ll be worth it.”
The walk to the athletic complex was supposed to take fifteen minutes. I’d timed it the day before. I didn’t want to be awkwardly early, but I didn’t want to feel rushed, either.
But nerves had turned me into a speed walker, and I stood in front of the athletic complex five minutes earlier than I had intended. The large, looming building looked a lot more alive on a Monday morning than it had been on the lazy Sunday afternoon before.
The lobby echoed with voices. People frantically ran around. It looked like half of the people were on their phones, no one using proper phone voice etiquette.
“Well, George, what are we supposed to do about it?” one man yelled.
“I said no comment!” barked a woman in a crisp pantsuit.
“No, I don’t have any more information, and if I did, you know that I can’t share it.”
“As I said, that’s confidential.”
When I had been here a month ago to interview, the atmosphere had been much calmer. But that was during the height of summer. The fall sports season was starting in a few weeks. It made sense that things were livelier now.
“Who are you? If you’re from the press, you know the rules. You’re not allowed to be here.” It took a moment to register that this person was talking to me.
“No, I’m sorry, I’m not with the press. I’m a new intern, Anne. Today’s my first day.” I stuck out my hand and instantly regretted it. The man in front of me had a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in another. He was clearly not in a position to shake hands with the intern. I felt myself blush.
“I’m sorry, who’re you interning with? I can point you in the right direction. Obviously, it’s a madhouse this morning.”
“With Sal Higgins’s office.”
I thought he was going to choke on his coffee.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
I shook my head.
“Wow, you’re kidding me.” After he recovered from almost dumping his coffee on both of us, he said, “Okay, well, I’m Graham. I work in compliance. Let me walk you to the office.”
“Is it normally this hectic?”
“No, I’d say that today is the exception. Wait, did you not see ESPN this morning?”
I panicked. I hadn’t thought about checking the news that morning. I’d done so much research the night before I had thought that would be enough. Who knew that the sports world had so much news to constantly keep up with? I mean, the season hadn’t even started yet.
“No, I was online last night, but I didn’t check this morning.”
“Well, there’s been quite a shake-up. We’re not supposed to say more than what’s already been reported. So basically, if and when you’re asked about it today, please just say that you have no comment.”
I figured that that would be extremely easy to do as I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You got it, no comment, lips sealed.”
“Okay, you just need to go in through that hallway and then the first door on your right. Good luck. I’m sure that this will be a first day you’ll never forget.” He flashed me a warm smile. I felt the urge to beg him to be my friend, to help me figure all of this out.
“Thanks for your help!” Before I could finish my sentence, he was gone. I wasn’t 100 percent sure what it meant to work in compliance, but he seemed busy.
Walking down the hallway, I experienced my first quiet moment since entering the building. I didn’t pass another person on my triumphant stroll to my new office. It almost felt eerie, abandoned. Maybe everyone in this part of the building started their day later?
I found the door labeled “Sal Higgins, Athletic Director” and cautiously pushed it open.
“No! No press! No unauthorized visitors!” a voice harped as soon as I cracked the door, slamming it back in my face.
“I’m not with the press,” I yelled back at the door. “My name is Anne. I’m the new intern. I’m supposed to start today.”
From the other side of the door, I heard a slew of curse words. A few seconds later, the door opened.
The feeling in the room matched the energy in the rest of the building: chaos. Papers were strewn everywhere. The woman who greeted me looked as if she had slept there. The room smelled like coffee and fatigue.
“Well, you picked quite a day to start. I’m Helen, the assistant to the athletic director.” Helen attempted to tuck a chunk of hair back into her bun before reaching out to shake my hand.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to pick a bad day to start. It was actually HR and my advising professor that picked my start date because I’m doing this internship for credit.” I could hear myself rambling. It was clear that Helen wasn’t really paying attention to what I was saying. None of those details actually mattered.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. How could you have known? How could any of us have known?”
“Known what?”
“It’s Sal. He’s gone.”
4.
The Times
August 10, Sports Page
RENTON’S ATHLETIC DIRECTOR SAL HIGGINS ACCUSED OF MONEY LAUNDERING AND MORE
MASON PONT
In one of the most shocking events of the off-season, Renton University has fired its athletic director, Sal Higgins.
Higgins took over as the university’s athletic director eight years ago and completely turned the program around. Many credit Higgins for putting RU’s football team at the center of the national conversation. Under Higgins’s leadership, the team went from years of 0-12 seasons to leading the conference. The team’s success is considered to be the biggest and quickest shift by any NCAA football program in the association’s history.
Higgins’s success was not just a victory for the football program. In addition to guiding the football team to seven eleven-win seasons and three national championships, almost every one of RU’s athletic teams was more successful during Higgins’s tenure. Higgins also improved the school’s recruiting efforts and raised the annual budget by securing significant gifts from the school’s athletic fund members.
Higgins began his tenure at Renton after a DUI incident that led to an internal investigation at the university, where he served as the head football coach. At the time of Higgins’s hire, Joel Bonne, Renton University president, assured RU that the board had looked into Higgins’s background and saw no grounds for further investigation or concern.
Higgins’s history with alcohol is not the only cause for concern. New information has implicated Higgins in a series of scandals at RU, which prompted the university to terminate his contract early this morning.
An independent investigation led by our team at the Times uncovered that Higgins was involved in academic fraud and laundering donations to the program for his personal gain. Several professors have come forward claiming that Higgins coerced professors into giving preferential treatment to athletes. We expect that the NCAA will launch a formal investigation within the week.
As this story develops, we will bring you more information. The school is expected to appoint Assistant Athletic Director Nora Bennet as interim athletic director.
At this time, Higgins and his team have no comment on the ongoing investigation.
5.
ALEXIS
August 10, 9:30 a.m.
Our departmental staff meeting was a waste of time. All anyone could talk about was the firing, or “mutual departure,” of Sal Higgins, the athletic director.
Finally, one of the professors said, “None of our jobs are at risk, so why are we still talking about this?”
Unless you were one of the professors in his pocket, I thought to myself. But I didn’t dare say that out loud. My palms hadn’t stopped sweating since I read the news that morning.
Everyone acted so surprised at the meeting. It was as if no one believed that someone at our school, a school that worshipped the athletic department, would ever compromise their morals to give a student-athlete an advantage. As if no one in our beloved English department would betray academia for athletics. I wondered if they knew how naive they sounded.
I had many surprises when I started working here. For one thing, I had assumed that people would behave like adults. Instead, I felt like I was back in the cafeteria of my middle school. As the conference room buzzed with gossip, I was reminded that no one could make up a story quite like an English professor. We had minimal details as to what Sal Higgins had done, yet the professors around me were slinging theories like they were entering a short story contest.
I had just wanted the meeting to end. I didn’t want to spend all day faking my surprise at what was the university’s worst-kept secret. We had the new semester to prepare for. Speculating on Higgins’s crimes shouldn’t be a priority.
“If you’ve ever felt pressured by the athletic department, or Sal Higgins himself, we invite you to come forward and share your experience with us. We want to ensure you all feel safe,” Nathan Bennet announced. “As the dean of the English department, I take these accusations extremely seriously. The other deans and I have been in communication with President Bonne, and I know that he takes them seriously as well. We are all united on this.”
I nearly choked on my coffee. Of course Joel Bonne, the university’s president, and Nathan Bennet, dean of the English department, would say that they sided with academic integrity. They couldn’t outwardly say that athletics were the most important thing to the school. Where the university invested its money spoke volumes. The air-conditioning in our building had been broken for at least a year, and nothing had been done to fix it. Meanwhile, if a light bulb burned out in the athletic complex, there would be talks of rebuilding a newer, better facility.
There was no way Nathan actually wanted to hear about our experiences. He and the entire faculty were primarily worried about keeping the department’s reputation clean. Nathan was surely worried about how this would affect our funding. Everything was somehow connected to our budget, or the lack thereof. But he needed to look like a good boss. He needed to at least imply that he cared. In a room full of people with advanced degrees, I was sure that everyone understood this was just semantics. I had joined the English department wide-eyed and naive three years ago. The three-year-ago Alexis might have welcomed Nathan’s invitation to share our experiences. But I knew it was just a script. If someone came forward, it wouldn’t help anyone. The information would be neatly filed away, and the whistleblower would find themselves without a job the following semester.
When I had taken this job, I envisioned myself like Rory from Gilmore Girls. I had spent my whole life buried in a book. I was a writer. Finally I had a chance to put all that nerdy knowledge and hard work into practice and pay my bills. It wasn’t by any means my dream job. But it had its perks. A university professor. I loved the way it sounded when I told people what I did.
When I was hired, I was so young and inexperienced. I never once considered that university politics would become part of my everyday life. But I soon learned that interdepartmental rivalries and conflict were unavoidable. I anticipated some sort of annoying political hierarchy within the department. What I didn’t anticipate was university-wide politics. It was like reliving high school. And I again found myself at the bottom of the social pyramid. At the top, the athletes. Only now these athletes were on TV, and the fame had made them even more unbearable.
I would bet that every single professor had been asked for preferential treatment by an athlete or a coach at one time or another. I was sure Nathan, the very person asking us to report anything suspicious, had been asked for multiple favors by multiple athletes or coaches. It was like a rite of passage. After three years on the job, I had heard hundreds of excuses from coaches as to why some player should be exempt from whatever it was I had assigned. It was sickening. I didn’t fool myself into believing that everyone taking my class wanted to be there. Especially English 101. But I at least imagined they’d have some level of respect for the class. Time and time again, I was proven wrong.
As soon as the meeting ended, I rushed back to my office, desperate to find something to distract me from the news.
But the walls in my office seemed to be closing in on me. I felt antsy staring at my laptop, willing myself to do some work.
“Knock, knock!” I was startled out of my angry daze. Talia stood at my door. She and I had been hired the same semester and had instantly gravitated to each other. We had a sense of solidarity. We found comfort knowing that we both were trying to learn the ropes. Everyone else in the world of academia seemed to have everything figured out. A few weeks into that first semester, Talia had come into my tiny office crying. She had no idea what she was doing. She felt out of her depth. In truth, I did, too. But up until then I had been too scared to admit it. It was nice to know that I wasn’t alone. We’d been joined at the hip ever since.
“Hi, sorry, you startled me.”
“There’s no way you’re actually getting any work done. I know for a fact that you’ve had your syllabus done for weeks and have read all the required reading like five times by now.”
She was right. I closed my laptop. There was no point pretending to work.
