Walking outside of the classroom in the deserted hallway, Nathaniel heard the door open and closed behind him followed by quick footsteps in his direction. Turning his head to the side, he saw Na-Yung coming near him. Waiting for her to catch up, he started walking back to his previous destination, her, following along.
"Na-Yung, why are you here?" Nathaniel sighed.
"Why should I not be here?" She asked back.
"He's going to fail you and you need those points considering the time you already miss from school or you are going to not pass the semester."
"I know that but what is the point of giving it if he's not going to be a teacher anymore?" She answers.
As if echoing Na-Yung words, the doors of the classroom opened again and many students were walking out of it, talking quite loudly.
"There is no way to know what is really going to happen, maybe he's going to be just fine and even if he's out, the next professor could very well choose to uphold the grade of his predecessor."
"There is no getting away from what you just did." Na-Yung shook her head strongly. "I already sent you the complete video of your little presentation by the way." She added.
"Oh good." Nathaniel answered.
Opening his phone, Nathaniel opened the file before using an app to cut the video in two parts. In the first part, he was discussing the case and in the second was the time when his professor was starting to ridicule him. Taking the second part, he opened a new post on the university internet network and published it. Once done, he pockets his phone back, Na-Yung watches him with attention.
"Why did you cut the video?" She asked.
"It's easy, my essay was never meant to be displayed to the public. This case already causes too much strife, both families don't deserve to have those wounds reopened, not even mentioning the additional damage that could be done. Clarissa's parents are still married and Eric's mother doesn't know about her husband's affair, they already suffered enough."
"I agree, what are you going to do now? This is going to make a lot of noise." She said.
"I believe you have archery in twenty minutes?" He asked, not answering the question.
"I do."
"Alright, you should go then, I need to go somewhere and it's best if I go there alone." He said.
Seeing the way that she looked at him, Nathaniel hurried to add something.
"I'll come to your archery lesson once I'm done and then we are going to eat where you want, my treat." Nathaniel offers, trusting his fist forward.
"Deal!" She exclaimed, fist bumping him before bouncing away.
Nathaniel laughs seeing her like this before turning away at the interception, angling his step to his direction. Entering the administration building, Nathaniel took the stairs to the third floor. Finding his way easily, he saw the secretary of the Dean looking at him curiously.
"Hello, do you have an appointment?" She asked.
"Hello, I'm Nathaniel Lyndon and I'm afraid I do not but I'm pretty sure that the Dean is going to want to talk to me really soon. In the meantime, I'm just going to sit in the corner if you are okay with it."
Nathaniel saw her blinked.
"Alright but if you start making noise or listening to music, I will ask you to leave."
"Don't worry, you will not even realize I'm here in the first place." Nathaniel smiled.
Sitting in the most remote chair, Nathaniel opens his bag, taking a book followed by a notebook and a pen. He then starts to work, reading the book and from time to time writing something on his notebook to the side. He could of course use his laptop but Nathaniel was a little old school even if he was computer smart and found it easier to take note using a piece of paper and a pen. It was almost twenty minutes later when he heard someone running and Joshua frame entered his line of vision.
"Is he there?" He asks quickly to the secretary.
"Yes but he is occupied…" The secretary answered, surprised to see him barge into the lobby like that.
"It can't wait!" Joshua said before entering the Dean office without knocking.
The secretary gapes at him before she seems to remember something and look in Nathaniel's direction.
"Did you happen to know what was that about?" She asked him.
"I might." He replied noncommittally.
"I see."
Even if she had a vague reaction, Nathaniel could feel her look in his direction more now. Almost as if she thought he was going to try to make a run for it even if he had come on his own accord in the first place. The door of the Dean opens again five minutes later and Joshua passes the doorway.
"Ingrid, I need you to summon Professor Miles and Nathaniel Lyndon to the Dean office right now."
"Alright I'm going to call Professor Miles right now but Nathaniel Lyndon is already here." She said, pointing at where Nathaniel was still working, not looking in their direction at all.
"When did he arrive?" Joshua asked.
"Almost half an hour ago."
"Lyndon! Get in there!" Joshua shouted.
Putting his things back inside his bag, he then throws it on his shoulder before walking inside the Dean office. He had the time to hear Joshua say to the secretary to call when professor Miles arrived before closing the door. Seeing entering his office, his mouth opened in surprise before he looked at Joshua askance.
"How the hell did you find him so fast?"
"I didn't, he was already waiting outside when I arrived."
"Well, since I have been kind of excommunicated from my classroom, I knew that you will want to talk to me so I thought it would be better to be proactive about it and your waiting room seem as good a place as any to work a little. Since I was called, I'm sure you both watched the video."
"We watched it alright! In barely fifteen minutes, this video became the most active post on the university network and the most shared!" Joshua exclaimed.
"Why won't we start about you telling us what happened before the video started?" The Dean butted in in a pacified tone.
"You want me to start from the beginning?" Nathaniel asked.
"Yes." He confirmed.
"To be honest, it started from the beginning. Professor Miles seemed to dislike me from the start, he was always asking me advanced questions, even when they have no link with what he was teaching us. At first, I thought he just wanted to test me but when he saw that I had the answers, he would up the difficulty and still I was still responding he passed to something else. He then started to make passing remarks about me in the class, ridiculing me but was never obvious about it, he was goading me into talking back so that he could exclude me from class. When I never took the bait, he got bolder and using the fact that I was in LA, trying to disqualify some of my assignments, I contacted him about it and he never answered or just told me that I will get an F for work not given. I sent him proof that I did send my work but he still chose to not answer. Ultimately, I had to contact Joshua to act as an intermediary."
The Dean looked in the direction of Joshua who nodded.
"It did happen two times in a row. At first, I thought it was only a technological problem as you know that Professor Miles is fiercely old school but the second time he wasn't willing to grade Nathaniel work and I had to raise my voice. I was going to tell you about it but it just left my mind."
"I see. You can go on Nathaniel." The Dean said.
"When I arrived today in class with my essay, Professor Miles singled me out again and told me that since I had the best grade in the class, I should present my work in front of everyone. He insisted that I wasn't forced to but strongly suggested that if I chose to not present it, it would reflect badly on my grade. Never was it asked or even suggested that it would be or could be an oral work so when I accepted, I hurriedly put together a presentation and showed what I had worked on. In the end, even if I could see that the students were impressed, Professor Miles ridiculed my work and it was apparent that he would fail me so that when it happened." Nathaniel explains, pointing to the Dean computer screen that as his video still on it.
There was a moment of silence after that who ended when Joshua asked a question.
"Why did you look into him then?"
"After what happened in LA when he kept refusing to acknowledge that he received my assignments, I knew that he was out to get me so I sure wasn't going to sit and wait for it to take it in the face. This is why I started to look into his record as a prosecutor, the way that he was doing it seemed too clean, too rehearsed, it was obvious that he did it too others in the past. When I saw at what frequencies he was excluding black jurors, I had no other choices but to get to the bottom of this. No one would have believed me if I had not the precise data and facts to back the whole thing. It took me weeks of analysis and strenuous work to compile everythings. I still have all the data, I can send it to you when I get home if you want Joshua."
"I'm afraid you will have to because if you don't that would just be slander and you will be expelled from Columbia." Joshua warns sternly.
"You will get them and you can verify everything, I'm not the type to put fake data on a document, especially when I have strictly no reason to do so." Nathaniel affirmed.
"This is going to be a PR nightmare, this video is going to blow up and a lot of people are going to get angry at him and you. I still wish you had come to me first with this instead of exposing it in public." The Dean sighed with resentment.
"I was going to." Nathaniel said, surprising them both. "I came back to New York yesterday and the earlier appointment you had was tomorrow 5PM, our appointment should be on your agenda."
Frowning, the Dean focused his attention on his computer screen, getting a copy of his agenda. He quickly found that Nathaniel was telling the truth and they had a meeting scheduled tomorrow. Seeing that the whole mess could have been avoided if he had an empty meeting today, the Dean sighed again.
Feeling his phone vibrating in his pocket, Nathaniel took it partially from his pocket. Seeing that it was a text message from Maggie, he pulled his phone all the way to read it. Taking the remote on the Dean desk, Nathaniel turns around, turning on the tv on the wall behind him.
"Nathaniel, what are you doing?" The Dean asked in displeasure.
"My agent just texted me that I needed to tune in to NBC News because of… that."
Seeing what was being broadcast, Joshua and Richard both turn paler.
"Those vultures work fast!" Joshua swore.
"They are the first but I accept CNN, Fox and NBC to broadcast it in the next few minutes." Nathaniel added.
"Was that your plan from the beginning Nathaniel? Get the public on your side to pressure us into firing Professor Miles?" The Dean asked hotly.
"If it was the case, I would have posted it on my twitter account. I'm as surprised as you are that they caught wind of it so fast, they must have put an alert on me or maybe one of the students as friends or family members working at NBC, there is no way to know for sure. I don't need to have public opinion on my side to have him fired as I have the necessary evidence to make it happen. The only way that he gets away with it is if you cover for him and in that case, you will not have to expel me, I will leave on my own. Even if it would be easy to think so, I'm not the responsible for this situation, you are."
The Dean and Joshua look at each other in surprise before focusing on Nathaniel again.
"What do you mean?"
"It's easy, you are supposed to be the ones who teach students that not doing their homework is going to bite them in the ass. The University is in this situation because you didn't take the time to do a thorough background check. You did this. Inaction is not an excuse, Ignorance is not an excuse either." Nathaniel said, pointing at the TV screen.
"That's enough, Nathaniel! Get out of here!" The Dean explode in fury.
Don't in the least intimidated, Nathaniel face stay neutral as he got to his feet and exit the Dean office.