The pleasure of seeing one’s own name in writing drove him back to the school website news page daily. So little went on at Las Palomas Community College that the blurb about the Health Professions instructor who got honored by the governor as a key partner in the state’s future stayed at the top of the page for months. A photo embedded in the article showed the beaming governor shaking the hand of Rex Magotti as they stood in a crowd of Rex’s students. Rex consulted the news page whenever he began to feel his confidence slipping. The hand of the governor always lifted his spirit back into place, even though the same hand had signed off on the latest budget, which cut away any hope of a raise.
A new face confronted Rex on his afternoon cruise to the website. He set down his water bottle with a resounding clunk. The governor had sunk to the bottom of the page, displaced by a long article that outweighed the one about Rex roughly two to one, from the enormous headline down through the ornate prose describing the so-called achievement. A woman with a forced smile and fear-stricken eyes peered out from the place where Rex once stood with the governor.
Rex snatched up his phone and dialed the dean’s office. The dean’s tired voice hailed him by name. “What up, Rex?”
“Who decides about the news page on the website?”
“The Public Communications officer, not me. I have nothing to do with it.”
“So this officer does the writing and choose the font and all that?”
“I think there’s a press release and it goes to the graphics department for—”
“The graphics department? That’s where this woman comes from, the one in the lead article. Now I get it. My own article about my trip to the governor’s office, where I represented my school and we both got recognized for our efforts to improve a vital workforce, got rejected for being too long. But suddenly someone with inside connections gets to go on and on about herself, even though she only attracted some money from some outfit I never heard of, ‘The Wycliff Foundation.’ And this money won’t even go to the school but to the woman herself for some foolish object of public art that does nothing to make our state better unless you’re some highbrow snob. How is this news?”
“I believe the press release was a condition of the award. The Wycliff staff wrote it.”
“So now you can put whatever you want on our website if you just pay a bunch of money? What kind of school is this anyway? What are we about here?”
“Survival. We like to encourage rich people to give us money, even if we start small. It tends to keep our budgets solvent. Call me back when you actually get us something besides a handshake.” The line went dead.
Rex’s arms fell slack and the phone clattered to the floor.
