BREAKING AWAY

Close to the entrance to the meeting hall, she stopped, assumed a confident carriage as if bracing to face a foe, and stepped into the room.

“Lola!” She heard her name and stopped. Her closest campus colleague, Ilene Sumner, Nursing Department chair, rushed over to envelope her in a welcoming hug. “Look at you!” Ilene stood back to take in the slender figure in a floral wrap-around dress. “Don’t you look great! Where did you spend the summer? On the Riviera?”

Lola McIntyre absorbed her friend’s extended warmth. “You are always the funny one, Ilene. Believe me, it was hard labor completing the fellowship, roaming around in libraries, going on field excursions, lots of late hours, but I had a little time for rest and relaxation, too. I guess it’s showing.”

In the hubbub the two women exchanged highlights of their summer activities before their enthusiasm subsided.

Lola looked around at her fellow faculty members, seemingly upbeat and in a festive mood. Was this a sign of good things to come? At the sight of the milling, buzzing crowd that appeared energized and glad to be back in one another’s company, back to life on campus as it had been in times past, she could feel her trepidation beginning to disintegrate and take flight like a retreating army. Without effort or will, she began to make a tentative overture to good fellowship.

Standing next to Lola, Ilene threw a sharp look across the room and back at her. “I’ve heard they’re planning some drastic changes for this academic year.” She kept her voice low and cautious. “I think it’s going to be pretty hot around here,” she said, adding that from talking with a few people that very morning, she’d picked up word that something out of the ordinary was waiting to happen.

“I’ve been thinking and fearing as much.” Lola said, casting a penetrating look around the room. The foreboding she’d felt when she came on campus threatened to return, and she flicked her head as if to dislodge the uneasiness before it could settle in.

“Colleagues, please take your seats. We’re about to begin.”

The announcement from the platform cut short the two women’s conversation. Used to being obedient, they joined the others in moving forward, and Lola rallied her inner strength to push aside the encroaching fears about the turn life at New Lebanon College would take in the new school year. From what she had seen the year before, she believed the Christian college was headed for turbulent waters, but for the moment, she would set aside the worrisome thoughts. With the ever-cheerful Ilene following close behind, she led the way to seats near the front.

“I don’t want to miss anything,” Lola said, making herself comfortable in one of the pull-down padded seats, the smell of newness lingering on it. While everyone got settled, she and Ilene whispered like freshmen on their first day in a new course with a difficult professor.

On the platform sat the objects of some of their whisperings, the two men who had installed themselves as the architects of the new day at New Lebanon College. They seemed bent on building a monument to intellectual strength, and in their zeal were steering the college in an unaccustomed direction. Spencer Burns, the chubby, businesslike academic dean, sat next to President Harold Drinkwater, aggressively ambitious and self-confident, but generally well-liked. To Lola, and to many of her colleagues as well, these two acted like prospectors striking out for new territory, their bold, even daring, moves calculated to give the college an enviable place in the academic sun. On the campus, the pace of construction never slowed. Buildings rose up out of the Pennsylvania clay like mushrooms after rain. As Ilene had hinted, the men had been at work all summer creating newness and seemed ready to continue their campaign.

As Lola sat there, observing the two men waiting for the crowd to settle down, she told herself she didn’t in any way resent their desire to make their small Christian college grow stronger and become a shining example of academic excellence. She welcomed every indication that the administrators’ efforts had borne fruit, and the college was advancing under their leadership. A Christian college, she thought, was just the place for showing how excellence can thrive alongside commitment to spiritual ideals. What she wanted most, though, was that along with its growth, the college would hold on to its strong Christian principles and that spirituality on the campus would be observable, not hidden under a bushel basket of ambitious changes. But during the past year, as she watched the juggernaut of change sweep over the campus of New Lebanon College, it had become clear to her that the administrators had begun to diminish the place of the spiritual in the life of the college. She didn’t think of herself as a fighter, and she didn’t want to assume the posture of a crusader for righteousness, but she knew that New Lebanon’s spiritual values were worth preserving and so were worth fighting for.

“Hello there.” The voice startled her. The seat next to her creaked, and she turned to her left where Jeffrey Hindman from Sociology was making himself comfortable beside her. “How are you?” he said, the result of the summer respite telling in his healthy-looking face and muscular body. Handsome and brilliant, Hindman had the attention of just about every unattached female on campus—including students. Lola was careful to keep herself out of the competition for his favors and made sure he knew it. She smiled at him cordially but didn’t speak.