Gotcha!

“Son, we don’t just let people out of jail because someone is here to get them.  I know it’s your mother, but we got rules at this jail,” the cop said, leaning over the counter for emphasis.  

Yes, sir,” I said, hoping that my crisp white shirt, rep tie, dark suit, good English, buzz haircut, and earnest, submissive attitude would do the trick, but his stern look didn’t offer much promise.  

It was Sunday and I’d been at the Dallas jail all morning, the same one where a few years later Jack Ruby would slay Lee Harvey Oswald.  I was slowly working my way up the chain of authority, trying to get my sweet, troubled mother out of jail because she slammed into a police car that was running at breakneck speed, lights flashing, siren’s wailing.  One of the cops at the jail said it was a miracle no one was killed.  Never mind that she had the green: she should have yielded, but she didn’t.  These things happen, especially if you are driving under the influence, which she was.

For a moment I considered explaining what was a stake: I needed to get her out, not just for her sake, but for mine, too—I was a freshman in medical school and in the midst of a 48-hour weekend drill collecting my urine for a biochemistry lab experiment.  My bladder was near to bursting, and I had to get home to the big jug in the bathroom. Letting my precious load go down the toilet would be the end of my experiment.  And I didn’t know what to expect if I didn’t turn in the expected paper. 

But it was too much to explain.  On my side of the counter were a scrum of surly humanity, each sure to have some sad, desperate story, and mine, while novel, surely ranked low on the sympathy scale.  So, I just let it go with, “Yes, sir,” and blankly stared back at the cop.

After a pause, he took mother’s papers and stuck his head in the office door behind the counter.  A few words were exchanged and the cop stood aside for a man in a suit and tie who came to the door.  He examined the papers and gave me a long look.  “Let the boy have his mother,” he said. 

But it proved to be too late.  By the time the paperwork was finished and she came meekly through the door I’d already sent my experiment down the plumbing.

The next day in biochemistry lab I explained my problem to the student next to me, Eddie Sankary, as he and everyone else busied themselves pouring urine into shiny glass beakers for chemical analysis.  I’d met Eddie early in the year on account of his wife, Lynny, who worked as a clerk in the library—I’d made a fool of myself with a prissy complaint that she talked too much and too loudly for me to study.  In spite of my boorish behavior we became friends—we laugh about it to this day—so it was natural for me to ask him what I should do about my lack of a specimen.  He volunteered to let me work on his specimen—we’d turn it in as a joint project, which we did.

I thought nothing more about it until a week later when I was summoned to the biochemistry office.  I was ushered into the office of a junior professor, to whom many of us had taken a dislike because of the air of officious self-importance that clung to him tighter than his perfectly starched and creased white laboratory coats. 

“I have here the results of your laboratory experiment,” he said.  “Is this the result of your work?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, not understanding the point, which made the inquisition all the more frightening.

With a flourish, he put another paper under my nose.  I could see Eddie’s name at the top of the paper.  “Your results are exactly the same as Mr. Sankary’s,” he said.  “What do you have to say about that?” he said, sitting back with a satisfied smile.

I felt relieved for a moment.  The explanation was simple and compelling, and neither Eddie nor I had tried to hide anything.  “Well, sir, it’s not exactly mine alone.” 

“So this is not solely your own work, is it?” he said after I laid out the details of my trip to the jail and how I had to let my specimen go down the drain in a jail urinal.  I should have saved my breath.  “You know what the Honor Code says about submitting work that is not yours alone,” he said, stabbing his finger at the honor code pledge posted at the bottom of the page above my signature. “Yes, sir, but…”  He stood up, ending the interview before I could complete the sentence, and shuffled the incriminating evidence back into a manila folder.

My heart sank.  I thought I was going to faint.  I knew something about honor codes.  I got my undergraduate education at Rice University, which had a famously strict honor code. We enjoyed the freedom it brought—self-timed, take-home tests, no nosy proctors hovering about during exams, and so on.  But the other side of the coin was that Rice Honor Council hearings were secret and students found guilty suddenly stopped showing up around campus as if liquidated by the secret police.  And the Honor Code covered all manner of conduct, not just cheating and other academic crimes—during my time there several students were summarily dismissed for bringing a six-pack of beer onto campus.

“But, sir,” I said, “what else could I do?” 

“Well,” he said, dismissing my question, “I’m referring both of you to the Honor Council.  You’ll hear from them soon.”  He didn’t say, “Gotcha!” But he might as well have.

It took a couple of weeks for the Honor Council to convene.  In the meantime, I was a nervous wreck.  Eddie and I testified separately to a council composed entirely of students, two from each class, including two in our class.  Dr. Gotcha and several senior professors were also present.  Only twice can I recall being so fearful for my future: once in high school when on a prank some friends and I broke into a small country store and stole boxes of cigars and candy bars and wound up in front of a municipal judge, and a second time in the late 1970s when I was in the laboratory business and we had a computer problem that for a while seemed sure to ruin us.

I told my tale, Eddie told his, and we sat outside the sanctum sanctorum while our fates were debated.  Seldom have I been so remorseful: poor Eddie, all he did was offer to help me out of a jam that was not of my own making and here he was, snared in a mess.  Finally, the chairman, a senior student, came out and told us we were not to be disciplined and suggested that if anything like this came up again we should tell the professors in advance.  For an instant, I was flooded with relief.  Then it dawned on me that this sensible advice could have been given to us by Dr. Gotcha and the Honor Council hearing could have been avoided.