Page 31 of The Girl and the Lies

I grab all my notes and hop into my car. The GPS has me getting to the campus with hopefully just enough time to find Samantha Clark’s office and be there on time.

Summer means the campus isn’t as busy as it will be by the middle of August when all the students return for the regular year. I’m able to look up what building Samantha’s office is in and find a parking spot close by, making my walk through the sticky, pre-storm heat mercifully short. I walk into the building and go to the fourth floor where the faculty listing said her office is located. The door is standing open when I find the one with her name on the plaque beside it, and I peek my head inside.

“Ms. Clark?”

A woman with thick, chestnut-colored hair pulled up in a massive bun and delicate silver-rimmed glasses looks up at me from the note she’s writing and gestures for me to come inside.

“Please, call me Samantha,” she says.

“Thanks for letting me come by,” I say. “Like I told you on the phone, I’m investigating a case involving the Tracy Ellis Ministry, and I know that she did a talk here a while back. You organized that talk.”

She nods, her expression slightly regretful like she’s thinking about how the talk turned out.

“I did,” she says. “Someone from her organization got in touch with the school and proposed her coming out here to host a talk with the students.”

“Marcus Kelsey,” I say.

“Yes, I think that was his name,” she says.

“What was your impression of him when you were talking about the possibility of Tracy coming here?” I ask.

“He was insistent. Very driven to get things done. It was obvious he believed very strongly in what he was saying and that he wasn’t going to be easy to dissuade. He was compelling,” she says.

“Were you familiar with Tracy Ellis when he first got in touch with you?”

“Familiar enough,” she says. “I knew of her and the reputation she had, which is why I was hesitant to plan an appearance for her here. This is predominantly a liberal arts college. I knew that a lot of the students weren’t going to be receptive to the message she’d be bringing with her.”

“Then why did you agree to let her come and speak?” I ask.

“Higher education is about broadening your horizons and being willing to stretch your boundaries. Marcus Kelsey pointed out that statistically speaking, there had to be students on campus whose personal beliefs lined up with, or at least closely resembled, Tracy Ellis’s and that they deserved recognition, while at the same time having someone of an opposing belief system speak would give other students the chance to challenge their own thoughts and perceptions. He presented it as a learning experience for everyone and an opportunity to encourage cultural and ideological exchange among the students.

“I have to admit, that convinced me. I’ve always been of the thought that you can’t really say you believe something until you’ve confronted opposing thoughts with an open willingness to listen, learn, and consider. Holding a mirror up to yourself as the only barometer of truth in your life will never foster a real depth of understanding, and it will definitely never give you the opportunity to influence others.

“So I agreed for her to come and give a talk out in the courtyard. It was advertised throughout campus for a couple of weeks leading up to it, and I got quite a bit of feedback about it from both sides. It seemed like this was going to be something impactful for the campus. As it turned out, it was. Just not in the way I was expecting or hoping for.”

“When you say you got feedback from both sides, was there anything especially negative? Any kind of threats or anything like that?”

“We did get a couple of messages saying having her on campus was an insult to the students and that there would be retaliation if the talk wasn’t canceled. But they didn’t make any specific threat, and when we talked to the students who sent the messages, they insisted that they weren’t making threats, they were trying to point out a possible danger they saw happening,” Samantha tells me.

“But you decided to carry on with the talk,” I say.

“Yes. Again, challenging thoughts and beliefs is part of personal growth. People were told when and where the talk was going to be held, so they had the absolute right to not attend and not listen if they didn’t want to. If they made the choice to go and listen to what she had to say, then that was on them. Our students are young adults, Agent Griffin. They are coming into their own—and deserve to be respected enough to make—their own choices. But they also have to learn that the world isn’t going to bow down to them and shift everything just because they don’t like it. They have to learn to live with all types of people and thoughts,” she says.

“I agree,” I tell her. “Tell me about what happened at the event itself.”

“I was actually surprised at how many people came out to listen to her and that they really seemed genuinely interested in hearing what she had to say. There were a lot of students who seemed excited to have her there, and I thought Marcus had been right about giving representation to a segment of the student body that might not usually be heard as much. Everything was going fairly well. There were some people who were walking by and making snide comments or trying to heckle her, but Tracy Ellis just kept right on going like it didn’t affect her at all. I’m assuming she’s more than accustomed to that kind of thing happening while she’s talking.”

“That’s safe to say,” I say.

“Like I said, everything was going well, and then a large group of students came down the sidewalk toward the people gathered listening to her. They were shouting and chanting, getting louder as they got closer, like they were trying to make it so that no one could hear her anymore. Some faculty and administrators were there, and we tried to get them to move on, but they wouldn’t. I’m not sure exactly what happened to start the altercation, but I know that both sides started shouting at each other, and at some point, it turned into a physical situation. Several fights broke out, and her security had to intervene. I remember one of the guards stopping a student who was trying to get to Tracy Ellis and bringing him to the ground. He ended up scratching the side of his head on the pavers in the courtyard. It got really nasty.”

“Do you know who called the police?” I ask.

“I did,” she says. “As soon as I saw things getting out of hand, I contacted 911, and they sent out several officers to help the security guards get everything back under control. A few students were arrested, and charges were filed.”

“I read that the group who protested referred to themselves as the Student Action Committee.”

“Yes,” Samantha says. “They are a student-led organization here on campus.”

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