Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(4)
Geoff jumped in first. “My experience is that people who want to be paid to share what they know are not generally reliable. They embellish and sensationalize the story because they want the money and publicity.”
Charlie chuckled. “I think even the most avid fans of Albany corruption are starting to find the subject tiresome. And I agree that paying a source is rarely a good idea.”
Gesturing toward Gina’s notebook, Charlie asked, “What else have you got?”
“Okay,” Gina said while flipping the page. “A longtime employee in the Admissions Office at Yale reached out to me. He claims that the Ivy League schools are sharing with each other the amount of aid they plan to offer individual applicants.”
“Why is that a problem?” Geoff asked.
“Because it’s right on the edge of price fixing and collusion. The student is the loser. It’s similar in some ways to when Silicon Valley companies made a gentleman’s agreement to not poach each other’s engineers. The result was that companies profited because they did not have to pay more to keep their top talent. The engineers earned less than they would have if they could have sold their talents to the highest bidder.”
“I believe there are eight Ivy League schools, is that right?” Geoff asked.
“Yes,” Charlie said, “and they average about six thousand undergrads. So that’s forty-eight thousand of the country’s twenty million college students. I’m not sure many of our readers are going to care about a handful of Ivy Leaguers who might have gotten stiffed on their aid package. If you ask me, I think they’re wasting their money on those overpriced places.”
Charlie had grown up in Philadelphia and gone to Penn State. His allegiance to state schools never wavered.
What a great way to make an impression on the new boss, Gina thought while flipping the page. Trying to sound animated, she said, “This next one is literally at square one.” She told them about receiving the email about the “terrible experience” at REL News and the response she had sent.
“So it’s been ten days since you answered the email and you haven’t gotten a reply?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, eleven counting today.”
“This CRyan who sent the email. Have you been able to find out anything about her? Is she credible?” Geoff inquired.
“I agree with your assumption that CRyan is a woman, but we can’t be sure of that. Of course the first thing that came to mind when I read this is that it may be a MeToo situation. No, I don’t know anything more about her than she put in the email. My instinct tells me this is worth pursuing.”
Geoff looked at Charlie. “What do you think?”
“If I were you, I’d be very interested in finding out what CRyan has to say,” Charlie answered. “And it will be much easier to get her to tell her story before she reaches a settlement agreement.”
“Okay, Gina, get to work on it,” Geoff affirmed. “Wherever she is, and I’m also confident we’re dealing with a ‘she,’ go meet with her. I want to hear your personal impressions of her.”
As Gina walked down the hallway to the elevator, she whispered to herself, “Please don’t let CRyan turn out to be a psycho!”
3
Ordinarily Gina would have taken time to absorb and appreciate the sights and sounds of the city she loved. Stepping into the subway car, she smiled as she remembered her freshman year roommate. Marcie was from a small town in Ohio. She asked if it had been “hard” growing up in New York City. Gina had been shocked by the question; she had mastered the subway and bus systems and loved the freedom of navigating them alone by the time she was twelve. She asked Marcie if it had been hard growing up in a place where you had to depend on your parents every time you wanted to go somewhere.
She stopped at the small grocery store on the corner of Broadway and picked up milk and some sandwich makings. Surprised that there was no line at the Starbucks next door, she popped in and ordered her favorite, a vanilla latte. As she walked the block and a half to her apartment, her mind was on the daunting task ahead of her.
After putting away the groceries, she carried the latte to the kitchen table and tapped her computer to rouse it from sleep mode. She clicked on the CRyan email. It had been sent from a Google account, but that really didn’t matter. After numerous violations the tech companies were under extreme pressure to safeguard the privacy of their users. There’s no way Google will lift a finger to help me find CRyan, she thought.
Gina reread the only part of the email that offered a clue; I don’t believe we ever met when we were at Boston College. I finished a few years apart from you.
CRyan obviously knows the year I graduated, Gina thought, and we were on campus together at some point. A few means more than one, but it has to be less than four or we would never have been in school at the same time. So that means CRyan graduated either two to three years before me or two to three years after me.
Gina sat back in her chair and took a sip of her latte. When she was working on the branding iron story, the Southern university had gotten wind of her investigation. They had fought her every step of the way when she sought contact information for fraternity members and faculty advisors.
But those were different circumstances. Boston College was not a target. This was not about them. And she was only asking them to identify the owner of one email address.