The English Department's Attempt to Remove Hank as Chair

The English Department's Attempt to Remove Hank as Chair makes a rumor about administrative loyalty the test of a department already divided by politics and habit. Finny and Paul Rourke build support for removing Hank after colleagues hear that he has made a deal with the administration; meanwhile, Hank learns that the procedure they rely on is outdated. His refusal to mount a conventional defense, followed by his concealed presence above the recall meeting, turns a formal departmental proceeding into a contest over information, allegiance, and who gets to define what counts as serious business.

Background and Political Alignment

The immediate crisis arrives when June Barnes warns Hank that Finny is telling people he has cut a deal with the administration. She expects the department to recall him by Monday. The rumor has spread after Hank’s conference with Herbert Schonberg, whose conversation with him was about the faculty union’s position in the university’s labor conflict. Herbert had invited Hank to join their side, arguing that his television appearance and his influence over the English Department could make him a useful public representative. He also made clear that the department’s votes mattered because English had more members than any other department. Hank understood the double edge of the appeal: he was being told he could lead the effort while also being shown that friends and colleagues had already aligned themselves against him.

Herbert pressed Hank to declare whether he would join the union’s campaign or make common cause with Dickie Pope. He warned that neutrality could leave Hank friendless. That pressure belongs to the wider political setting of the recall, but it did not resolve the departmental dispute. Instead, the meeting with Herbert became material for Finny’s accusation that Hank had betrayed his colleagues. Hank’s reported response to the prospect of removal is that he has been trying to get recalled all year. His irony makes the campaign both an institutional threat and a spectacle he refuses to treat with the expected gravity.

Billy Quigley offers another measure of how personal leverage enters the conflict. He tells Hank that if Hank will not help him, Billy will never forgive him and will vote with Finny and Paul Rourke. Hank recognizes the threat as a lie, even while Billy’s voice conveys real conviction. Billy’s position is entangled with his appeal for Hank’s help over the duck-budget ultimatum, so his threatened vote is not simply an expression of settled political allegiance. His later participation in the recall meeting—where he insists that he has heard enough discussion—shows how a colleague’s unpredictable involvement can matter inside a process otherwise governed by formal rules.

The Recall Rule and Its Stakes

As the campaign gathers momentum, Hank initially hears that a two-thirds majority is needed to remove him. Teddy Barnes says Finny believes he has votes to spare, and June Barnes agrees that Finny’s count is likely right. The two-thirds figure, however, is obsolete. A colleague brings Hank the English Department’s operating paper, opened to the recall procedure and marked to emphasize the actual requirement: a three-fourths majority. The booklet establishes that this higher threshold has been in force since 1971, when Professor Quarry was recalled. Hank remembers that Quarry hired him and Jacob Rose, but cannot remember how he voted in Quarry’s case.

There are twenty-eight voting members of the department. Against that number, the difference between two-thirds and three-fourths is consequential: the latter requires twenty-one votes. Hank asks for thirty copies of the relevant material and tells his colleague not to tell anyone. The extra copies give the discovery practical force, while secrecy keeps the corrected rule from becoming an open warning to Finny’s side. The episode changes the apparent balance of the campaign: the opponents may believe their numbers are sufficient, but their expectation rests on a mistaken understanding of the procedure.

Hank Declines the Public Defense

Before the meeting, Finny tells Hank that charges will be discussed and that Hank has the right—and perhaps the obligation—to respond. The accusations include giving aid and comfort to the administration and misleading or betraying the department he is meant to inform and support. Finny formally hopes Hank will attend, but privately prefers that he stay away; he fears Hank will turn the proceedings into farce. In Finny’s view, the department has been treated as a joke long enough, and this meeting must be serious business.

Teddy and June separately urge Hank to attend and contest the charges. They argue that he could deny providing Dickie Pope with a list and reassure colleagues that he would not betray them. Such a defense, they believe, might restore the department’s familiar deadlock. Teddy invokes the department’s long record of disagreement, including its rare instance of consensus: hiring Gracie DuBois. Hank nevertheless agrees not to attend in person. He can vote by proxy if he finds someone to carry his vote, but the evidence does not specify whether he does so. His absence is therefore a choice within the procedure, not proof that he has no stake in its outcome.

The Meeting and Its Unresolved Outcome

Hank eventually observes the meeting from a ceiling space above the conference table. From that hidden position, he hears Billy Quigley press to vote and Finny note that Billy missed the discussion. Jacob Rose is present because a dean or representative must attend proceedings against a department chair; he is also technically still an English Department member. When Jacob seconds a motion to call the question, Finny rules that Jacob’s ex officio status prevents him from moving or seconding under the rules. The motion fails for lack of a valid second, and the discussion stalls again—a procedural impasse that Hank recognizes as characteristic of his department.

Jacob then identifies the two matters that remain, whatever the members decide about Hank: whether to recall him and who would become chair afterward. Gracie DuBois asks whether the search for an outside candidate has ended. Jacob confirms that its funding did not come through. Thus the recall is not a self-contained personnel dispute. If the department removes Hank, it must still confront the vacancy without the externally funded search some members expected.

The opposing group ultimately forces a recall vote for that day and schedules nominations for Friday, with the election to follow the next Friday. Finny distributes ballots and explains that yes counts as a vote for impeachment, while no indicates confidence in the chair. Billy Quigley is awakened to vote, but does not understand which mark expresses support for Hank; June corrects his ballot when he chooses yes, and Billy then passes it in. These details show how the vote’s formal meaning can be difficult to separate from the loyalties and confusion of the people casting it. The account describes ballots being distributed and the count beginning, but does not state the final tally or establish the immediate result of the recall.

Wider Institutional Consequences

The conflict takes place amid a wider dispute over layoffs, budgets, and union action. Later, Herbert Schonberg calls for a strike vote near the end of the academic term, explaining that preventing seniors from graduating is among the faculty’s few sources of political leverage. Still later, after Dickie Pope is dismissed and Jacob Rose becomes chief executive, the faculty votes overwhelmingly against striking, despite the union’s position and the effects of upcoming budget cuts on people such as Finny. This later reversal places the recall episode within a changing institutional struggle: alliances are provisional, and the same faculty whose votes determine a chair’s fate can divide again over the costs and tactics of collective action. The attempt to remove Hank exposes not only a contest for departmental leadership but also the unstable boundary between personal reputation and institutional politics.