Only two more Thursday lectures for “Introduction to European History”, one before Thanksgiving break and one after, before the quarter ends.  Professor Grantberg’s shiny pate is slightly more visible above the lectern than usual.  He’s wearing cowboy boots, adding a couple inches of height.  Today his disembodied voice is preoccupied with the French Revolution.  The canned lectures have covered 6,000 years of history – from the Stone Age to Napoleon – in only eight weeks.  Blink and you’ll miss an epoch.  But I’ve still learned shit.  More than I expected, frankly.  Maybe because I’m a Latin Americanist who never strayed into the domain of Europeanists before.  Or maybe because higher education has evolved into a pedagogical joke – Diplomas-R-Us at the undergraduate level, myopic specialization at the graduate level.

The orange-seated ocean of Smith Hall is even emptier than usual.  The 500 students have dwindled to 325, according to UCLA’s enrollment database.  An attrition rate of 35%.  Bad enough to send the administration and the department chair into a panic – over the almighty dollar, naturally.  The administration wants to keep the tuition checks coming.  The department chair risks a reduction in funding if History can’t pull its share of students.  I’d like to ask them, would you pay for canned lectures and yellowing slides?  But that’s pissing on the academic third rail.

Instead all blame is coalescing around Grantberg.  Everybody already knows his one-year teaching contract won’t be renewed, because those contracts are never renewed.  He’s a gay Harvard Ph.D. on the visiting instructor merry-go-round.  Include his most notable personality trait – an uptight superciliousness like lily-white buttcheeks clenched together – and even the UCLA Theater Department couldn’t produce a better villain.  It’s almost enough to make me feel bad for the guy, but I don’t waste sympathy on assholes.

Besides, what do I care if students are dropping like bombs?  Attrition is the ally of a teaching assistant.  Fewer butts in seats = a corresponding reduction in grading, paperwork overhead, and all-around undergrad idiocy.   I wish every registered student in my “Introduction to European History” sections would drop – some of them dead, preferably – leaving me free to focus on my last flaming hoops of bullshit.

Afterward I manage to beat some of the remaining 325 students into the afternoon.  Campus is overcast with smoke from the coastal wildfires, stoked by the Santa Ana winds and bone-dry air.  I think of Phoebe’s condo and its balcony, too narrow for anything but storing her mountain bike.  We only bothered going outside for the view once.  That was two years ago, when Malibu was burning.  We leaned against the railing and watched flames write a flickering hieroglyph on the distant hills.

Turning toward the Latin American Studies department, I fall in behind a Hispanic chick walking at a recreational pace along Bruin Walk.  A vintage army backpack hangs lightly from her shoulder, more fashion statement than industrious carryall.  Her twisty brunette braids remind me of a medusa.  She wears a burnt orange dress and low-cut white Converse All Stars.  Both of her calves are tattooed with colorful floral designs.  The wind carries her scent, a mix of bubble gum and patchouli and pot.

Maria fucking Ortiz.

Maria is the ruination of my funding dreams, a neo-hippy chick from Anaheim.  Oh sure, she’s a minority alright – in skin tone only.  Otherwise she’s whiter than I am.  She speaks Valley Girl better than Spanish, thinks lowriders are thong-exposing jeans, and doesn’t have a single passport stamp from a Latin American county.  Like that stopped UCLA from slathering her in money, including the $10,000 Professor Emeritus Hercules Gutierrez fellowship and $7,000 of Javier’s leftover funding.  It wouldn’t piss me off so much if Maria was a deserving brainiac, but she’s not.  I doubt she’s any smarter than me.

“Hey.  Nick.  How goes it?”  Maria leans in for the Latin greeting – a kiss on one cheek.

I lean back.  “Mi querida, talenta, merece Maria.”  My dear, talented, deserving Maria.

She knows enough Spanish to blink at me through tortoiseshell frames.  “Don’t be an asshole.  It’s not my fault I got the fellowship and you didn’t.”

“You think that’s why I’m pissed at you?  I’m pissed at you because you got Javier’s leftover funding too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The $7,000 that found a new home in your checking account.  That’s what the hell I’m talking about.”

Maria sighs and looks in the direction of the Inverted Fountain.  “Nobody is supposed to know.”

“So much for that plan.”

“Yeah.  I guess so.”

“You didn’t even ask for it, did you?”  A testing question.  If she hesitates, I’ll know Maria was after it all along.

“Ask for it?  I didn’t even think of it!  Hercules brought it up.”  No hesitation whatsoever.

That’s goddamn Hercules for you.  He takes the progress – and thus funding – of Hispanic grad students to heart.  Gringos like me get whatever is left over.  I call it favoritism when I’m in a charitable mood, reverse racism when I’m not.  Either way I’ve been fighting it for four years, ever since UCLA dangled a scrap of graduate funding and University of Texas-Austin and Arizona State didn’t.

“We’ve been friends since we were first-years,” Maria is saying.  “If something comes between us, I want it to be academic.  Like, I believe in this theory or that interpretation and you don’t.  Not because I got more funding than you.”  She sticks out a hand.  “Truce?”

“For chrissake.”  But I play along and shake her hand.  Who knows, I might need a favor someday.

Maria brightens in relief.  Another reason she isn’t deserving – she can’t carry her end of a feud.  “You heading back to the department?”

“Yeah.  You too, huh?”

“I have to go get Carvajal off my back.  He’s trying to assign me all this extra reading about Spanish colonial folklore.  Hello?  My dissertation topic is the fictive identity of tejanos in late 20th century America.”  Her anger dwindles into resentment.  “He’s such a tool.  I don’t know why I ever put him on my committee.”

Because Hercules told you to.  Professor Carvajal is part of Hercules’ power base in the department – and a textbook case of affirmative action gone wrong.  Carvajal has brown skin and a Ph.D. from some third-rate institution, but he couldn’t cut it on a high school faculty, let alone UCLA.  In this publish-or-perish dystopia he hasn’t published a damn thing.  But Hercules protects him.  For example, two years ago Carvajal was catching flak for his conspicuous absence from dissertation committees.  Any dissertation committee.  No grad wanted shit to do with him, surprise surprise.  So Hercules “arranged” for Carvajal to join several dissertation committees that he chairs.  Like Maria’s.

Hercules made the same “suggestion” to me.  Ditch Frankie, replace with Carvajal.  It was a transparent ploy to punish his neocon archenemy in the department and reward his useless but faithful apparatchik.  That’s why I told the old reptile to go pound sand.  The smartest thing I ever did, when I’m feeling my oats.  The dumbest thing I ever did, when I’m contemplating my empty wallet.  Right now I’m contemplating my empty wallet.  Mexico on $2,500 a year.  Fuck me.