It gets busy

A couple hours later, the peaceful quiet of the campus is almost unimaginable. Traffic is nonstop in the parking lot near the Mellon building as students are dropped off, their luggage unloaded by doting parents, or in many cases chauffeurs, and hugs of farewell being exchanged.

You had intended to grab a bite to eat and then wander around the school grounds some more to get a feel for the campus. Seeing the scene of arrivals, however, you decide that your presence here is a priority.

For all of Diana's talk about the ladylike behavior of students, if they are anything like their parents, it is no wonder they act out. The arriving girls were far more interested in greeting their classmates than unloading their possessions in an orderly manner, and their parents were even worse. The owners of the luxury cars pulling into the limited space each expected to be treated like royalty, and the harried maintenance staff and housekeepers were repeatedly ordered to drop what they were doing to help the newly arriving students. Any attempt you made to speed the disembarkment was met with a combination of arrogance, indifference and often times confused ignorance. As often as not the families in question tried to use you as a porter, and you had to be quite firm with several of them about moving their cars away to make room for the next batch of arriving students.

Your efforts gradually pay dividends as a little order is imposed on the chaos, but you could use help. Apparently, all the experienced teachers knew enough to give this madhouse a wide berth. During one of the few breaks you get yet another black limousine pulls into the parking lot, but unlike the twenty or so that preceded it, it parks well away from the front steps and no excited students pour from its interior. Instead, a burly male figure in a dark suit disembarks and strides across the lot to a bench where one of the fathers has been sitting and watching the show from the sidelines for the past 20 minutes. The thin man doesn't seem to fit the mold of the other families and you wonder if he is the father of one of the scholarship students you read about.

The heavyset man in the dark suit who is clearly a bodyguard as much as a chauffer pauses by the bench and the two men head back to the limo together. Not that it matters much, but any chance you have to watch the pair is wiped away by two mothers who are arguing over whose luggage one of the beleaguered Hispanic maintenance men should be carrying next.

Their daughters seem unconcerned by the issues that vex their mothers and are standing side by side chatting and eying the broad back and shoulders of the sweating, dark-haired man in question. No sooner than that crisis had been averted that another limo pulls up cutting in front of a slightly slower towncar that beeps loudly in indignation.

Close to an hour later, a student you vaguely remember from earlier in the day approaches you shyly. "Mr. Hawkfeather?" The student is dressed in tight cut-offs and a fitted top and seems almost excited to be talking to you. "Ms. Naylor wants to see you in her office." Before you get a chance to thank the young woman she turns on her heels and is off to join a group of similarly dressed students heading towards the arts pavilion, or maybe the lake.