"Wait a minute! What are you telling me?" The gray bearded professor leaned over toward the teaching assistant sitting before him. "Say it again!"

Sally said nervously, playing with a tissue in her hand, "During the grading session after the exam Friday night, the teaching assistants who stayed to grade were drinking."

Professor Drakes eyes narrowed. "How did this happen?"

"Well, you know that all of the teaching assistants were proctoring the general chemistry exam in the 15 different rooms. Then, when the exam was over, we all came back to the lab room where we sorted the exams into alphabetical order for grading. Some of the TAs planned to stay and grade their part of the essay exams right then."

"How many stayed to grade?"

Oh, maybe half -- eight or so. I really feel terrible about this. I waited several days before coming to you, but I couldn't stand it. The longer the grading session went on, the worse it got. It really got out of hand."

"Did they plan to drink during the grading or did they go out and get the liquor after they got started?"

"Oh, I saw some bottles when I got there to sort my exams. But I think that, as the night went on, some TAs made runs to the store for more. When I came in to teach my lab on Monday afternoon, I had to clean up the bottles and cans. It was a mess."

"Who was involved? Not everyone, obviously. I hope not Phil or Amy. Maybe not even every one who stayed to grade." Drake saw Sally shaking her head. "Who was it?" he asked.

"Sarah and Deborah left after they saw what was going on."

"Were any of the undergraduate TAs involved?"

"Maybe one. I'm really not too sure because I left. You know that my professor's research lab is right next door to the teaching lab where the grading was going on so I could hear the partying going on for hours. They were really getting sloshed. I couldn't be sure exactly who was drinking or who brought the stuff in at the beginning."

"But it sounds as if it might be the new graduate students that came in this year. It wasn't you or the other older students and it wasn't most of the undergrads."

"I suppose so."

"This has never happened in the 20 years that I have been teaching this course. TAs have always behaved responsibly in their grading. What in the devil could they have been thinking? This university has a zero tolerance for alcohol on campus. This could jeopardize their careers and their TA stipends. What happens if anyone hears about this? Are they crazy?"

"Well, I suppose they could have gotten the wrong idea about drinking in the lab because the faculty held a recruiting party for the potential graduate students in the summer and they had beer and wine then. And we have it during the Christmas party.... I feel terrible coming to you about this. But I couldn't stand it after Janet and I started totaling the final scores and saw how many pages hadn't been graded or totaled correctly. There must have been 50 tests that weren't completely corrected. Janet was able to get Jim to finish grading the tests. I don't see how he was able to fit it in because he was setting up the lab for this week and he was here until 1:00 a.m. working on it. It made me so incredibly mad, the mess that had been made out of the exam."

"So, what is Janet doing now? She must know what happened. How is she handling this? Where are we now in the grading? This is Friday, and we have our usual TA meeting in three hours. We are supposed to be finished with all of the grading, totaling and should be putting the exams back into the envelopes for the TAs to return to their students Monday."

"I had to tell Janet what happened because she saw all of the problems with the grading. She said that nothing like this had ever happened since she had started working as a lab supervisor with you. But she did get Jim to finish the grading and she was able to get the grades put into the computer. And right now Phil is starting to put the exams into the proper envelopes so that they can be returned Monday. I feel really worried about this, especially since some students know what happened."

"What?" Professor Drake exploded. "How would they know, for Gods sake?"

"Well, my lab TA partner, Tanya, started off our lab on Monday by saying to the students, 'We certainly had a good time Friday night grading your exams. It gave us a good excuse to get drunk.' The students looked worried and asked was it really that bad? And before Tanya could answer, I jumped in and said lets get started with today's lab. So nothing came up after that."

"Did the students really believe her?"

"I don't know, but I'm really concerned that this could blow up into something big. It is truly terrible. I didn't know what to do so I finally had to come and tell you."