Brooklyn Bombshells: Part 1

Harvard University was an entirely different world to Claire. Everything felt so surreal. She wanted to be better than everyone, and she had something to prove to those who doubted her.

The jealousy she felt befor

e she left home to attend school on a partial scholarship was palpable. Claire Brown was leaving the ghetto to better herself in life—to get a higher education from a prestigious school. She’d graduated high school with a 4.1 GPA, and she scored a nearly perfect score on her SAT.

The entire school was wonderful. It was 210 acres of historical and contemporary buildings, students, staff, and knowledge—210 acres a world away from the Glenwood Housing Projects. Her dorm room was a bit larger than the bedroom she shared with Chanel in the projects, and she had two roommates—a white girl named Becky, such a cliché, and an African-American girl from Chicago named Tiffany. Though Tiffany was from Chicago, she didn’t have an ounce of ghetto in her. She talked proper and dressed white. Claire thought, Brady Bunch.

In fact, Tiffany and Becky quickly bonded. Tiffany had a lot more in common with Becky than she had with Claire. Tiffany was sheltered and privileged and grew up in the suburbs, yet, she still represented Chicago. Fuckin’ fraud, Claire felt.

Two weeks at the school and Claire found out she had a lot to learn. The classes could be grueling. The professors weren’t going to hold your hand. Either you got it or you didn’t. And if you were an undergraduate, they expected you to fully understand their lessons. The school wasn’t going to coddle you.

In Claire’s first two weeks, she found out that Harvard was a very extreme place. Everyone was extremely smart, extremely driven, and they were extremely focused on attaining their goals. She observed several students suffer from panic attacks in public. The school could become so extreme that it could be scary from time to time. Claire found herself surrounded by highly intelligent classmates with very competitive spirits—and a lot of students were full of themselves.

Claire figured that because she was from the gritty streets of Brooklyn, she could handle anything that came her way—and that no school or pompous, educated fool was going to scare her. Although her first two weeks started out shaky, she believed that she was built to last and there to stay. If she could survive Brooklyn, then she could survive this.

It was her third week into the semester and October was right around the corner. The Massachusetts weather was chillier than New York in late September. Claire had a lot of assignments to complete and projects to work on. She was in her dorm room alone, trying to study. She had heard about her father’s seizure and she wished she could be there for the family, but she had a lot on her plate and she didn’t have transportation back to New York.

She called her family to check on her father’s condition. He was stable.

The knock on her dorm room door interrupted her time with her books. She sighed, stood up, and marched toward the door to see who was knocking. She opened it to find one of the school’s administrators standing in front of her.

She gazed at Claire and asked, “Is your name Claire Brown?”

Claire nodded. “Yes.”

“You need to come to the Dean of Admissions’ office,” she said.

Claire was taken aback. What did the Dean of Admissions want with her? She was a freshman who kept to herself, and she didn’t know anyone at the school. Not having a choice, Claire followed the woman to the dean’s office. It was a place she didn’t expect to see so early in the school year, but there she was, meeting face to face with Dean Convoy, an aging white man in his late fifties with a serious look on his face.

“Have a seat, Miss Brown,” he said.

Claire felt extremely nervous. She took a seat in the leather armchair and waited to hear the reason for the sudden meeting with him.

Dean Convoy sat behind his neat looking desk and didn’t beat around the bush, saying to Claire, “It’s come to this administration’s attention that your SAT scores and your GPA are fraudulent.”

Claire was shocked by the news. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Are you calling me a cheater?”

“How you were accepted into this university is beyond my understanding, Ms. Brown. Our vetting process is meticulous, yet, you still made it into the system—and with a partial scholarship. We are conducting a full investigation into this matter.”

“A full investigation? I didn’t do anything wrong,” she exclaimed.

“As I explained, some things have come to our attention, and until we investigate, your enrollment is suspended until further notice.”

Claire couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She tried to deny the accusation of cheating and being a liar, but she knew the truth.

“Who told you this lie?”

“I can’t divulge that information to you,” he said.

“Someone out there is calling me a cheater and a liar, and you can’t fuckin’ tell me who it is!” Her Brooklyn side was coming out for sure.

“I would appreciate if you didn’t curse at me,” he said politely.

Claire wanted to do more than curse at him.

“As I stated earlier, until this matter is resolved, your enrollment at this school has been suspended.”

***