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it. If we go in on the eighteenth, that should shit things up, or fuck them up, or something.”
    â€œWhat do we do in the meantime?” said Lattice, hoping that in the meantime they’d drop the plan.
    â€œSmall stuff,” said Matha. “Minor annoyances that get in the way of the committee.”
    The group was happy and high-fived one another to prove it, and low-fived one another as well, and bumped chests and fists. Most of their courses demanded no intellectual effort. But a series of disruptions? That was something they could sink their teeth into.
    â€œUse for the useless!” cried Matha, not entirely sure what she meant.
    â€œUse for the useless!” cried the others.
    â€œMy darling! My sweet! My heart is breaking!” Producing his iPod, on which he’d recorded a medley of Syrian love songs, Akim sang along with “My Sheep Are in the Pasture.”
    Matha nodded to Bagtoothian. “Now.”

CHAPTER 3
    LIVI WAS ON A TEAR AGAIN. HER EYES BLAZED GREEN, AND she yanked at her hair, which looked on fire. “Keelye Smythe? That snake in the grass? You appointed Keelye Smythe?”
    â€œI can handle him.”
    â€œThat’s what you always say. Jesus, Mary, and Moses! I married a babe in the woods!”
    â€œI know what Keelye is, but he’s also smart.”
    â€œEverybody’s smart. But not everybody’s good.”
    â€œWell, pickings weren’t exactly cherse.”
    â€œBecause the only people who want to join committees are jerks.”
    That was their conversation of the previous night, when Peace told Livi whom he had named to the CCR, the shorthand by which Peace’s committee on curriculum reform was now known. He’d used the two days since the Day of the Bollovate to select the members. He knew he might have done better, but he was pressed for time—two months to come up with a plan to save the college—and while it may have been hard for Livi to believe, the six he’d come up with appeared to be the best of the applicant pool.
    Pickings from Peace’s own department had been the slimmest. Apart from Smythe, applicants included the minor poet WillaGeorge, founder of the Beets, a local group in the 1960s who rebelled against Kerouac’s bunch, pooh-poohed jazz, ridiculed Zen, said no to drugs, and wrote blank verse; Johnny Claque, the only independently wealthy department member, who’d struck it rich with a bodice-ripper, and was said to be one; and Larry Gunderson, the Shakespearean who could recite the 128th Sonnet in 5.3 seconds, and could not be stumped on questions about Edmund Spenser, no matter how hard one tried.
    Manning had told him so—“I told you so”—earlier in the day, when Peace was putting his committee together. “This assignment will bring you in contact with every mad dog in the college.”
    â€œVery helpful. Instead of being so all-knowing,” said Peace, “why don’t you serve on the CCR yourself?”
    â€œBecause I only look crazy.”
    On the morning of October 17, Peace crossed the quad of the Old Pen toward the CCR’s first meeting in Bacon Library. He was already beginning to feel he’d entered a new world, and in some ways he had. He had never served on a major committee, much less headed one, either here or at Yale, where a lowly assistant professor was not accorded the honor. One of the less substantive reasons he was so well-liked at Beet was that he had not been involved in its business. All he knew about being a professor was students, teaching, and learning, and this skewed and narrow prospect of academic life deprived him of the full, rich picture.
    â€œDown with Beet! Close the college!” chanted Matha and her band of revolutionaries. They stomped back and forth on the lawn.
    â€œYou want to close the college?” Peace asked them as he walked past. But they kept chanting and drowned him out.
    Reaction from the