Something funny is going on here Late one autumn evening, Mike Woodsen, the public relations director for a major Pacific Northwest university, is called by the campus police.
A body has been found in central campus.
It is Jeremy Ronson, a university vice president in charge of information technology.
He lies four floors beneath his office window.
The police conclude very quickly the fall was accidental and close the case.
Woodsen isn't convinced.
He manages to get in to Ronson's office and finds stacks of paper everywhere -Ronson's filing system -- but only the stacks on the path from Ronson's desk to the window are disturbed.
Woodsen decides to look deeper, despite his boss's admonition to suppress his investigative instincts.
Meanwhile, in his day job, Woodsen encounters the bizarre world of a public university in the 21st century.
It is governed by suffocating and arcane bureaucratic rules, but at the same time its leaders dream of it achieving its rightful place as one of the most important, if not the most important, of society's institutions.
Woodsen has a ringside seat for a major rebranding effort that is underway.
The consultants announce the new brand is to make the university seem comparable to Harvard.
They defend this lie by describing it as an aspirational truth.
They're slippery bastards.
But apparently, in the current environment, they have the upper hand.
The university administration announces a series of cheesy television commercials to launch the rebranding project.
Faculty react angrily.
They regard it as a shallow effort that ultimately will devalue the institution as it moves down the slippery slope to becoming just another commercial product like soap or deodorant.
They are pretty much ignored.
Academic freedom, it turns out, is free but powerless.
Woodsen finds that the still-dead Ronson was responsible for the precipitate layoff of about 50 tech employees due to his mismanagement of the budget.
But Ronson himself kept his title - appar.
