THE CON ARTIST AND THE INSTITUTION
Copyright 2001 by Jean Roberta.
(Written for "Perceptions," gay/lesbian newsmagazine, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.)

Lately, I've been haunted by the image of a small, attractive Asian woman looking angry and scared, her hair whipping around her face, on TV and in the newspaper. Lana Nguyen is the star of a media circus and academic scandal at the Canadian prairie university where I teach. Neither the press nor the Ivory Tower seems willing to overlook a chance to rub her nose in the mud.

So why does her case concern me? Probably for some of the same reasons it concerns other observers. For two years, Ms. Nguyen taught engineering at the university, having convinced a hiring committee that her ex-husband's academic qualifications in the subject were hers. Eventually, student complaints about her teaching prompted an investigation which revealed that her working persona was as unreal as a role in a sitcom, which in some sense it was.

The exposed poser was persuaded to resign, understandably. This was only the beginning of the public saga. The university administration imported two outside administrators (one from Alberta, one from Manitoba) to review university hiring procedures and recommend strategies for running a tighter ship.

Meanwhile, the now-jobless Ms. Nguyen applied for another job as an engineering instructor at a university in the American South. This was not far enough away, since this information was publicized in Saskatchewan. Ms. Nguyen fled to Calgary with her current husband, and was forced to return to Regina to face a string of criminal fraud charges.

Ms. Nguyen is 34 years old, which is still young by my standards. Even after her trial and possible prison term, her life will be shadowed by the current scandal. Whether she will be hired anywhere, as anything, remains to be seen.
Does the punishment fit the crime? This is a question for a judge with the wisdom of Solomon. A deeper question is: Why did she play such a dangerous game? Didn't she know that hell hath no fury like an institution conned?
Universities, like most other institutions in the Western World, have traditionally been run by straight white men of means. All other people who have pushed their way in (mostly in the past thirty years) have been treated like trespassers, at least when they first arrived. Innovations such as Women's Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies, and the influx of women into disciplines formerly seen as macho (such as engineering) have been cited as evidence that a) institutions that have such things are on the cultural or intellectual cutting edge, or b) academia as a haven for objective thinking has been subverted by "special interest groups." Bona fide degrees have not protected academics who are female or sexually unorthodox or "people of colour" from being seen as fraudulent or undeserving.
None of this can excuse a resume full of lies. However, persistent discrimination in various forms has predictable effects: it causes those of us who are non-straight, non-white or non-male to see ourselves as impostors if and when we achieve any degree of success. Or it encourages us actually to BE impostors who create unreal identities because our real ones don't feel acceptable, even to us.

I spent my first year as an English instructor at the University of Regina in a barely-suppressed state of anxiety. I felt like an immigrant trying to cross a national border with a suitcase full of heroin, wondering when the trained dogs would sniff it out. I was female, I was lesbian, I had a sexual past which included rape and prostitution. My golden-brown daughter was evidence of my failed relationship with a man from a war-torn African country who was quite a poser himself (for clear-enough reasons). When he was a university student, he denounced me to everyone who would listen.
I felt as if I had failed at many things, and I lacked the Ph.D. which would have proven my worth as a scholar. (I never claimed to have one, but this just meant I was honest about my limitations.)

I wondered how many of my students' parents would want me to teach their children how to write essays if they knew the whole truth about me. I wondered which particle of truth would be leaked first to my department head, the administration, the student newspaper, or the public at large.

I taught PYGMALION, George Bernard Shaw's play about the transformation of a slum-bred girl into a "lady" who can then explain in good English to her academic mentor that his experiment has cost her the integrity she had when he found her. (Forget the happy ending of the musical version, MY FAIR LADY. Shaw's play is a different animal.)
I taught THE SCARLET LETTER, about the public shaming of an "adulteress" in the Puritan culture of colonial Boston; it dramatized some of my worst fears.

And I taught THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, Oscar Wilde's gay novel about a man who literally becomes his own image, painted by a passionate admirer, while his hidden portrait becomes a hideous record of his sins; Dorian comes to a shocking end, as did the author himself. I questioned my own fitness to teach any of these works.
At the end of the term, I gave anonymous evaluation forms to my students, to be filled in and taken to the department head. I didn't get to see them until I had handed in my final marks. When I read the reviews of my teaching, I was moved to tears. My students claimed I knew a lot, I could explain it clearly, I was fair and approachable. They thought I was fit for my job. Who would have guessed?

I can only speculate on the level of insecurity which prompted Lana Nguyen to play a game she was likely to lose sooner or later. She might not have had a firm grip on reality. In any case, I wonder what really interests her and what she can really do, besides playing a role. I wonder if she even knows who she is.

How many of us truly know ourselves after years of staying closeted for the sake of a job, of trying to fit in to survive or to get ahead? Are any of us honest all the time? How many of us really believe that the truth is good enough?
When I "came out" in the early 1980s, local gay/lesbian culture seemed to centre in the bar, where invented roles were a tradition. No one seemed to have a family name, and first names were likely to be made up for the occasion. Personal histories were often edited or pulled out of thin air to impress a potential date and/or to protect oneself from being identified as a pervert in the sober light of day.

Although the les/bi/gay/trans community is more diverse now than it was then, "coming out" to the queer bar is still a standard rite of passage. Bar culture in general does not encourage honesty, and when confusion about one's sexuality and fear of rejection contribute to the alcoholic haze, the truth (about oneself or anyone else) can be hard to find.

There is little that anyone can do now for Lana Nguyen. She lied, and she is paying a high price for it. I could rant about the hypocrisy of institutions in which "minorities" are pressured to be "twice as good to go half as far," and then punished for lying to reach that goal. However, I am more concerned about those who, like her, surrender to temptation.

If you have ever claimed some accomplishments which weren't yours to get something you wanted, or denied some part of your identity to protect yourself, consider the cost. Even if you are never forced to wear a scarlet letter in public, the harm you do to yourself can be worse than anything the press, the law or an institution could do to you.