Horror at Hillsdale : Low times on a conservative campus

Lissa and I.V. returned to their home. Said Lissa, "You need to go back and see your dad and tell him we all need to leave Hillsdale and go somewhere else and start over." I.V. did just this. His father rejected the idea and also, his tongue recovered, categorically denied that there was an affair. While at the hospital, I.V., concerned about Lissa's suicide threats, tried to reach someone who could counsel his wife. He then went back home. When he got there, Lissa was sitting in front of the fireplace. They spoke briefly, but Lissa asked I.V. to go up the street to check in on his grandmother. I.V. was reluctant to do this, but hopped in his red pickup truck and made the short trip.

When he got to Broadlawn, he saw that his father and Mrs. Roche had just arrived, so he turned right around and went back home. He was gone for no more than five minutes, he says.Back at home, he sensed that the house was empty. He raced through it twice. He then noticed that the kitchen door leading to the backyard was slightly ajar. He opened it, stepped into the yard, and saw that the gate leading to the arboretum was open. He bolted down the same path that Lissa had used, and, from a distance, spotted her lying in the gazebo, with blood on her shirt. He cried, "No! No! No!" as he ran toward her body. It was still warm, but "there was a look of death in her eyes."

All of this is, of course, a horrendous personal tragedy-but also, in certain respects, a public one. Lissa Roche had been a rather big deal at Hillsdale. She was managing editor of its high-circulation newsletter, Imprimis. She was well known by important conservatives as a contact person for the college. It was often she who would invite guests and escort them around campus.

In the hours and days after the suicide, I.V.-who had suffered blows that stagger and sicken the imagination-began to sense that the college was going to spin the suicide: He believed it was going to suggest that Lissa had simply gone crazy. And that, he insists, "is just a f***ing lie."

So he started to talk to friends, and ultimately went to the administration. On October 27, he met with Robert Blackstock, then provost, and told his story. Blackstock spoke to Trowbridge, vice president for external affairs, who in turn called the chairman of the board, Donald Mossey, saying, "We have a problem." Trowbridge went and heard I.V. himself, and considered the information devastating.

There ensued a flurry of conversations among Hillsdale brass. Roche had gone off to Hawaii for his honeymoon. On November 1, an executive committee of the board heard the evidence, via a conference call (Trowbridge was in Oxford, England, where his daughter is attending school). That same day, the board placed Roche on a leave of absence. It announced this fact on November 4, with a cryptic statement that only attracted further interest. The lid was coming off.

An emergency meeting of the full board was called for November 10. Roche flew back from Hawaii early. This was a trustees-only meeting-no staff, no others. Trowbridge, speaking for the prosecution (so to speak), made his presentation. He said, roughly, "We will never know the truth. But the perception of the truth is what condemns President Roche. He cannot retrieve his credibility. There are only two people in the world who know for certain what happened-one is dead, and the other is denying everything." Yet, he continued, there was compelling circumstantial evidence. Trowbridge had worked for Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1980s, and he recalled for the board something that Burger had once told him: