Jeff Scheidel

Ampersand or Professor Hohenstofer's Nervous Disorder Jeff Scheidel

The president of Klooster-Hemming College has too many problems. A board member dies, and his evil daughter conspires to grab the school's trust fund. A larcenous former president wants his job back. Another board member has his own candidate for the job. The boilers are exploding. The teachers are all hopeless intellectual basket cases. And none of them, with all their money, credentials, degrees, or backgrounds, is what he appears to be. To make matters worse, a certification team, prompted by the evil daughter, arrives to give the school a checkup. Their head auditor, vicious and ambitious, wants to gut the place. Professor Hohenstofer, the history teacher and second-in-command, is a heartbroken wreck. Murderously tall and unlucky in love, he flounders in regrets. The president must hide all their secrets, keep things running, keep his job, keep his mysterious staff of geniuses happy, keep the math teacher away from the coeds, keep the art teacher out of jail, and keep everybody from killing the obnoxious philosophy teacher. But amidst the chaos, he sees his opportunity: he sets up Hohenstofer with one of the auditors. There's just a chance that the clumsiest possible romance, between two very tall academics, can hide a multitude of sins and save them all from the light of day.