The Belle Of The Ball ... Or Carrie At The Prom?

This college thing ... I have been personally requested to be part of the next working group meeting, which comes up tonight.  This request has come from the other side, which makes me worried.

See, as I think I've said before, I haven't been much of a contributor to these "negotiations."  I am, however, a representative for a part of the country my alma mater has relatively little presence in.  Part of the negotiations is finding a compromise in recruiting people who will represent the university, just not in a formal, official way as before.  (Sorry to be so vague; I don't think I can go into detail lest I get in trouble with the other side, plus I scantly understand this model myself.)  I have been told by the people on my side that is the only, anodyne reason.

But what if it's not?  We resisters have come to the conclusion that the head man on the other side, the president of the alumni association, is a conniving dick.  He was the one who made the unilateral decision to put down all alumni clubs in the United States.  And many of us hold him in low regard when it comes to negotiating over these Zoom meetings.

I am getting paranoid over the depths to which he will be underhanded.  So, I am afraid that he and/or the people who work under him have been busy digging up dirt on all of us in the resistance, including me.  And when the time comes, such as in a Zoom, he'll show up (which, by the way, he's not supposed to, because the number and the specific people who are supposed to be in these respective groups are set; he just popped up the last time this working group tried to work together, which was seen by us as a power/dick move) and go, "So, UW, I see that you have a hankering for ... eggplants!" and then he'll post screengrab after screengrab of me giving eggplant emojis to all the hot women I befriended on Facebook.  And then I'll get all embarrassed and then we'll be divided between people who think I'm a pig and people who think what I did doesn't matter in the face of these negotiations.  The other side would have successfully deployed a divide-and-conquer strategy, and the resistance to those who want to save our clubs would fall apart.  And this guy would laugh diabolically.

I brought up this paranoid fear with my therapist Tuesday, and he asked me why would the other side want to shame me and potentially cause me to cut ties with them permanently, thus making it harder for my alma mater to have any engagement in a lower-density part of the country.  He has a point, although I don't totally dismiss destroying any obstacles to this plan he wants to implement as the sole goal.  So, I go into tonight's meeting not believing the other side is completely acting in good faith.  Seriously, they want my input when I have offered little to none up to this point?  There has to be something up their sleeves.