Riot?

http://www.ez-entertainment.net/interview/elf_col74-31af.jpg

nearly incited a riot in class yesterday.

She essentially did the professorial equivalent of "you two... fight to the death!"

We're reading "Last day of a Condemned Man" by Hugo


She looks around the class and says

"who agrees with the death penalty? Come on, fess up!"

A few students tenatively raise their hands

"and who here is a card-carrying Christian?"

A couple more hands... and looks of confusion.

"Who's a Jew?" she demands.

my mouth must have dropped open.

now she points at the kid who agreed with the death penalty and says

"You. Defend yourself."


This begins an attack by all the other students as this poor kid tries to defend his position. Things are getting a little heated (to say the least) and his voice is getting higher and higher.

Something must be done... and of course I'm turning red as (let's call her Bob) sits there and SMILES.

So I look at her and she says

"Let Katie talk, she looks pretty angry like she wants to say something."

angry?! what is she trying to do here?

So I say

" No, I'm not angry. Let's look at what Hugo [desperately trying to get back to some semblance of literature and normalcy] says about the death penalty."

I open my book to a page, any page.

"If everyone will look at page 13...."

And I start reading aloud in a very slow, very measured voice about whatever was on that page. The class slowly calms down and starts talking about the text and not yelling at one another.

And Bob is SMILING.

was this some crazy kind of test?

So I talk to her after class.

"wow, that was [be nice, be nice] pretty intense today"

"yeah, It was good"

"I was worried, I tried to get them back to the text"

"Oh, I wanted them to get angry"

Ah. Apparently tenure allows you to be a sadist.

huh.