POSTED
Warning: On Keeping Order at Departmental Meetings
Faculty members who speak out of turn
will be bound and gagged
by a member of Executive Committee,
rehabilitated
by a member of Faculty Development Committee,
and re-evaluated
by a member of Personnel Committee
By order of the temporary, interim, acting
Deputy
Chair
In the hot, crowded classroom I’m trying to get the students to understand run-on sentences. And I’m writing and writing on the board, forgetting it as I’m writing it. It just gets longer. But I’ve lost the sense of it—and it was such a good example! I ask them what it was, but they’re talking to each other. Then I see that somebody’s friend has come in and is lounging against a wall by the door, engaged in conversation with several of the students. Furious, I throw him out, blaming him and them for being so casual and inattentive. A hot flash flashes; I can feel the blotch. I’m still trying with this sentence on the board and by now can’t remember what I was trying to illustrate. A middle-aged male professor strolls in and puts down his briefcase in the back of the classroom, and goes back out in the hallway to get more of his stuff. I look at my watch. It’s quarter of, so I still have five minutes. I walk to the door and shut it in his face as he is about to reenter the room with his scientific paraphernalia. I try to get the class back but things are in an uproar. A student gets up to make his presentation—that serious kid into philosophy and religion who had all the great insights into Frankenstein—and I find myself snapping to attention, realizing he’s been droning on and that I have no idea what he’s been talking about. I stop him after pretending for a moment that I have been listening, have been completely absorbed, even though the din in the room is such that nobody can hear anything. I say, “We’ll take this up next time” because now I'm worried about going over the class time. Amid the bustle of everyone leaving, the new professor enters placidly with his boys, who are all eagerly into physics. They’re scribbling formulas all over the blackboard. Out in the hallway I’m ambushed by some girls who missed class and are asking me if we did anything important today. I skip the lecture on them asking such a question. I just say no.