I am driven this morning to write after another academic anomaly I’ve encountered, though not directly.

A friend of mine in grad school is currently taking a general marketing course which, thankfully enough for me, I managed to get waived due to my prior studies at Skidmore. The professor of this class is… how shall I put this delicately?

A lunatic.

Or at least what passes for one in the course of a three-year degeneration following an apparently messy divorce. Basically this guy has lost more than just money, I think there might’ve been something in the divorce papers that claimed ownership of 50 percent of his mind.

On the first day of class, according to my colleague, there were a large number of international students in the class, particularly from Asia. Makes sense, UNH has a huge population for international students. But apparently, this professor, who incidentally, was once quite a brilliant man, and deep down still may be, went out of his way to insult these people.

He said something to the effect of, “Wow, we have half the population of China in here tonight,” and went so far as to go up to one student and say (insert your best Chris Tucker voice here), “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” Now if that’s not grounds for immediate dismissal, I don’t know what is. It’s unfortunate that many of these international students are on the shy side due to an obvious language and cultural barrier, otherwise someone might’ve said something.

(An interesting aside: My largest class this trimester also happens to contain the most group work. The professor decided to let us pick the groups, and one international student complained that she had a problem with groups, because the American students always gravitate towards one another, leaving the international students to form their default cliques. She argued that she’d want more cultural diversity in a group to allow for a greater breadth of perspective. A valid argument, I’ll give her that. And then it comes time to pick groups, and she gravitates to whom? A quadrant of international students. File this one under “Pot Calling Kettle Black.” We now return to this regularly scheduled entry, already in progress.)

This professor (let’s call him Kotter for carpal tunnel’s sake) informs the students that to easily secure an A in the class, all they must do is write down twenty things they’ve learned per class. Sounds fair enough. Until he proceeds to go into the messy details of his divorce for the next two and a half hours, not once even gracing the topic of marketing. And then he asks each student what he or she learned (in a class of 40+, that takes up a good portion of the time). For every item a student writes down, Kotter will stop class and ask for a show of hands corresponding to how many other people learned said item during that period.

Sound bizarre? You bet. Moreover, we’re now going into our fourth week of classes, and Kotter has yet to cover anything in the text. The more I hear about this situation, the more I’m certain that a half-baked hunk of Hollywood crap like The Faculty can become a reality. But it goes deeper. Oh, yes friends, it goes deeper.

As it turns out, my colleague (let’s call him Rufus (for the sheer reason that no one knows anyone named Rufus (and if you do, I’m not sure I want you reading this blog))) has found out somehow that the entire class is part of some sort of statistical study. The twenty items, the corresponding hand check, the rambling on, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Kotter doesn’t want a class full of students; he prefers a lab full of guinea pigs. Full-sized guinea pigs in pursuit of their MBAs.

Now I ask you, what is keeping this man from being terminated immediately? And I answer my own question with one simple, evil word: tenure.

When a professor accrues a certain amount of years at a particular institution, they get this thing called tenure. Long story short, tenure allows them to fuck up as much as they want and still keep their job. At least that’s been my experience at the undergraduate level, and it would appear to be no different at the next academic rung. I find this to be incredibly unfortunate, because I’m sure there are a lot of ways that professors such as Kotter can hold down a steady job at any given institution while completely neglecting their professorial duties. If they can do that for long enough, they get tenure, and they’re home free, leaving the students to sit with sore colons from the tremendous administrative butt fucking they receive.

Now I will give Kotter credit, having met him years ago. He wasn’t always like this. To the contrary, he was once a very strong professor whose work was appreciated by many. Since his divorce, though, he’s gone almost completely off the deep end. In that case, should tenure really be an issue here? If someone is neglecting their duties, should they be kept along for the ride just because they’ve memorized the architectural layout of the entire campus? To me, that’s back asswards thinking. This guy is obviously in no condition to be teaching kindergarten let alone a graduate level course, and because of that he should be excused from his duties. Because he’s a special case, maybe they can work out some sort of an arrangement where he could return upon receiving professional help and pulling himself back together. I’m sure that sort of thing isn’t unheard of.

In the meantime, Rufus is sitting in the back of class week after week, doodling, taking down random items he’s learned in class such as the fact that every other James Bond movie seems to involve Russia, and wondering when they’re ever going to crack that book. And he and the other forty some odd students in class will continue to be deprived of the education they’re paying for until April, when they take their final and procure their “easy A.”

Easy A or not, I’m glad I got this one waived.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.