I had to take 3 semesters of a hybrid philosophy/humanities
class in college called “Individual in Society” or something like that since we all
referred to it as I&S. For whatever
reason I&S seemed to attract the quirky professors. There were two incidents that I’ll never
forget the level of awkwardness. They
were moments where you could feel the air getting sucked out of the room in an instant.
The first two semesters of I&S I had was with Professor
Shippey, I must have the spelling wrong since he’s not coming up on any google
searches. Professor Shippey looked like
if Mr. Roberts was a philosophy professor.
Button down shirt covered by a v-neck sweater, khaki pants, sensible
shoes, coke bottle glasses, salt & pepper hair that went a little bit of
everywhere and a propensity for keeping the chalk between both hands and
shaking it. If memory serves, he was a
good professor who was diligent, kept things on track and stuck to the
syllabus, except for this one time.
It was the second semester and I distinctly remember that we
were talking about Plato’s idea forms and how there are certain forms for
everything. The professor was stuck on
the notion of the forms for trees and dogs.
He was hammering the point home over and over again listing different
types of dogs and trees, and how they shared some unique thing that tied them
to their respective category. I think
these classes lasted an hour and fifteen minutes and we were about an hour
in. For some reason that to this day makes
my head hurt, Professor Shippey doesn’t even go on a tangent as much as he
stops the lecture to tell an anecdote about graduating college and back packing
through Europe in the late 70’s early 80’s.
Mind you this class was in the spring of 1999 so he was probably in his
early to mid 40’s. I had always wanted
to back pack through Europe after college or maybe because I was a highly
conscientious student, I was actively listening to his story. I remember wondering how he was going to
relate it back to Plato as he started.
He started by laying out his route, France then heading East through
Belgium and Holland on his way to Germany and then finally Italy. He quickly guided us past the exposition of
the first few countries and really the story began in Germany. It was most likely the early 80’s and the
Cold War was in full swing. I’m not sure
how travel between West and East Germany was for Americans but he said that he
went over to East Germany for a bit where he met a woman and quickly fell in
love. He was so smitten that he gave up
on going to Italy and spent the rest of his time with her. I think they ended up getting married such
that she could leave the country but it’s been a while and some of the details
have been muddled over time. Professor
Shippey’s visa expires and he has to return home. They write each other constantly with some of
her letters never making through or they make it through redacted. He goes through channel after channel trying
to get her over to the US but the bureaucracy on the East Germany side is
either holds things up or outwardly dismisses them. This process of letter writing, bureaucratic
undermining and trips to East Germany goes on for years; years of frustration,
years of love, years of holding on to hope.
After all these years, she begins to waiver. She doesn’t waiver with another man, but
rather She waivers in her belief that her government will ever let her
leave. She decided to take matters into
her own hands and escape the country in the most direct way possible, the
Berlin Wall. She decides to climb over
the Berlin Wall under the cover of darkness only to be gunned down by the
guards. There might have been a long
pause here in his story or very possibly the moment that it took for Professor
Shippey to take a breathe felt like an eternity for every single person in the
room. Then without missing a beat, he
starts shaking the chalk and goes right back into Plato’s forms. It feels like no one has taken breathe in the
last two minutes. The air is stale and
our eyes darted from the clock to each other for any hint as to how to react to
this heart wrenching, out of place love story.
I remember thinking not to stare at the clock but at the same time
making eye contact with the professor was out of the question. The ten remaining minutes were dead silent
from the student side. Professor Shippey
continued with his lesson without tying anything from the anecdote back into
it, nor did his flow or cadence change.
If you had walked into that classroom as soon as his story finished,
you’d have no idea that anything was different from when you left to go the
bathroom. The eternity that was those
last ten minutes ended and everyone in the class had the wherewithal to not say
a word about what just happened as we crossed the threshold. We all took the stairs down trying to wrap our minds around it and how to
react.
My third and final semester in I&S was with Professor
Tenywa, who I learned today died almost ten years ago in his native Uganda
which puts a damper on this story. At
the very first class Professor Tenywa with his ear-to-ear grin informs us of
his basic tenant, punctuality is key and lateness to his class or on
assignments will not be tolerated.
Professor Tenywa liked suits and tweed jackets and he was always smiling
this enormous smile. There was a string
of bad weather in NYC the first few weeks of class and on our very next class
the professor was late. He explained and
apologized for his lateness by informing us that he was an adjunct and was working
at another college directly beforehand.
I remember having a hard time reconciling his personnel lateness with
his policy concerning our lateness but I didn’t give it much thought since
every once in a while we are all late.
On the third class day the professor is late again but this time there
is no explanation and he sticks by how important it is that we the students be
on time all the while showing off his pearly whites. On the fourth day of classes the professor is
late again, this time later than before.
There’s an unwritten college rule that if the professor doesn’t show up
after fifteen minutes then class is cancelled, it’s the fifteen minute
rule. Now on this fourth day of class
the troops are getting restless at the hypocrisy and at the thought of a
cancelled class. We were at or about the
twelve minute mark when he walks through the door smiling. The room deflated. After class there was a sentiment rallied by
a few students that we should report his perennial lateness. To my knowledge it never came to that. On the fifth day of classes, he was late
again. Now the class had basically had
it. It should be noted that Professor
Tenywa was a nice man but he wasn’t what you’d call friendly, he was more
authoritative which didn’t sit well with some.
Five minutes went by and the murmurs of the fifteen minute rule
started. Seven minutes went by and
people started planning on how to handle the situation. Ten minutes went by and the class is divided
between walking out early and waiting until the full fifteen. Twelve minutes went by and the conversation
had degraded into whether or not to leave a note. At the fifteen minute mark the class has
reached its fever pitch and a student walks up to the board to write that the
class has left since he was more than 15 minutes late. As the chalk hit the blackboard Professor
Tenywa walks through the door with his ear-to-ear. The class looks around for its vocal leaders
of dissent against the hypocrisy to say their piece. Just then Professor Tenywa says, “I’m sorry
for my lateness. My wife died.” He paused as everyone in the room felt like
the worst person on the planet. Here we
were an angry mob ready to tear into this man and we were all very quickly put
in our place by human understanding. “Next
class is cancelled as well since I have her wake. Thank you.” Then he walked out with that same smile but
this time you knew he was faking.
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