Just punch a professor; that's all you've got do to. A young one, ideally -- an "assistant" or "associate," someone who just got here and doesn't know the streets. Seriously, it's that simple: Just trail him out of class one day, get him alone and clock him. That's it.
Easy. Deal?
It's an experiment, see. I want to know what happens. Now, I know what you're thinking: That's insane. I'd get kicked out of school, that's what would happen. Or arrested. Or both. The professor would whip out his cell phone (well, maybe he'd throw a fist back at you first) and he'd have the cops there in seconds. You'd be off to the depot, or at least the dean's office, and before you can say "non-trivial" you'd have Honor and UJC and the registrar's office kissing your enrollment goodbye. Your instructor, meanwhile, would hobble back to his office, slap some ice on his eye, slide your term paper into his shredder (no great loss) and return to the business of answering e-mails, posting Toolkit readings, writing books, making coffee or whatever.
Lucky him. If we ran this experiment 160-some years back, it wouldn't end so nicely. You'd find the poor fellow, smack him up a little, leave him whimpering on the sidewalk ... and a week later, he'd be on the train out of Charlottesville. You, in the meantime, would have sauntered back to your Lawn room and informed your neighbors -- fine Southern blokes like you -- that they might as well blow off the calculus homework, as that dweeb of a teacher was gone. Days of chivalry, indeed.
Don't believe me? Well, how about this: It happened. Early spring semester, 1842 -- and I've got the records to prove it. You've heard, no doubt, of the shooting of John Davis, the unfortunate chap who, as a recent troupe of student reenactors (!) so delicately put it, "took a bullet for the University." What you may not have known is that in those dark, lawless, pre-Honor days, faculty took bullets and punches and slurs all over the place, and no one did much about it. You can read all this in the Board of Visitors Records, a hefty archive that stretches back to the earliest days of this institution. These days, it is tucked away in the Special Collections Library, where it guards its ignominious tales from the impressionable eyes of us youth. But it's wholly viewable if you've got a moment to spare, and it's precisely the place to drag a nostalgic alumnus bemoaning the moral putrefaction of his Wahoo brethren. Okay, so we wear jeans to class. At least we don't sucker-punch professors ... anymore.
How did it happen, anyway? By U.Va. standards, circa 1842, it was all but inevitable. The target was British (strike one), he was Jewish (strike two) and he taught mathematics (strike three). He was new, too -- fresh in from England, where he had been a sharp mathematician, but no less the social misfit. In the eyes of his gentleman-students, James Joseph Sylvester had a giant "Kick Me" sign on his back. Worse yet, he tried to teach them calculus, and he couldn't really teach. The man had it coming, safe to say.
And come it did. Not just the punch -- Sylvester took six months of smart-aleck antics before someone finally shoved it in his face. There were taunts, tricks and sneers to rival the wickedest grade school lunchroom, only the perpetrators were a decade too old. So Sylvester told the Board of Visitors Feb. 1, 1842. He slammed one student in particular -- an uppity first-year, surprise, surprise. Would the Board kindly throw the punk out? The members shrugged. Look, that's your problem, they deadpanned. You know what happens when we challenge students? Go ask John Davis. Oh, wait.
It's breathtaking, really. Stymieing, hilarious. Check the records yourself: The administration did nothing. They sent Mr. Sly right back to class to timidly draw some more integrals. As for the students? They only heckled harder. A month or so later, one of them caught their man outside class down by what's now the Corner, and wouldn't you know it, he attacked. Bad calc test that day? The records don't say. Either way, that was it for Sylvester. Before Spring Break, he was clean out of town.
So you see why I want to experiment. "Student self-governance!" we're still known to trumpet -- but honestly, I think we've gone soft. I'd like to see what would make the Board records today.
Board: You attacked a professor? We have to expel you.
Student: It was just an experiment.
Board: What in the world were you testing?
Student: A tradition.
Rachel's column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at rcarr@cavalierdaily.com
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