By Sarah Heath
Some of us were pretty puzzled around campus last week: Some mighty strange things were happening.
It’s not an ordinary experience to have a total stranger approach you and press a piece of candy into your palm. It is further not a run-of-the-mill sight to see a blindfolded person being led around to classes. The clincher was seeing two guys reading a map in order to find the English class that they’ve been attending for nine weeks!
On top of all this, as though that was not enough to cause us to do retakes, we hear the story that one of the TCC faculty sends her students out to do shoplifting.
After reflecting on these things and doubting our sight and hearing, the truth behind these weird happenings reaches us. The candy episode was part of one instructor’s plan (while teaching descriptive writing) to show the students the various reactions by recipients when a sudden, unexpected good befalls.
A popular reaction seemed to be “Gee, I didn’t know you had a crush on me.” The leading of the blind was also another instructor’s method for demonstrating the problems facing those who cannot see. It seems here that when the demonstrators were a boy-girl team or both female, the experiment ran smoothly. If, on the other hand, two males were assigned to work together, there were problems. Most of the guys didn’t seem to want to walk from one class to the other holding hands!
The map-reading episode has not been fully explained. Either these fellows were being taught to prepare maps accurately, or some instructor was trying to teach them how to follow directions. At any rate, the story is that they did know, without using a map, where that English class was. Thank heaven for that!
Even the shoplifting story could be explained. It seems that one instructor out here has her students do a field project (if they aspire to an A in that class). One group in the class decided to put to test whether witnesses who see shoplifting would report it to store managers. With the permission of the manager, the group permeated one local store. One person was stationed at the store’s front and as customers entered, they were interviewed and asked, among other things, if they would report shoplifting if they were witnesses to it. Another member of the group was back in the store (again, with the store manager’s consent) stealing items to see if these people really would report it.
Now this was a scientific method being used to prove a hypothesis. But the story that got out because of it was hardly of a scientific nature.
After hearing that one, we recommend that you carry “Open Marriage” in a brown bag in case you are required to read it.