2008 Woodie Awards
Remember When: Professors at Play
Dr. Ashby Bland Crowder
Issue date: 9/15/06 Section: News
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When I think back over my more than a few years at Hendrix, I enjoy recollecting some of the pranks I have played on my students.
When my son Ashby was five years old, he assisted me in playing a joke on an entire class. I was teaching a class in Renaissance drama (without Shakespeare). It was early in the term, and the students were unsure of their footing in the sixteenth century. We were beginning our discussion of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Having coached my five-year-old son with the proper response, I began class by asking the students: What major theme that runs through all Renaissance drama do we find in abundance in Kyd's play? Well, the students didn't know what to say. No hands went up. Finally, my son stuck his little hand up. I called on him. He chirped in that clear-as-a-bell little boy voice, "Would it be the appearance vs. reality theme?"
Every jaw dropped. Then, almost in unison, they realized that they had been had.
On another occasion, perhaps a year later, after Ashby had learned to write, I brought him to another upper level English class. It was a day on which papers were due. Again, my son and I had conspired: he knew what to do. He was positioned at the teacher desk at the front of T3. I collected the papers at the beginning of class. Then I handed my son Ashby a red pen, and said to him: "Here, son, will you grade these papers for me?" He went right to it, picking up paper after paper, and writing all over them.
My students were dumbfounded. They hardly noticed me for the hour; all astonished eyes were riveted on six-year-old Ashby as he scribbled away. (I did grade their papers afterwards-with a different color of ink.)
Bob Meriwether, emeritus professor of history and education, was, I would hazard, the supreme prankster in the History of Hendrix College. This edition of the Profile could be filled with stories about Bob. I have space for just one.
When a former faculty member first arrived on campus to be interviewed for a position, Bob took the candidate aside for some "essential advice." You must watch out for the dean's wife, he warned: she just can't keep her hands off young male faculty members, and the dean is terribly jealous. So be on guard when we go to their house for dinner tonight. This advice was bogus, for the dean's wife was a lovely and upstanding lady.
To add to the fun, Bob also told the prospective faculty member that the dean's wife was almost deaf; he told the dean's wife that the candidate was almost deaf.
When the young instructor-to-be arrived at the home of the dean, he tried to keep distance between himself and the dean's wife. They shouted at each other over that distance. Then he reluctantly endured an anxious meal sitting next to the dean's wife, waiting for her hand to drop in his lap. After dinner, when, in her natural friendliness, she sat down next to him on the couch, the young man was sure that his chances for the faculty position were sunk.
The young professor got the job and taught at Hendrix until his retirement, but he never forgot what he had to go through to get the job-and he never stopped laughing about it.
--Ashby Bland Crowder
When my son Ashby was five years old, he assisted me in playing a joke on an entire class. I was teaching a class in Renaissance drama (without Shakespeare). It was early in the term, and the students were unsure of their footing in the sixteenth century. We were beginning our discussion of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Having coached my five-year-old son with the proper response, I began class by asking the students: What major theme that runs through all Renaissance drama do we find in abundance in Kyd's play? Well, the students didn't know what to say. No hands went up. Finally, my son stuck his little hand up. I called on him. He chirped in that clear-as-a-bell little boy voice, "Would it be the appearance vs. reality theme?"
Every jaw dropped. Then, almost in unison, they realized that they had been had.
On another occasion, perhaps a year later, after Ashby had learned to write, I brought him to another upper level English class. It was a day on which papers were due. Again, my son and I had conspired: he knew what to do. He was positioned at the teacher desk at the front of T3. I collected the papers at the beginning of class. Then I handed my son Ashby a red pen, and said to him: "Here, son, will you grade these papers for me?" He went right to it, picking up paper after paper, and writing all over them.
My students were dumbfounded. They hardly noticed me for the hour; all astonished eyes were riveted on six-year-old Ashby as he scribbled away. (I did grade their papers afterwards-with a different color of ink.)
Bob Meriwether, emeritus professor of history and education, was, I would hazard, the supreme prankster in the History of Hendrix College. This edition of the Profile could be filled with stories about Bob. I have space for just one.
When a former faculty member first arrived on campus to be interviewed for a position, Bob took the candidate aside for some "essential advice." You must watch out for the dean's wife, he warned: she just can't keep her hands off young male faculty members, and the dean is terribly jealous. So be on guard when we go to their house for dinner tonight. This advice was bogus, for the dean's wife was a lovely and upstanding lady.
To add to the fun, Bob also told the prospective faculty member that the dean's wife was almost deaf; he told the dean's wife that the candidate was almost deaf.
When the young instructor-to-be arrived at the home of the dean, he tried to keep distance between himself and the dean's wife. They shouted at each other over that distance. Then he reluctantly endured an anxious meal sitting next to the dean's wife, waiting for her hand to drop in his lap. After dinner, when, in her natural friendliness, she sat down next to him on the couch, the young man was sure that his chances for the faculty position were sunk.
The young professor got the job and taught at Hendrix until his retirement, but he never forgot what he had to go through to get the job-and he never stopped laughing about it.
--Ashby Bland Crowder
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