To the hardworking members of the jury, and to the victim, who didn't get all of the justice she deserved (my opinion - I was the alternate).

Times have changed...
but every-so-often, things seem to revert back to the way they were...
and this is not always a Good Thing...

When I was in elementary school, I attended an "experimental school." The school district administrators assumed their teachers were good at their jobs, intuitive and creative, and that they knew their students better than the administration did. They let the teachers teach the way that seemed to suit their students best. Especially at our "experimental school."

Everyone seemed to thrive in this environment. Even the "problem students" seemed to actually learn stuff. I don't remember any students having a shouting match with the teacher or storming out of the classroom. Of course, we were still very young.

When I was in fourth grade, my family moved to another town. Luckily, the new place was a college town. Education was valued; teachers were respected; my new school was not labeled as "experimental," but subjects were still taught with more individual attention to each student's learning style. I do remember one student storming out of the classroom and leaving the school campus. He was back in class the next day.

Centuries later, when I became a teacher myself, remembering my own successful education, I tried to individualize instruction to my students. When I ended up teaching at ITT Tech, the school emphasized that their students were not the "usual" college students. They typically were older; they usually had jobs they found not open to advancement; they often had families. In addition to these features, they were not often the "visual" or "auditory" learners like the usual college student. ITT Tech encouraged hands-on learning. I had bags of wooden blocks so students could see that 4³ actually was a cube of 64 blocks, 4 on each edge. I had foam circles cut into fractional slices so they could verify how fractions worked. Science classes were loads of fun: experiment after experiment: "Now, what do you see? What do you think that means? What do you think would happen if...?"

Not all of my schools I taught in emphasized individual education. As time passed, schools seemed to become increasingly rigid in how students were to be taught. In my last school, an online text presentation followed by a computer-graded online quiz was the ONLY learning process offered to students. As a teacher, my sole job was to nag them via email to finish the sections. Naturally, I HATED this style, and it was one of the reasons I decided to retire before I had actually intended to.

Up until the online thing, as the schools increasingly insisted we use ONLY certain teaching techniques, I was able to ignore the rules and teach my students how I felt they would learn best. Students were, frankly, grateful; they felt they were actually learning difficult concepts (statistics, calculus, quantum physics) that they had thought were too difficult for them to learn. By the second week of class, they were suspicious: "This is easier than I thought it could be... AM I ACTUALLY SMARTER THAN I THINK I AM???" By the third week, they were developing a swagger. I was so proud of them. I had a few students actually get jobs doing what I was teaching them DURING MY CLASS or soon afterward. They would tell me: "I just did the things you told me to do, and they were so impressed, they had me sign papers during the interview!" Students would come back in later years and say things like: "You know... about the time-space continuum thing? I have an idea..." If their idea sounded promising, I would put them in touch with a NASA colleague.

I initially thought the administration was wrong to mistrust their faculty. Teachers should be able to teach their students any way that seemed best!

But, as time passed, and especially during COVID, I began (slowly) to realize that not all teachers are great teach-ers. Especially at the college level. They probably are knowledgeable about their subject matter, but about communicating that to someone else? Maybe not so much...

I have actually known fellow college professors to say, "We don't want to make it easy for our students to understand this stuff. They'll lose all respect for us if they think the subject is easy!"

Well, I lost all respect for THEM when they said that...

I should have known that not all teachers can teach. After spending my youth being taught by talented, creative, GREAT teachers in the public school system of the 1960s and 70s, when I got to college I discovered there were actually some pretty bad teachers.

I remember an Introduction to Fortran Programming course I started. The professor came into the class (exactly as the bell rang), said nothing (not even: "Hi! I'm Professor Blahblah and this is Introduction to Fortan Programming." Instead, he immediately turned his back to us and started writing on the chalkboard (yes, it was THAT long ago... we still used chalk...):

0001001100011010101100000111010111110010101011000110001...

When the bell rang, I hastened to the office to change sections. I hurried because I assumed EVERYONE ELSE would be wanting to change sections, too, and, since there are limited openings in each class, I wanted to be sure I got one. I ended up in a class with a SUPER professor who kept us challenged and learning. We did a program for every class (we met 3 times a week) We did a final project where we wrote a program to solve a complex physics problem using do-loops and print out the solution and an explanation on microfilm.

A friend who had stayed in the original class (which ended up having only a handful of students... hmm... wonder why?) showed me his final project (they had done NO other programs in the entire class.) The program was to print out the letter "M" on the printer paper.

So, there are some bad college professors...

But "bad" can be exhibited in a variety of ways - not JUST the inability to teach students the subject matter they were hired to transmit.

College professors, more than K-12, are expected to prepare students for life as an employed adult. As I mentioned, my students could get JOBS using the information I had taught them in my classes. I taught them how to do complex statistical analyses using Excel spreadsheets. I taught them how DNA analysis is used in criminology, how engineers use calculus (which is different than how physics-folk use it!)

But, you also need to instill in your students a belief that they ARE smart; they CAN solve hard problems; they ARE professionals, worthy of respect and even admiration.

I would have to say few college professors actually view this as part of their job. At the undergraduate level, class size can explain this lack. I once taught an undergraduate statistics class of over 700 students. Needless to say, I didn't know the names of about 690 of my students, and we did NO hands-on activities. I joked that I would grade the final by dumping the (refrigerator-sized) box of their blue books down the stairs of my apartment building. Those that fell at my feet got an "A"; those that I had to go down 5 flights of stairs...

Of course, I didn't ACTUALLY do that. But I was grading about 14 hours a day, 7 days each week for the two weeks before grades had to be posted.

~oy~

Still, as you move into graduate school, class sizes become smaller, one-on-one relationships with students become possible, and, especially at the doctoral level, a professor, especially a dissertation advisor, should be a good mentor to their student.

Well, as Gershwin would say, "It ain't necessarily so..."

I got into the master's program in the Statistics Department at the same school I attended for my bachelor's degree. As I have mentioned in another short story, I wanted to specialize in time-based linear models to "forecast the future." And this school was the go-to school in the US for that topic.

But... as soon as I got into the master's program, the department head retired and was replaced by a professor allegedly specializing in stochastic (random) processes, not linear models. We later discovered that his claim to fame in this topic was that he had proof-read the standard text in the subject for the author. He was given a "thanks to" in the acknowledgements.

Of course, this was the textbook assigned for his spring term Stochastic Processes class, which was a new required course, as the Statistics Department's emphasis was beginning to change.

It was so completely incomprehensible that I scrounged through the college library to find a comprehensible Stochastic Processes book. I found one - I remember the author was named "Bhat." It was so good, I ordered my own copy and passed on the library copy to a fellow-sufferer in the class.

Of course, we called this treasure "Blot."

This new professor was mostly better than Professor 00100110, but there was an eerily-similar moment in one class where he was writing on the board (yes, still chalk) supposedly proving a theorem. He stopped after the first line, then spent the entire rest of the class, probably 20 minutes or so, back to us, staring at the board. Silent. Staring.

Finally, as the ending bell rang, another professor who was "sitting in" on the class suggested, "Uh, you might try blahblah..."

Our professor whipped around to face us. "Yes, that's it. I'm sure you all see it clearly now," grabbed his satchel, and dashed from the room.

We looked at one another. Well, no, actually, we DIDN'T see it clearly now. We'd sorta like a few more details. Unfortunately, the "sitting-in" professor had also fled the scene. Luckily "Blot" provided the answer to my friend and I and any of the other students who asked us.

During the term, our professor was invited to another university about 50 miles away to give a visiting lecture. A bunch of the students in the class carpooled to attend. This university specialized in medicine, so our professor included an example of the use of stochastic processes in that field. He dashed off his matrices with élan and handed out copies of the final results solving the medical conundrum to members of the audience.

One of the medical faculty stuck his hand up. "Actually, this ISN'T the correct solution to the problem It's actually blahblah..." and everyone else in the medical discipline nodded.

"Oh. OK," said our professor. We waited for him to say, "Well, we could adjust this matrix to include..." He didn't. We, and the rest of the audience, are still waiting for his correction.

For the final exam, he (reluctantly) decided to make it open book. For most of the students in the class, being allowed to use the text provided no advantage. For my friend and I, "Blot" saved the day. We passed!

But, our professor had just come to the US from Australia. In Australia, graduate-level classes had only ABCF grades (it's probably that way now in the US, too, but at that time "D" grades were also permitted.) In our class, one doctoral student (who was only auditing the class) got an A. My "Blot" friend and I both got Cs. The rest of the class all received Fs.

And, you can't stay in a graduate program with F grades...

And, most of the graduate students in statistics are foreign students...

And you can't keep your national backing to stay in America if you've failed out of your college program...

And you can't stay in America if you no longer have your national backing...

Well, I wasn't a foreign student, but I knew this new emphasis on stochastic processes rather than linear models, especially being led by this new department head, was not for me.

I also knew I would not be able to get into any other program at another university with a "C" on my graduate transcript.

So, before the C hit my records, I quickly applied to a smaller university, traditionally a "teacher's college" about 20 miles away. They had a not-too-terrible program in linear models, although their emphasis was in "judgment analysis" rather than forecasting. Judgment analysis is useful in education and is not generally time-based.

Still, I could make it work, and I was admitted.

~whew~

Interestingly, my previous university administration never told the professor that "Oh, by the way, you're in America now, and we have D grades in the graduate program." Apparently, if they noticed at all that only three students who had taken the class had not failed out of the program (and that one of those had transferred out), they decided that somehow the statistics program was admitting totally unqualified students! It could NEVER be the professor's fault!

Oh, and by-the-way, they had given this new head of department instant tenure to lure him into taking the position. And he resigned from being the department head after the first year. But, he still had tenure, and they couldn't get rid of him. It is my impression that he never published ANYTHING. Just proof-read the textbook. He didn't have to publish anything: he had tenure already... As long as he stayed at that University, he was set for life.

Meanwhile, back at my new school, the admission counselor gave me an offer I couldn't refuse. They had an option that you could enter the program as a doctoral student - not a master's student. You would take the master's-level classes, then the doctoral-level classes, write your doctoral dissertation and - tah-dah - done! In other words, you didn't have to write a master's thesis.

Skip one big, nasty paper? Sounded good to me!

You could do this two ways: one way, you could still get the master's degree; the other way, you couldn't. The counselor recommended the first option: in case something went awry, you could quickly write a master's thesis and get the master's degree; at least you would have that to show for all your efforts. I thought, "What could go wrong?" but took his advice and selected option one.

This school assigned your Graduate Advisor to you (at my previous school, you selected someone you wanted and trusted to have your best interests at heart.) THIS SCHOOL ASSIGNED YOUR ADVISOR TO YOU. They didn't tell you that you could change Advisors to someone else. And, I thought, "Well, this guy is a professional. He'll act professionally." I didn't make a fuss. I didn't insist on choosing my own preferred Advisor.

I was very young...

And, while I knew quite a lot about linear models, I was also very stupid...

My Advisor managed to work his mantra into each class he taught: "I don't think women should be in college stealing jobs from men."

This was in the late 1970s. The women's movement had been around for quite a while, but it still wasn't the "norm." You couldn't expect employers, for example, to treat a female applicant equally with a male applicant. But universities were supposed to be different. More equal. More up-to-date.

Still, this guy is a professional. He'll act professionally.

~ ! ~

This school emphasized applied statistics. That was good. I could only prove theorems in my sleep. I would wake up in the middle of the night with the solution. I kept a notepad next to my bed to scribble it down, because I would not remember it in the morning. Proving theorems was necessary in a theoretical statics program but not in an applied program.

But, in an applied program, you needed an "area of application." Since this was an education school, I suggested I could do an education project.

My Advisor instantly put a kybosh on that. "I'm bored with education. Everyone here does education. You have a strong background in anthropology and archaeology - why don't you do something in one of those fields?"

Frankly, I was thrilled. Nothing sounded less interesting to me than education!

This school had good graduate programs in both anthropology and archaeology. Since my stronger undergraduate background was in anthropology, I took my first graduate applications course in that.

The professor made it clear to me that he thought I was an idiot. He mocked my project topic in class. During a brainstorming session, he told a student to write all the ideas we came up with on the board. Except, as the student was writing my idea, the professor quickly said, "Don't write that one!"

I may be the only person on the planet who had my free thought idea excluded from a college brainstorming session.

Nah... probably I'm not the only one.

Anyway, after surviving that class, I decided to try archaeology. The school had a very strong American archaeology program, and I was particularly interested in Meso-American cultures. So, ANCIENT Meso-American cultures? Sure! No problem!

I had come up with a way to make the locally-preferred analysis method (judgement analysis) into a time-based linear model, AND had come up with a way to make it Bayesian (which was very popular right then, and interestingly is popular again as I write this), so I could sell that as the statistical part of my dissertation, now I just needed some archaeological data to analyze, and I'd be set!

My archaeology professor at that moment drug out a refrigerator-sized box of papers with numbers on them from a back corner of the university's archaeological publications storage room, and I had data! Not enough data, as it turned out, but a good start!

My dissertation was this: archaeologists develop for each site they dig a series of the pottery used at the site. The pottery changes over time. The timing of each sort of pottery can be determined by how deep the samples are found - the deeper the layer, the older the pottery. Some layers can actually be carbon dated by wood found in that layer. The pottery series is determined by the archaeologists (their "judgments", like in "judgment analysis", get it?), the changes form a time series (time-based). So, can these changes be modeled mathematically using a time-based linear model? (Turns out they can!) Then, the Bayesian part, can the models for each archaeological site be used to test the hypothesis that sites close in proximity to one another have similar pottery that changes similarly over time. (Also turns out to be: yes!)

Using my data, I found several Maya sites in Central America all had similar pottery series. One didn't. Several years later, another researcher used satellite imagery to trace canals connecting all the Maya sites EXCEPT the one I found was different. Turns out, it was on the other side of a mountain range - no canal connecting it. And pottery is too heavy and fragile to haul over mountains. At that site, they made their own pottery in their own styles.

So I had the classes, the topic, the data, the analysis, the results, and I was writing the dissertation.

What could go wrong?

My archaeology professor lured me into an inner corner of the publications storage room and tried to rape me. It started out with kissing, and, yes, I DID let him do that, and even kissed him back. This guy was the applications-area professor on my dissertation committee - I needed his signature to graduate!

Thinks quickly got worse.

But, I am a dancer, and my specialty is high kicks - I can still do them, although not nearly as high - I'm in my seventies, after all.

I left him clutching his painful privates. I dashed out the side door, grabbing my purse but dropping my coat. It was February in Colorado. But, I didn't go back for my coat. A couple of years later, my folks told me they had received a package from the university: my coat. (My parents' address would have been the address of record the university had for me.)

I always liked that coat. I never retrieved it from my parents' home. I never wore it again.

For modern women, it is incomprehensible that I did NOT immediately report this incident to the university authorities. I can only assure you that "times was diff'runt" in 1978. I was just worried that the professor wouldn't sign my dissertation and I wouldn't graduate.

And, notice, he obviously had no concerns that he might get in trouble for this. That I might report it.

Obviously I was not his only victim...

So, I had an attempted rapist and a misogynist on my dissertation committee. You needed 3 "content" members on your committee, and the university would appoint a fourth from outside the department. Since I knew I might have trouble with the rapist, and possibly even the misogynist, I asked the only female faculty member in the Statistics Department to be a fourth "content" member. That way I felt sure I would have the 3 signatures (plus the university-appointed one) that I needed to get the degree. The university appointed a female professor from another department to be on my committee. I thought I had done everything I could.

Well...

It wasn't enough...

On the morning of my dissertation defense, I came early with four boxes of donuts. My Advisor also came early. He shut the door and told me, "I won't be signing your dissertation today..."

I gulped. "Why?"

"I just don't think women should be getting degrees to steal jobs from men."

The other committee members trickled in.

By the time my dissertation defense started, I barely knew my name. After a few minutes I was back on my feet, but...

Well, I had sat in on other students' doctoral dissertation defenses, and I knew how they generally go: the other committee members grill you, try to trip you up, try to make your life a living hell for about an hour. Your Advisor generally sits at the back of the room leaning back in his chair like an innocent bystander. But if you are going down for the third time, your Advisor rides in on his white horse and gives you a hint that saves you.

Not in my case: the other members had little chance to ask questions; my Advisor attacked on every detail. The other committee members told me later they were surprised at how he was handling things.

After an hour and a half, much longer than these things usually go, the committee sent me out into the hallway while they deliberated.

Out in the hall, of course, all of my fellow statistics students were waiting breathlessly: "How did it go?"

I broke out crying (I could still cry then.) "They're not going to sign it!"

"They ALWAYS sign it. NOBODY actually writes a dissertation, then defends it, and they don't sign it!"

"My Advisor attacked about everything!"

One of my fellow students was a very religious Pakistani guy - a HUGE guy. He always wore Pakistani garb. He put his arm around me and said, "He must defend you. It is his task to get you through. It will be embarrassing for him if you do not succeed."

The door opened. I went in.

Of course, NO ONE on my committee would sign the dissertation.

They told me later that there were two ways they could do it: one - I could redo the defense at a later time, within 4 years. Two - this was it. Done. Over.

Apparently, my Advisor argued for option two. But they wouldn't let him.

"They didn't sign," I told my support group waiting outside the door and fled the campus.

Rumor has it that EVERY STUDENT (not just the females) immediately changed their Advisor away from my guy. That afternoon.

The next day, I trudged back to campus and went to my two non-Advisor statistics professor committee members offices with a huge stack of books. I plopped the books on each desk and flipped them open to pre-marked pages. "See? I was right!" Flip. "See, I was right!"

They each said, "Yes, I see you were right. He WAS acting very oddly..."

"So, you'll sign it?"

"No, we can't do that without another defense..."

I marched over to the campus ombudsman's office. He wasn't exactly hiding under his desk, but he told me he DID already know about my case.

A University is a small village...

He told me, regretfully, "Your Advisor HAS to sign the dissertation. You cannot change Advisors at this point. At any time BEFORE the defense, you could have changed Advisors, but not now."

~ !@#$%^&*~

I quick-quick wrote a master's thesis. I couldn't just call my dissertation a "master's thesis" because it would mean I could not use it later as a doctoral dissertation. A dissertation must be new, never-been-published information. If I used it as a master's thesis, it would be "published." I would have to start all over again on a new dissertation.

If I wanted to do that...

I don't know of anyone who actually wrote two dissertations...

Probably in the history of the world SOMEBODY has...

Not me.

To this day, I cannot tell you what my master's thesis was about without looking it up on my résumé. I just threw something together and got SOMEONE (can't remember who) to agree it was my master's thesis and that I could graduate.

With a Master's degree.

Anyhow, I did at least get a Master's degree in the summer of 1979.

I got a job teaching statistics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario that fall on a one-year contract. I told them I would NEVER have a doctorate degree. While I was there, they offered that I could get my doctorate there, without taking any new classes (they could transfer them from my old school.) I would just have to write a NEW dissertation, only because they didn't have a department of Meso-American Archaeology for a professor to sign off on that aspect of the project.

I think they were actually serious about this.

I didn't take them up on their kind offer.

After I left Canada:

I lived in a commune.

I joined the Air Force.

I worked for H&R Block.

I lived in the basement of the Episcopalian Church with a bunch of other kids (it was the hippie era, and people did that.)

I applied for a job on a US government project funded at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I told them I did not have a doctorate degree and never would. They hired me anyway.

After a year, they told me I HAD to get the degree or they would have to let me go.

~ !@#$%^&*~

I mailed a letter (again, a pre-email world) to my old department - I figured it wouldn't hurt.

By return mail I got a letter from the non-female statistics member of my committee - the guy I would have chosen to be my Advisor if I had thought I had a choice - saying, "Your Advisor has committed himself to a psychological hospital! I've been appointed your new Advisor! Since you had an extra member on your dissertation committee, we can schedule your re-defense at any time, and we can do the defense by phone! You don't actually have to be here!"

Sounded good to me...

Here's how my re-defense went: I'm in my half-office at work. I pick up the ringing phone (land-line; no cell phones yet for decades) and say, "Hello?"

They say, "We're signing it!"

I say, "Thank you," and hang up.

Ah, but my life is stochastic (random) even if my degree is not.

In the summer, I got a letter from my university. It said: "We regret to inform you that you will not be able to graduate with your class. Your doctoral dissertation title page has a date from 4 years ago. You will not be able to graduate until this has been remedied."

~ !@#$%^&*~

I phoned them immediately. It was Wednesday, and graduation (which I had NO INTENTION OF ATTENDING!!!) was on Saturday. And Saturday was also the four-year cutoff point for graduation based on the ruling from my first dissertation defense. If I didn't graduate then, it was: START OVER AGAIN!

~ !@#$%^&*~

The person on the phone assured me she KNEW ABOUT MY AWFUL SITUATION. (I suspect I was a fable in university lore by that time.)

And I said, "Well you KNOW I am going to retype the title page and send it to you IMMEDIATELY but it will not arrive in Colorado from Missouri before Saturday because Colorado still uses the pony express for delivering mail so why don't you just let me graduate assuming the title page will arrive next week?"

Of course she couldn't do that, but of course she did anyway, and I did get the doctoral degree.

~ !@#$%^&*~

Many people (possibly most) who attempt doctoral degrees have horror stories; mine is the worst that I've heard that I did actually get the degree.

Many do not.

Two years later, I received a letter from my ORIGINAL Advisor saying, "In lieu of the many changes you have made correcting your dissertation, I am now willing to sign your dissertation."

~ !@#$%^&*~

I assume the "many changes" he was referring to was the date on the title page.

A few months later, I asked a good friend to go to the university library (with white-out) to check to see if he really HAD signed it. And white it out if he had.

He hadn't.

Oh, and just to show that a rapist never changes his spots, a few weeks after my graduation, my archaeology professor sent a package to MY APARTMENT. (Somehow he had gotten his hands on my Missouri address.) The package contained a series of pictures of him doing a strip tease with the final pic being him full frontal nude with an erection.

By this time the world had changed (a bit...) I called a local women's help hotline and told them about the pics. I could send them back to the ombudsman at the university and get the professor into all kinds of trouble. Tempting. Very tempting. But my guy-at-the-moment was an expert at weapons in karate, especially katana (the samurai sword.) I visualized my guy riding off to Colorado to dismember my professor.

Yes, it was 1984...

The women's hotline person and I agreed that my best option was to toss the pics in the dumpster...

And, notice, my professor still obviously had no concerns that he might get in trouble for this...

~ ! ~

I keep thinking the world has changed...

But the world keeps changing and changing...

And changing...

I'm afraid we are headed back to where we used to be...

I never thought I'd write this story. The "Stealing jobs" part, sure, but not the attempted rape part.

But I recently was on jury duty. As part of jury selection, they asked, "Has anyone here ever been the victim of a sexual assault?"

I assumed every woman in the room, and a few men, too, would have their hands up.

They didn't.

I was the only one.

I don't believe that I was the only person in the room who was the victim of a sexual assault - not for an instant.

Apparently "me, too" is over, and once more we are sliding back into the world where it is absolutely a god-given right for a man (especially one in power) to have sex with any woman (or man) he wants to, whether she (or he) wants it or not. And the victims, who really ARE victims, are regressing back to silence. It's just too dangerous to share. To report. To tell.

If my sharing this story can help a victim to realize IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT - that is what I hope for.