Article Contributed on: 9/17/2009 11:49:18 AM
There was a first-time production of a major broadway play that had also been a very popular movie by John Waters. For this first production, high school students from all over the United States had been selected. My family played host to a couple of these talented high school kids as they rehearsed it. The theater professor who has now gotten in trouble was in charge of it. This is my impression of what he was like, having only seen him a couple of times.
He was full of creative energy and enthusiasm for what the kids were doing. And they were a supremely bright and talented crop of kids. I think it must have been heavenly to work in the field you love and have devoted your life to, and get to work with the best there is in young actors.
This professor was also super nice to the host parents, but I felt like it was in a practiced way, as in 'be nice to these people so the show will go better inasfar as the big things go well when the small things go well." Which is understandable as that's all we were to him.
Physically I thought the man didn't look healthy. His skin was blotchy and he wore a wig that didn't look good at all. He looked like he could use some good nutrition, like fish oil or whole grains. I don't know if you know what I mean. It's just that condition of people's outsides often indicates the condition inside them.
Only later did I become aware of the moral depravity of this professor and all the young people he hurt.
The first young man who spoke out let himself get into a hotel room situation. Much like a young college girl who gets drunk at a fraternity, goes and lays down in a frat guy's room and is surprised when he rapes her, this young man just lay down and took what the professor did to him.
Now, I do not judge the young man for that. I know exactly why he did that and my heart opens up to him for who he was and what was done. I know exactly how much he wishes he would have run out of there, been a little wiser, been a little less afraid, been a little tougher. I'm sure that is so. And yet that's how it was, and sympathy compels me to not judge.
I went to college and the few times I spent any social times with professors, I remember how, well, how can I say it. Any professor who likes to socialize and let down his guard around undergraduate students is...
not right.
I have been dancing at a bar and seen a professor high on acid making a damn fool of himself.
Igot in a hot tub with another gray-haired professor. Gross-a-mundo it was. I was about 20 or so.
I saw the 'in crowd' of my graduate department completely do the final in co-op "let's cheat and say we didn't" fashion and of course they got good grades. When I told the prof about it later he just shrugged and said, "Are you sure you want to make these allegations?"
The profs I liked were the ones who would host students in their homes in groups, and sit there and be a dignified professor and then shush the students home. I don't care if he sniffed ether when we were gone!
I'm glad we have the legal system so professors like this theater professor, who liked to watch boys and girls pee, can be taken care of and get into some nice, embarrassing trouble.