June 19, 2003

Stand up

A professor comes into the first day of his college class. The large lecture hall is filled to capacity for the only time during the semester, and the rare quiet makes him smile to himself. He puts down his books and looks out over the audience for a few seconds before speaking. "Everybody please stand up right now" he says in an emotionless voice and looks down at the floor. After a few seconds a couple of the students begin to stand and then slowly the rest join them. After they have been standing for a few seconds he looks up and says: "Ok, you can all be seated." There are a few quiet chuckles and some of the students give each other confused grins while they slide back into their seats. He lets them get settled and then tells them to stand again. He then walks to the front of his lecture space and begins talking.

"When you came into this room today you may have thought of people in terms of groups - college students, rich kids, black students, whatever. Simply put, I think that we are, instead, a series of individuals with different views, histories - different everything. But at the same time we can be grouped into certain categories based on whatever grouping mechanism you like. For example, you could say that just now there were people who were very resistant to me making them stand up, and you could say that there were those that simply stood up without questioning it. There were those that got mad at what they saw as an abuse of power, and those that laughed and thought it would make a nice little story to tell when your friends asked you how your first day went. The point is, we can group people based on small things like this, but that doesn't mean that we are different. Now, let's talk a little bit about biology."

June 19, 2003 06:45 PM