No one is in panic mode?

From the SF Chronicle a few weeks ago

A small private college lifted a campus lockdown Tuesday evening after police spent the day searching for a man who was seen with a gun in a residence hall, school officials said.

Classes at Ferrum College were canceled for the rest of the week, and students were told they could leave early for spring break, which was to have begun after classes Friday, school spokeswoman Natalie Faunce said.

Earlier Tuesday, Ferrum College President Jennifer Braaten activated an alert system and ordered the school locked down after a member of the housekeeping staff reported seeing a young man walk into a residence hall with a handgun, Franklin County Sheriff Ewell Hunt said at a news conference.

...

"No one has been hurt; no one is in a panic mode," Braaten said.

All campus buildings had been searched by Tuesday evening and police said they still had no idea who the man with the gun is or whether he is a student.

Students were taken to the gymnasium during the day for security reasons, but were escorted back to their rooms Tuesday evening.

Campus is locked down, classes are canceled for a week, every building on campus is searched, residence halls are evacuated and students herded into a gym. But they're not in panic mode.

Substitute

I ran across this blog post on teaching a college class as a substitute for another faculty member. It reminded me of the first college class I taught.

I wasn't on the teaching faculty, I had faculty rank but had a full time research job in the Division of Economic Research. I was a part-time doctoral student in Quantitative Business Analysis. I wasn't very far along in the program but knew a lot of the grad students who were further along than me because I'd had a student research assistant job as an undergraduate that given me an office in the basement with all the graduate students.

So, I'd known Phil for a a pretty good while when he called me at my desk at 8:15 one morning. He taught an 8:30 class, the intro sophomore course in QBA, and his car had broken down. This was the last class before an exam and he didn't want to cancel it. He had no lecture planned, it was just a Q/A session on the test material. He wanted me to cover the class for him. That time of morning there really wasn't anyone else he was going to be able to get hold of.

I balked. 1) I'd never taught a class. 2) I'd never read the textbook he used. 3) I wasn't sure I was going to be off-the-top-of-my-head familiar with the material.

"You'll do fine, there's no actual lecture to give". "Shirley (the QBA department secretary) will get you a copy of the book, Chapter 6 and 7". And, "It's just Central Limit Theorem and t-test stuff, you know all that stuff just fine".

Against my better judgement I caved and agreed to meet the class.

Everything went fine for about 10 minutes.

Then a young woman with a very small, quiet voice asked a question from the back of the room that I couldn't hear well. So I stepped a little further into the room, asked her to repeat the question and focused all my attention on her.

That's when I discovered the importance of keeping eye contact with the whole room, engaging the class, making it at least seem like you're addressing everybody. Clearly I was addressing just that one student so the rest of the class took a break and began talking among themselves. A faint background roar began and quickly grew to the point where I still couldn't hear the young woman's question.

I stepped back and said to the class "Just shut up. If you don't want to be here then just leave. If you're going to stay then shut up." They left.

Everybody walked out except the one young woman in the back of the room.

Without the distraction of other students it was easy to then address her question. She came to the blackboard with me and I went through the answer in detail until she seemed to grasp it.

Later, when Phil showed up, he stopped by my office to ask how it had gone. I told him what happened. He asked what her question had been. I told him. He put it on the test.

Columbia

That self-important clown at Columbia who's introducing the Iranian President is condeming Iran because they execute minors.

So does the US.

Maybe we should invade ourselves?

Update:

The speech started off with an introduction that was later correctly characterized by the Iranian President as rude. It made the President of Columbia look uncharitable and small-minded, and politically weak. He was clearly caving to critics of Columbia trying to upgrade the public and political image of Columbia. In doing so he did some damage to his own image I think.

I laughed out loud when the Iranian nutcase forgave him for his lack of politeness. I thought that was really funny, and the best way to deal with it.

What did we learn from the whole thing? (the intro, then the speech, then the Q/A).

Well we learned some things we already knew -- that for example, we're the enemy of freedom from the point of view of an Iranian. The US supported the dictator that they overthrew, the US supported Saddam in his war with Iran, the US fights Iranian attempts to acheive self sufficieny on the world economic stage. Of course they think of us as the enemy -- we are.

University Systems

UC, Berkeley is a very good school. UC, Los Angeles is a good school.

The other schools in the UC system? Not so much.

UC, Irvine not being able to make up their mind whether they really want to have a law school or not is a topic being beaten to death.

Now UC, Davis has joined the ranks of the Keystone Kops branch of the UC System.

Update:
A similar point of view.