Being a teacher is like being the mayor of a small village. You're in charge of a community of sorts, with its own customs and laws, and are forced to do whatever you can for the betterment of your citizens/students. Sometimes, that means you need to keep secrets for the easement of their minds, otherwise the entire structure could fall apart.
Reddit user, u/design-responsibly, wanted professors to crack open those gossip books and share:
Professors and university employees of Reddit, what behind-the-scenes campus drama went on that students never knew about?
Wow. Who Knew Chemists Were This Crazy?
Giphy
Two professors arrested for meth production, one for murdering his wife with lab supplies, another stepped down quietly for embezzlement.
And that's how we replaced half our chemistry department in a year.
Launder The Money Wrong Ways
A professor was hired to start a research center/institute, got paid a lot of money and came in with tenure. He was f-cking weird to begin with, but as time went on it became apparent that he wasted all the funds intended for starting the center - nothing was happening but the accounts were diminishing. The whistleblower hotline was provided with a bunch of data that strongly suggested he was funneling a lot of that money to a company owned in part by his brother, in addition to a lot of blatant and casual misuse of funds (buying personal and convenience stuff for himself and staff).
Things started heating up and they called him in for a hearing about it. The very next day we found an indignant letter announcing his resignation and accusing the entire department and college of unethical behavior slipped under the door. He skipped out in the middle of the night leaving a big pile of deliberately damaged equipment in his office.
The university didn't pursue him. I believe it was because they were in the middle of a scandal involving faculty* and students in another department and just didn't want to hear about it.
Students were completely unaware.
Can't Make It To The Meeting Today
In the English department, one of the professors got arrested for domestic violence, divorced his wife, then got another english professor pregnant and eventually married her.
And they all saw each other at department meetings. Super awkward.
Edit to clarify: The husband and original wife were both professors. He had an affair with another English professor. Wife found out and there was a major fight, cops were called, he was arrested for DV but I believe the charges were dropped. He filed for divorce, moved in with the other professor, got her pregnant, and he and the ex were still fighting over child support and alimony when I left. I was the pregnant professor's TA, but I was definitely Team Original Wife.
Doing Everything Wrong
I went on a trip to Vegas as part of a big IT internship that my school got to participate in. All my professors and students got drunk off their asses and no one knows except for all who went. This wouldn't be bad until you found out we went to a private religious university. Also, we broke a lot of guideline rules like don't go to strip clubs, don't drink, don't do anything considered not Christian on the trip...we got wasted with our professors and I made out with some random dude while wearing my schools advertising shirt. Best. Time. Ever.
Note: I also forgot that people were literally hooking up while we were there too. Big suite parties have a lot of alcohol and don't ever really check for iD.
Wrong Kind of Garden
We had some students growing weed out of their dorm. Turns out they were student workers and the president of a big engineering club on campus. The other, was a student worker for the science department. Low key high key, they were expelled.
Also, the old old old president of the esports team cursed at our student president and stole money from the school, he also stalked a girl too. He was expelled. Esports still does not have good relations to this day with the student leadership committee.
What? Chemists Again?
Giphy
My PI (professor) for grad school had his lab raided by the FBI. This happened long before I joined.
Apparently,one of his first or second class of grad students in the 80's/90's decided that they wanted to use lab resources to brew some meth. Very easy to do with the equipment we have. From what I am told, this student would stay late in lab after others had left, to get this done.
In Breaking Bad style, he fences his drugs to some distributor and thought that was the end of it. the purity of his drugs was enough that they were able to trace it back from the streets to him and the lab.
A sting operation shut down the lab, while the dust settled, and my professor was cleared of all wrong doing, since none of this was under his direct control, and all campus resources were being misused by the student.
State "Intelligence Bureau" told the professor that it was the largest and purest operation they had seen in the state at this time.
Anything To Survive The Day
We had to have a "booze locker" complete with cooler near the grad student lounge in my department because some underage undergrads kept stealing from our fridge and our department in trouble. We gave out the lock code on new graduate student orientation.
Money Passed Hands
At my university a staff member accepted money from students and changed their grades so they passed. Apparently was happening a lot
One day federal police arrived and confiscated all the computers and files from an office as part of their enquiry. One guy did time for it, a few people dont work there any more....
Cutthroat World Of Physics
I work in a Physics office. One of the professors has been working to get another one removed from faculty through sneaky means and even goes out of his way to make the minutes of our faculty meetings not reflect what he's doing, even asking me to not include a motion he made to have a vote of confidence towards out program director (I refused because no way am I removing a motion from minutes).
No Secrets Kept
Im a professor in a medium/large US university... we definitely all talk about the students. Who we like, but especially who is the most annoying. We warn other professors about certain students too.
And there are certain other professors that everyone hates. Chances are if the students hate them, we usually do too.
A Techno-Oopsie
My husband works in IT at our university (student employment). A few days ago he got a call asking if anyone in the office had a lot of experience with this certain program. Turns out the person calling accidentally deleted 82 virtual machines containing close to 10 years of research and data. He worked for a small department and they didn't have any backups of the data. Not sure what happened since my husband transferred him to a data specialist.
Just An Awful String Of Events
I was a professorial assistant to the Italian department and one of my favorite professors did a showing of a very famous Italian film Swept Away on a weekend.
This was an outside of class activity, which no one was required to attend. At a college with college age students. Just a "we don't have time to watch this in class, so we'll watch it over the weekend in the auditorium."
The movie in question would be considered...controversial by American standards. But Italian film standards it is also controversial, but considered a pretty important film for anyone studying film. It deals with some pretty intense issues involving dynamics between men and women, wealthy and poor as well as, depending on your interpretation, an assault scene.
I was working in the department when we did this movie showing and so I got a front row view of it blowing up. Apparently some freshmen, who are 18 years old, attended the screening and complained to their parents, who complained to the school. The school decided the best option was to fire my professor.
The Italian department went to bat for him, reminding the school that adult students attended the screening voluntarily. The school knew they couldn't get away with firing him specifically for that, so at the end of the quarter they revoked his contract renewal (he was supposed to come back the next year) for "lifestyle choices that conflict with university standards."
Dumb move. I don't know who on the universities legal team wrote it that way, but they should be fired. The professor in question was Pakistani and openly gay, living with his husband. As far as I understand it, he took their a--es to court for discriminatory dismissal. They settled out of court for an unknown sum, but it was enough that my professor and his husband moved out to Italy where he now works at a university there and is very happy.
No one outside of the Italian department knew what happened. Professor was there one quarter and gone the next with no warning whatsoever.
Annnnnd Another List Of Problems...
Years ago at a university where I worked.
-A student worker was inventorying old storage closets and he found a large display case full of preserved animal specimens. It was the work of a long-retired and now deceased biology professor who had gathered an extensive collection decades ago and preserved them all in jars.
-The student was a chemistry major, and for some reason realized that the preservative used would turn into picric acid if you left it sitting there for half a century. Picric acid is in the same chemical family as TNT.
-The State Police bomb squad detonated the collection in a nearby field a week later, rattling windows for miles around. Few students ever found out this bomb had been sitting in the basement of their lecture hall for all those years.
...Maybe Just Stay Away From The Chemistry Department...
Giphy
In our chemistry department a few years back, a grad student who was failing started poisoning another graduate student they worked with closely by putting carcinogens in their foods and drinks. Colourless, odorless, flavourless, thanks to his chemistry knowledge. He was eventually caught and I'm not sure what happened to him, thrown out for sure, perhaps arrested.
Another year a grad student pushed another student down a flight of steps to try to kill them.
Chemists are crazy
It connects people, ideas, senses or humor, creativity! Yes, we've got our fair share of deviants, murderers, and trashbag people, but we've also got decades of wonder to celebrate.
Newbies like to think using the internet for awesomeness is something they came up with, but the old heads are here to tell you the internet has ALWAYS been a complicated crash course in the coolest stuff ever.
So let's hop in the wayback machine and get our nostalgia on.
Reddit user ransom0374 asked:
"What do you miss from early internet times?"
So let's take that walk down memory lane, or if you're new-ish here on planet Earth, this is going to be a fun little "history" lesson.
If you're uncertain where you fall, here's a test:
"Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger..."
If you finished the song, you're probably going to remember quite a few of these...
Away Messages
"AIM away messages saying stupid stuff like 'BRB going to get some bagel bites.' "
"Don't forget to update your personal profile with Blink 182 lyrics and the initials of your school sweetheart and some ASCII. Browse for a new inappropriate buddy icon and strike up a convo with SmarterChild"
GiphyThe Unknown
"I miss the wild unknown frontier that the internet was."
"It seemed there was so much discovery to be had on the internet, and if you were good at the internet everyone thought of you as 'Hackerman' and you were like a God amongst your peers."
"It seems like there isn't anything 'new' on the internet anymore. No discoveries to be made."
GiphyThe Irony Is Not Lost On Us
"Variety. There's a popular tweet that says something like 'the internet has turned into four websites where on each one people share screenshots of the other three.' "
"I miss when you could search a term and there would be dozens of sites dedicated to it or forums especially for it. Now it's just ads, Wikipedia, and Reddit."
"Oh, and not having ads shoved down your throat every time you search a term or navigate to a page!"
"I know there were pop ups and banners, which weren't any better. But there was a sweet spot."
"There was a few years there where you could Google something and half the first page WASN'T sponsored ads that had nothing to do with what you looked up. And you could go to a website and it DIDN'T block the page with a full screen ad asking for your email to join their mailing list or save 10% on their merchandise."
GiphyFiguring It Out
"That all the webpages were just random people trying to figure out HTML."
"There really wasn't a corporate presence at all. It was just a place for people to experiment."
"You could click on a button and make a cardboard hand wave at someone's cats. You could dispense a coke from a machine in some dorm. It was dumb and fun."
GiphyEndless Learning
"The learning was endless."
"There were almost an infinite source of information from all over the world. If you wanted to find something all you had to do was search for it in Ask Jeeves or whatever and you'd find any website that had ever mentioned that thing."
"There were more than 10 different websites. And at least it didn't feel like I was being forced to sign up for a subscription after every click."
"There were so many fun, cute stores to shop. Now it feels like everyone dresses and decorates the same."
"I miss a lot of things about the early internet. I'm probably wrong, but it just felt safer than it does now?"
GiphyMaking Friends
"I was in my late teens when the internet was becoming accessible to everyone. Our one household computer was in the kitchen & facing in a way so anyone coming in could see your screen."
"I remember looking at someone's website and my Dad passing by to get something to eat, asking me if the person on the website was my friend."
"I miss those old days! The internet seemed endless & friendly."
GiphyA Base Level For Participation
"Most people were smart."
"In the early days (by far) most people on the internet were in college, either as a teacher or student. Beyond that, people had to to be in a lab or make their computer talk to a connected computer which was not so easy in the old days."
"It acted as a sort of intelligence barrier one needed clear to participate in internet things."
- tsoldrin
"Higher barrier to entry."
"I remember the fond days of SLIP and Trumpet Winsock when you had to know at least a little about tech to get on and participate."
"There was still stupidity, but it just wasn't as loud as it is now."
- dramboxf
"In the very very early days, pre-AOL, you needed skill and knowledge to get online."
"Then AOL came onto the scene an d anyone could get online at the push of a button."
GiphyGo Away Now
"I miss when what happened on the internet, stayed on the internet."
"You could turn off the beige box and go about the rest of your day without it affecting you."
"The fact that is only existed on a big computer in the house, as long as no-one was on the phone. It wasn't some all-encompassing thing."
- dienices
"The internet not following me around. When you logged off, you effectively put the internet away."
GiphyIt Used To Be...
"How people used to treat it."
"The internet was not just a novelty, but an amazing piece of technology that let anyone share anything. It was so wholesome and loving, with everyone still being amazed at what we could do now."
"Now? There's so many websites that are designed to make you angry and radicalize your beliefs. It's quantity over quality."
"There was a time when nobody on Reddit shared politics, when Facebook was for socializing, when YouTube was where people uploaded stuff they were passionate about."
GiphyWe Used To Love Yahoo
"Yahoo Answers"
"Yahoo Pool"
- inaclick
"I can't remember what it was called, but Yahoo had this great music video program where it showed popular artists, and some very unknown folks."
"I discovered some of my favorite artists having it play in the background all the time."
"Launchcast/Yahoo Radio. It was revolutionary for music streaming and the 1-5 star system worked really well. I preferred it over Pandora's up/down system."
GiphyOn a personal level, I want to go on record and say MusicMatch was the greatest music program in the history of life.
It just was.
I will die on this hill.
It was dopeness in all forms. MusicMatch Jukebox? Dope. Yahoo MusicMatch? Dope.
So what relics from Ye Olde Internet are you passionate about? Sound off in the comments!
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
The dogs owner shared the video along with a post asking professionals to shed some light on why he does what he does.
Owner-obliviousness as they gushed about how adorable it was made the awkward even better.
The owner explained the Frenchie often makes aggressive eye contact and licks his lips while he "plays air guitar"—which is what the family calls it—and how cute & funny they all find the behavior.
GiphyThe video was the dog, casually chilling, using his paw to rub the tip of his penis while staring awkwardly at the camera and licking his lips like a pup possessed.
Three hundred and fifteen laugh-reacts—at the time that I saw it—and only three comments:
1. a vet explaining that the behavior showed in the video was the dog masturbating while making direct eye contact
2. the owner giving a simple "thank you" and
3. the admins of the group closing the comments.
So, why am I sharing this with you?
Because Reddit user Drakmamman asked:
"Dog owners of reddit, what the dog doin?"
... and so now you get this whole article just so I had an excuse to tell y'all about a furiously fapping Frenchie, 'cause somebody else needed to know about him.
I cackled for a good 20 minutes imagining the family getting all giddy about their dog "playing air guitar"—making the little air guitar meedly squeedly noises while he played, maybe even playing along thinking they're enjoying a fun little game—but they're really just been giving a hair metal soundtrack to their dogs stroke sesh.
Something tells me now the owner knows what "air guitar" really is, they're not likely to rush and tell Reddit all about how they've been gathering as a family to watch cause it's just so cute.
That's what I'm here for.
Anyway, here's the stuff other people's dogs are up to. It's not fapping—or if it is, the owners aren't telling Reddit.
Partner Preference
Giphy"Wife just came home with the baby. Dog is acting like she's been abandoned for years running up and down, barking and jumping on everything."
"They'd only been out an hour and I was with her the whole time." - Single_Goose7015
"My dog does this too when my wife comes home. Like what am I, chopped liver?" - jackof47trades
"I feel your pain. My dog started howling mournfully when my partner went back to work last week… I was right there!" - TreatOutside
"Staring at the door waiting for the only human he cares about to come home (obviously not me)" - SnarkyRedhead
Herding Cats
Giphy"Probably trying to herd the cats."
"He's a border collie mix who's afraid of goats and sheep, but even after six years of living with them he still thinks he can control where the cats go."
"He's a good boy, he's very persistent, but not terribly bright sometimes." - TokesNotHigh
"After 8 years our border collie still herds the cats, and the vacuum." - psychologicaluse28
"Big heart, small brain. I have one of those dogs too. They are the sweetest." - Technobucket
Wretched Existence
Giphy"She has flung herself flat across the bed and is playing dead, quiet except for the occasional pitiful whine. Every now and then she lifts her head up and fixes a desperate look upon me, silently begging for release from her wretched existence."
"She's a bit overdramatic about having to wear a cone. The issue is an abrasion on a toe that she won't stop licking, which is making it worse."
"I've been alternating between bandaging it and having her wear a cone. She's been consistently a drama queen." - halfinboxes
One Hour
Giphy"Staring at me because their dinner time is in one hour and they need to start letting me know that, in an hour, they need to eat...in an hour, so I better not forget...cuz they're hungry, which is why they're staring at me...and it's almost dinner time."
"Just one more hour, And they want to make sure I don't forget. Because maybe I will."
"So, they need to remind me. By staring at me. Every day. One hour before dinner." - MotherOfFred
A Little "Light" Exercise
Giphy"Mine loves light reflected off watches or phones. And loves lasers."
"It's sunny and he sees light on the wall so he is bothering me to use my watch or phone so he can chase the light. I've spent the last hour doing it."
"I even got him a cat laser toy that's automatic for him and he runs himself tired as all hell with it. But he is STILL asking for it."
"Used the laser toy also too, so he is panting dripping tongue and still wants to play more..." - boomgoon
Vicious Predators
Giphy"Last night my dogs chased down and killed a rabbit in the backyard. They are usually so gentle; this was weird and unexpected."
"I watched the whole thing helpless because it was so fast. The rabbit screamed, it was insane."
"Now, I'm watching them sleep on my couch and can't help but think they just murdered someone."
"They are just vicious predators, right here, in my house. On my couch."
"But they snuggly as f*ck. This trips me out." - Atheist_Redditor
A Problematic Princess
Giphy"We have two chihuahuas. One is a 15 year old (quite appropriately) named Princess and one is a one year old named Charlie."
"Both have their own dog beds on the couch since they are spoiled."
"When Princess is feeling particularly moody or like asserting her dominance, she will drag Charlie's bed into her bed and lay on top of BOTH of them and snarl at him if he comes close to her personal space bubble/bed mountain."
"And when we tell her she can't have both beds and put his bed back to the side, she just glares at us. Lol." - mslm90
Shoe-nanigans
Giphy"She's currently in her cage resting after her great adventure."
"She managed to get upstairs and grab a hold of one of my shoes. Not just any old shoe, but one of the shoes I am planning to wear this weekend for my wedding."
"After running around, she dropped the shoe to chew on a shirt - at which point she was cornered, and then brought downstairs."
"Pup and shoe are both unharmed and doing well. My nerves, not so much." - still_interesting23
So ... what's YOUR dog been up to lately?
Want to "know" more?
Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again.
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.