::A Geek in Korea::

There are bad students. Tantrum throwing children with attention problems come to mind. However, this is the first actual issue I’ve had with any of my University students. One of my classes has a group of guys that are all friends with one another. One student doesn’t own a book, so he just looks off other people’s books when they come to class. I don’t know why they tolerate this, but they let him leech off them.

Usually these guys sit together, and they don’t bother anyone else. Everyone else sits FAR away from them. They are the only students in ANY of my classes that I have to warn about speaking Korean in class. These are the ONLY students that I have in all my classes that will chat in Korean while the rest of the class is speaking English. They are the most immature students I teach. They have class in the middle of the afternoon and they usually look like they’ve just rolled out of bed and are still hung over. They are just smug, dumb freshman that will most likely fail my class. I have nearly 100 Freshman and Adult students, so three or four assholes isn’t that bad a ratio all things considered. There are so many nice, polite students that these particular students are only an odd exception, not the rule.

One of them was spectacularly bad today. If one of the students wanted to pursue charges, I would have helped get the student removed from my class, or even the university.

I came to class today prepared with a lesson. I was running around playing the CD, lecturing at the board, and generally trying to be a professor like I am paid to do. One time, while I was positing a question to the students, I saw that one of the male students, the one that never brings a book, was fondling the genitals of one of the other men he hangs out with under a chair. He had his hand on top of his friend’s pants, holding the outline of his friend’s penis. He had his hand on the man’s junk, RIGHT IN CLASS. He was grabbing him uncomfortably while I was turned around writing at the board.

I gave him a “WTF” look and just sort of waited to see what was going on. I thought that maybe he had dropped a pencil in a really awkward place, or he had a reason to have his hands resting on his friends pants, groping his friend. I don’t know what the other students saw, so I just tried to keep going. It was harder than I expected to keep my concentration when there was man on man groping in class.

The fondled friend knocked his hand away and said something in Korean. I don’t think they are gay. I think this was a fucked up Korean male dominance thing. The fondler had been doing this while my back was turned. I think he was trying to get his uncomfortable friend in trouble in class. Like the shocked guy would say, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU WEIRDO, STOP!” in the middle of class and make me turn around in surprise. I don’t know, and I didn’t really want to ask.

I just gave him a nasty stare and continued my lecture. I had to actually say, “Keep your hands to yourself,” to an adult in my class.

I had to continue on with my lecture. When I had them break up in groups to talk about a hypothetical question I had written on the board, I saw that the same guy, the fondler, was asleep. He had shown up to class, clearly hung over or still drunk, groped someone in class, then fell asleep. I was so astounded at his poor behavior I didn’t even know how to approach the situation. I mostly just stared and tried to make “Hate Bullets” with my eyes. He was too sleepy to care.

I actually stopped the class at that point because everyone was staring at him. He wasn’t snoring, but he was clearly asleep, head back, resting on the wall behind him. I was about to toss a marker to the friend he had fondled. I explained to the class that anyone that fell asleep in my class would wake up with a mustache drawn on their face with marker if I caught them. I had threatened to do to elementary school children in a joking way, but they always were usually sick when they asked me to sleep. They didn’t come to class hung over! Right before I went to toss the marker, the drunk woke up. His friend next to him had elbowed him to make sure he was awake.

Ugh.

When the guy went to his group I felt really sorry for those students trapped working with him. I intentionally broke him away from his group of friends when I made groups. He was alert enough to copy down some people’s phone numbers in his phone, but I don’t think I saw him speaking to anyone. He is dead-weight for that group showing up in that condition. He’s in for an epic slap down on his peer reviewed grades, I’m sure of it.

After my class, I told the rest of the teaching staff what had happened to me. They were SHOCKED. I thought they’d be able to share something comparable since there are lots of heavy drink stories in Korea, and lots of years of experience between them all. No one ever had a student do any of the things this student had, let alone all in the same class. One teacher offered, “Oh, my first semester, years ago, I had some students fall asleep…” or something like that. No sexual deviancy as a prelude to the sleep at all!

My director was shocked and laughed when she heard my story. She wanted to know how I was going to handle the situation. The other teachers asked of I tossed him out of class, or yelled. This is not something that would have made me yell in class. For example, this is the last time I lost my temper in class. This wasn’t personal.

They said they toss students that sleep in class outside. I’m not that confident in my confrontational skills with University students yet. I’m firm, but I’m not a bouncer. I hadn’t raised my voice, or even gotten angry while in class. I was too bewildered by it all happening in front of me to say anything at the moment. It was only after I started getting the reactions of the other teachers and I started thinking about it that it made me angry.

Even my elementary school students have the decency not to grope each other in class, and they don’t even know better. It’s just unbelievable to think an “adult” could display that sort of behavior in class. I think this will be the first student I’m going to have to issue an after class warning to about his behavior, if he shows up next class…if he even remembers or understands what is going on.