SYRACUSE, NY- Chad Conway thought he had been relaxed enough as a TA in his MAT 221 recitation that he could start to exert a bit more authority on his students. He thought wrong.
In last week’s recitation, the graduate student had the gall to ask two freshman boys to put away their laptops and stop listening to recap podcasts of American Vandal episodes. This, according to other students interviewed after the incident, was a reasonable request.
Immediately after he timidly asked the boys to focus on his explanation of probability, one boy said, “I don’t fucking need this,” and the other added, “Shouldn’t you be in the real world by now?”
Conway, in response, sighed with his head down, and told students he was going to end class early that day for unrelated reasons. He was unavailable for comment after class.
