Student's fiction story concerns professor
Kevin Rand
Issue date: 5/15/07 Section: News
A professor at San Jose State University no longer conducts his writing class because he said a student's story that fictionalized the killing of a professor, "had created an atmosphere of conflict in the classroom which would make learning difficult."
Mitch Berman, the professor for Writing Fiction, an English course at SJSU, said in an e-mail that the story, which was written before the Virginia Tech University shooting, had "created a great deal of anxiety," and several of his students wrote to him after the shooting, questioning "their own safety in the classroom."
Berman added that "the incident at Virginia Tech has underscored the need to err on the side of caution, and I believe the university well understands that incidents such as the one that happened in this class now need to be taken more seriously."
The story, which was written by a student in the class, is a 17-page fictional narrative about an English student who convinces a vampire lover to kill the student's "unethical, wicked" professor.
Berman said in the e-mail that he asked the class to be moved online if a substitute teacher could not be hired, but students in the class urged the department administration to appoint a substitute teacher after only a few online classes were held. The department obliged, and a substitute lecturer is handling the remaining classes.
The chair of the English department, Scott Rice, as well as the student who wrote the story declined to provide any detail regarding this situation.
Gyasi Woods, a senior majoring in advertising, said she is a student in Berman's class, and that certain quotes from the story match what Berman had said to the student during a classroom critique of one of the student's stories submitted earlier in the semester.
Although the fictional story never references Berman by name, one of the fictional professor's quotes reads, "You don't know jack-s--t about movies if you don't know Kurosawa."
Another student in the class, who wished to remain unidentified, said the fictionalized professor's quote in the story is nearly verbatim to what Berman said to the student during the critique. The student also said other quotes in the story were nearly identical to things Berman said in the classroom.
Mitch Berman, the professor for Writing Fiction, an English course at SJSU, said in an e-mail that the story, which was written before the Virginia Tech University shooting, had "created a great deal of anxiety," and several of his students wrote to him after the shooting, questioning "their own safety in the classroom."
Berman added that "the incident at Virginia Tech has underscored the need to err on the side of caution, and I believe the university well understands that incidents such as the one that happened in this class now need to be taken more seriously."
The story, which was written by a student in the class, is a 17-page fictional narrative about an English student who convinces a vampire lover to kill the student's "unethical, wicked" professor.
Berman said in the e-mail that he asked the class to be moved online if a substitute teacher could not be hired, but students in the class urged the department administration to appoint a substitute teacher after only a few online classes were held. The department obliged, and a substitute lecturer is handling the remaining classes.
The chair of the English department, Scott Rice, as well as the student who wrote the story declined to provide any detail regarding this situation.
Gyasi Woods, a senior majoring in advertising, said she is a student in Berman's class, and that certain quotes from the story match what Berman had said to the student during a classroom critique of one of the student's stories submitted earlier in the semester.
Although the fictional story never references Berman by name, one of the fictional professor's quotes reads, "You don't know jack-s--t about movies if you don't know Kurosawa."
Another student in the class, who wished to remain unidentified, said the fictionalized professor's quote in the story is nearly verbatim to what Berman said to the student during the critique. The student also said other quotes in the story were nearly identical to things Berman said in the classroom.
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