The Eastern Back is a yearly publication by the staff of the AS Review. Anything contained here probably isn’t true- unless it is. Happy April Fool’s week!
By Julia Berkman
In what some have been calling an “unprecedented turn of events,” Western sophomore Andrew Sellman did not speak in class today.
This change comes after weeks of Sellman speaking in his Political Science 261 class, starting comments with such phrases as “I think it’s interesting that,” and “I just want to mention…”
Fellow classmate Marina Belsen was shocked and left class with her jaw open.
“I just can’t believe it. He didn’t say one thing. Not even anything I cared about,” she said. Belsen speculated that Sellman could have had a sore throat or was otherwise distracted.
Another member of the class, Oscar Jung, was equally concerned for his fellow classmate.
“I can’t think of a single class this quarter where I haven’t heard [Sellman] say something,” Jung remarked.
Marcel Yeates, a sociology professor who studies men’s behavior, believes that Sellman’s urge to share his every last thought stems from feelings of male inadequacy.
“We often see this sort of behavior in young, white men. They’re convinced the classroom is a hunting ground or field where they must prove themselves,” he said.
According to his professor, Sellman’s comments ranged from valuable insights to lengthy and confusing tangents. The professor, too, was concerned about Sellman’s well-being after he refused to make a comment in class on Thursday.
“Even when no one else was raising their hands, Andrew always had something to say. I actually had to stop calling on him for a while to make sure someone else could give their opinion,” said Political Science Professor Paul Dowley.
Belsen remembers wanting to share an insight from her experience interning on a South African political campaign.
“I would have my hand raised, but he would just keep talking, so I would make eye contact with [Dowley], but it didn’t help. We all had to let him finish his tangent,” said Belsen, a third year political science major who has also interned at the United Nations. “It’s a good thing that what he learned on Reddit last night adds so much more to the class than I ever could.