Further questions for former graduate student

Q: Did you expect to receive this large of a response to your story?

“It’s really foreign to have a ton of people talking about you all at once. It’s not that bad, I don’t mean to sound melodramatic or anything. There are much worse problems in life. You have to get used to what to respond to and what not to respond to.”

Q: How do you think Dr. Browning became aware of the incident between you and another student that led to your meeting with her?

“I get the sense that the student talked about what happened in her day to another professor, maybe a counselor or something like that, and they complained about it. That sounds, to me, more possible. Because she did not seem to be offended. Now, it’s possible that she could have been raging at me from the inside. I just feel like she didn’t care, at the time. It just seems to me more likely that another person did. Because why else would some other professor be mentioned during this meeting who I never heard of?”

Q: Why did you decide to transfer from UTSA?

“I made the decision to transfer almost immediately after [Browning’s] meeting. I couldn’t get the sense I was getting the complete truth. I was getting partial truth. I feel very confident saying this now, because after transferring to Texas State and seeing how people voice their opinions there, it is a night and day difference.”

Q: Do you this class discussion issue is unique to liberal arts?

“I think it’s specific to the philosophy department. Because, I studied in the computer science building, and the conversations I heard were very fraternal, in the sense of a fraternity. The guys were just talking shit all the time. They were very blunt and open about what they were thinking. And, I did not see that from the philosophy department.”

Q: How do you think class discussion will change in universities of the future?

“I think the future of education is in decentralized, online universities. Obviously there’s still going to be reason to go to actual physical places, but I think you can considerably scale back universities and make them a lot less of a burden on students in general.”