Role-play Situations: Student-Professor

Role-play Situation: Faculty-Student, “A Not-So-Honest Mistake”
Have two people read the scene. Discuss the situation as a group, using questions on the back.

Grace and Betsy are looking for their male professor’s office and having trouble finding it…

Heard from the hall…Betsy: So where is this guy’s office?
Grace: He’s my sociology professor. It should be somewhere around here…
Betsy: What’s his name again?
Grace: Leach.
Betsy: I don’t see a Professor Leach anywhere.
Grace (next door to a woman professor’s office): Oh! Here it is. Locked. Damn -- he doesn’t have a whiteboard.
Betsy: Hey, maybe this lady knows where he is. He’s a big professor… he must have a secretary.
Grace: Yeah, maybe. (to the professor) Um, excuse me? Are you Professor Leach’s secretary?
Professor (pause): I’m another professor. This entire hallway is faculty offices (short pause). The secretary is in the department office down the hall.
Grace: Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. We’ll try there. Thanks.

Questions:

1. 
   Can you imagine this statement being made by a Skidmore student? (btw…it was)
   
2. 
   What assumptions about the woman professor underlie the students’ question to her?
   
3. 
   What assumptions about the man professor underlie the students’ statements?
   
4. 
   How might the students’ assumptions about gender that showed up in this hallway conversation influence what happens in classrooms?