Codependent Collegian

by Billy Pilgrim, rogue Collegian editor


(Toledo, OH)—Winston Tuttle, Professor Emeritus of Music and Performance Theory at the University of Toledo, remembered the point to his lecture on woodwind improvisation right before dismissing his Jazz Appreciation class last Tuesday. Tuttle, 78, officially retired in 1996, but teaches one course per semester at UT in order to draw his annual salary of $84,793.

The professor has struggled in recent years to recall even simple details about jazz greats like Art Blakey and Herbie Hancock, so he has devised a “rant beyond meaning” style of pedagogical instruction that frees him of minor considerations such as organization or coherence in his lectures.

“I find most of my students are highly engaged and willing to embrace the greatest American art form of the 20th century: jazz,” Tuttle remarked to a literary colleague over a fondue lunch. “They are acutely aware of the racial, social, and theoretical implications jazz invoked during the late 1950s, and they never fail to ask insightful questions.”

“Man, I think everybody sleeps through that fucking class,” said sophomore Robert Gibbons, 19, while smoking outside the Student Union. “I don’t know how old that fucker is, but I swear to God, he’s given the same lecture on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, like, four times since the semester started. I’ve had closed-eye visions on acid make more sense than that guy—I’d drop his class if it wouldn’t screw up my financial aid.”