"Mr. Dalton."
Silence
"Mr Dalton"
Silence
"Jeremy!" Professor Griggs said, raising his voice.
He had been calling out to his student assistant, but the young man seemed to have been in another world, and he was. That world being between Ava's legs.
He had been staring up her skirt. She was sitting in Professor Gigg's office with one leg set slightly above the other, leaving her thighs ajar. She was dressed in this beautiful black 2-piece suit.
"Where do you always trail off to?" Professor Griggs asked.
"I'm sorry, sir. You were saying?"
"Do you have all the slides prepared?"
"Yes, sir. I stayed up all night making sure it's all set."
"So is that why you are sleepwalking all over campus? Look alive, man!"
"OK, sir."
"I've got a meeting right now. Ms. Morgan here will take care of everything."
"OK, sir."
"Ms. Ava, I trust I can count on you to deliver."
"They are in safe hands, Professor Griggs." Ava responded, barely looking up from the book she was so engrossed in.
"OK then, au revoir." Said Professor Griggs as he picked up his bag and walked out of the office.
"Don't let him rough you up too much. The man's from a different time. They believe in a tough love approach." Ava said, standing up and adjusting her clothes.
She was speaking to him. Damn, in the two weeks since he started this student assistant business, they haven't really spoken to each other other than the regular good mornings, good afternoons, the hellos, and the hi's.
Don't mess it up. Say something cool.
"I don't feel loved at all. I'm not even sure he likes me."
She laughed. He watched her laughter, the way her teeth shone, the white contrasting the caramel of her skin. It was very beautiful to behold.
"It's going to be alright, Jeremy. You just need to prove yourself to him. He is one of those old heads. Come on, let's go. Your classmates are waiting."
___________________________________________________________________________
"If you think about it hard enough, most people are puppets. They are being controlled one way or another; they are slaves to a system, to the invisible hands that rule the world. Even when you think you're doing something right, you are just a minute part of a larger agenda. A cog in a wheel.
This is what Milgram's experiment aimed to prove. Well, not entirely, but along the line, this can be inferred.
So what is the Milgram experiment? Anyone?" Ava asked, gesticulating dramatically towards the students.
"Isn't that the guy who used shock therapy on his participants?" A girl with round-lensed glasses said.
"You're close, but you haven't quite hit the nail on the head. Milgram's experiment is not very popular, and for good reason too. When you think psychology and social science experiments, you automatically think of Pavlov. Conditioning. You know, some Russian man, some dogs, and a bell. The Milgram experiment isn't very popular because it exposes the worst in us.
Just how much do you revere authority, and how far are you willing to go for approval from a higher power? Will you do something against your moral code if a figure of authority asks you to? Will you harm another person at the command of a higher power?
These crazy questions are what Stanley Milgram set out to answer.
Picture this. There are 10 people in a room. Five of them are labelled teachers, and the remaining five are called students. One other person enters the room. This person is called the instructor. The people are paired up, one student to one teacher.
The students are asked questions by the teachers. Now, for each question a student fails, a shock is administered by the teacher. Do you get the picture? Each student is set up to a rig, and the teachers have a shock button. Whenever the student fails a question, the teacher presses the button, delivering a shock. The shock voltage increases per shock, the lowest shock being 50 volts and the highest being 450 volts.
Now, Milgram did this experiment many times, each with different variations. In one variation, the teachers do not see the students. Think of it like an old-school Catholic confession box. They can only hear each other, but they can't see themselves. Just like the priests in the Vatican who give penance as a reward for transgressions, the teacher administers voltages as punishment. You get the idea."
The students chuckle at Ava's cheeky joke. They all pay rapt attention, listening to her every word. She takes a brief pause and then continues.
"Now, as this question-and-answer session is going on, the instructor stands close by. They are there to tell the teachers when to administer the shock. To encourage them. In this setup, the highest authority figure is the instructor."
"At first, it's all fun and games. The students simply say ouch or ow. But as time goes by, as the questions get tougher, their screams become screams of agony, screams of pain. They begin to beg for mercy. But the instructor ignores these pleas. They proceed to encourage the teachers to continue with the exercise."
"Now, I'd love to know, how many of the teachers do you think follow through with the experiment?"
Some students attempted her question. Some said two, others one.
"Well, it will interest you to know that as high as 65% of teachers in the experiment actually follow through to the end at the instruction of the instructor. Mind you, they continue to obey authority regardless of the fact that it causes another human being pain."
"But wait a minute, what sorta psycho is this Stanley guy? Out here electrocuting innocent people. What in the Saw is going on?"
The class erupts in laughter.
Well, here is one part of the experiment neither you nor the teachers are aware of. The students are all actors. The shocks are actually harmless, and the screams? All acting.
Think about it. How many times have you done something knowing others can be hurt, but you did it because you were told to do so?
At the end of the day, where is our morality that we speak so highly of? The compass suddenly becomes faulty in the face of authority, and right becomes whatever we are told is right?
The whole class was enveloped in a gloomy silence. The reality of this experiment has put the students in a sombre mood.
"But the obedience was reinforced by rewards." Jeremy said suddenly, disrupting the decorum.
The students all turn to look at Jeremy, a notorious backbencher.
"Oh, really?"
"I mean, well, people have empathy. They wouldn't have done it if there wasn't something in it for them."
"Ah, I see someone has been reading up."
"Nothing too deep. Just a little skimming through the library." Jeremy said shyly, lowering his gaze and playing with his fingers on the table.
"Please go on, Mr. Dalton." Ava said with a hint of pride in her voice.
"The people who showed up for the experiment only came because they saw the ad in. Newspapers. Participating in the experiment got you paid. And you could only collect the money if you completed the experiment. So the experiment is more about self-preservation than it is just about blind obedience. It is more of greed vs empathy if you think of it. If anything, it is closer to Darwin's primal theory, which basically says when the chips are down, man reverts back to his animal instincts. Kill or be killed. Survival. Natural selection."
"Very well said, Mr. Dalton." Ava remarked, clapping softly. "I must say, I'm quite impressed. Please give him a round of applause. Excellently said. Based on the limitations of Milgram's experiment Mr. Dalton has so eloquently explained, I need you all to discuss the Stanford prison experiment in not less than 2000 words."
If we have no more questions, we can call it a day. Thank you all very much, and see you in the next class.
Jeremy felt ecstatic. He had more than butterflies in his stomach; dragons were probably swarming in there. He could feel his heart hit harder against the insides of his ribcage. This was it. He finally caught her attention.