Silent Standoff Lasts 15 Minutes Before Professor Begrudgingly Answers Own Question

Story by Erik Mellgren 

| Published Feb 23, 2010

Exhausted students emerged from Richards Hall yesterday after taking part in what would later be discovered to be a record-setting lecture. At 2:47 p.m., Dr. Zabrowski asked his History 429 students an open-ended question regarding the Italian Fascist movement during the 1930s. Students later reported that the answer to the question was in the assigned reading for that lecture and would have been simple had any of them actually read it.

“Did he really expect us to have read before lecture? I mean, it’s a history class, I just build off of what other people say the whole time,” said Max Cherry, a senior history major.

As it was, not a single student raised their hand to venture a guess at the answer. So, Dr. Zabrowski decided to take a stand against his apathetic students. “They were just staring at me as if I had asked for volunteers for a suicide mission. I did not want to give in, so I stared right back into their cold, lifeless eyes,” said Dr. Zabrowski following the class period.

By 2:55 p.m. students said that they were getting "really weirded out." Several students reported that they were constantly shuffling in their seat from side to side, uncertain of what to do. Dr. Zabrowski had not moved from his place at the front of the class, staring down at his students. "I was just hoping someone would raise their hand, even if it was a shot in the dark," said Dr. Zabrowski.

“Everyone was waiting for someone to crack and say something,” said sophomore Ordell Robbie, “I kept looking at the ceiling while mouthing words to make it look like I had the answer on the tip of my tongue, but you can only keep that charade up for so long. I’ve never seen a professor hold out like that for so long.”

According to all sources involved, a non-verbal cacophony of noise began to rise in the room roughly around 3:00 p.m. Fingers tapping, the flipping of pages in a book, the tapping of keys on laptops, “It was like a huge crescendo at the end of a symphony,” said junior Melanie Ralston.

Finally, at 3:02 p.m., the tension gave way as Dr. Zabrowski, in a defeated voice, answered his own question and went on to the next slide in his presentation. Unbeknownst to the students or the professor, they had shattered the old record at the University of Nebraska for mutual silence following a question. The previous record holder was philosophy professor Dr. Dargus, whose class had held out for seven minutes.

Senior Louis Gara said of the ordeal, “That sort of experience is not easy. But if you make it through, it’s the sort of thing that can really bring people together. I can tell we are going to be hitting up happy hour as a class for a long, long time.”