An Incident from Academia--the Black Bag

 

In 1967, I was attending Oregon State University, as was David. By chance,we each enrolled in (separate) courses in “Communications” taught by professor Charles Goetzinger from New York. The Professor was not new to academia—he had to be at least in his 40s, if not older, but when you’re 18 or 19, that seems old. But he was new to OSU, and he was not a good fit.

     OSU was traditionally a “Cow College,” a land-grant university teaching forestry, agriculture-related courses (it developed the Blue Lake stringless green bean), and engineering. It was tucked into a tree-lined campus in the Willamette Valley at Corvallis, and a majority of its landmark buildings dated back to the 1880s. The setting was culturally conservative. Girls wore skirts and dresses, and boys  wore slacks and hard shoes, not jeans and sneakers, to class. The school of forestry bragged that it had never admitted a woman.

     Professor Goetzinger was assigned to teach basic courses in communication. But he was not a good fit because he wanted to shake things up a bit.  One of his students, under Goetzinger’s tutelage, declared his independence from the Greek system, ran for student body president, and won. That was a first.

      My class was entitled “Speech 101,” and was a core course that was supposed to teach the fundamental principles of public speaking. That’s what all the other students of Speech 101 in all of the other sections were learning. Our class was nothing of the sort. I don’t recall any structured lectures or assigned reading. I do remember our midterm: “There are 20 students in this class. Your grade depends upon your getting your fellow students to sign your petition saying that you should get an “A.”  Five of you will get “As.” The rest will get “Fs.” (There must have been a limit on the number of petitions we could sign. I don't remember it, but otherwise the game wouldn't work.)

     And the instruction for our final examination was succinct. “You have 5 minutes. Communicate.” The results were diverse. One man with a surly attitude sat silent with his arms crossed  staring down the class for a full five minutes, and everybody sweated for him for the whole five minutes.It was tense, and everyone wondered whether anybody would break.  One woman handed each of us a paper tag with a color painted on it that, to her mind, represented us.  Then we had to reassign our color to somebody else in the room.  I ended up with a pink and a brown. For my short, pre-Marshall McLuhan time, I decided to tell a story, so I began, “Once upon a time….”

     There are some lines that will always make you need to know what happens next.  “Never was there a tale of more woe/than this of Juliet, and her Romeo." “A priest, a rabbi, and a lawyer walk into a bar.” “In a galaxy long long ago and far far away….”   I knew I had them hooked at “Once upon a time.”

     Professor Goetzinger’s most famous game was the  incident of the Black Bag. A man began attending one of Goetzinger’s classes dressed from the top of his head to the tops of his shoes in a plain black bag. Somebody drove the man to the classroom, and picked him immediately afterwards every day. Goetzinger claimed to know nothing about it, but somebody had to pull strings to allow a car to drive onto campus. Goetzinger had a great time observing the reactions of his students—at first they were hostile, but when news media descended upon the campus to follow the Bag, they were protective, of "their" Bag. But it was Goetzinger’s last stunt in Corvallis. I don't suppose he liked Corvallis any more than the tenure committee like him.

     I have no idea what became of Charles Goetzinger. If I Google his name, I am redirected only to Amazon books, where each of two psychology books tells the story of the Black Bag. ###

Eric adds: Two articles from the Buffalo (N.Y.) News - the rest of the articles are hidden behind a paywall:

Charles R. "Doc" Goetzinger, 68, of Perry, professor emeritus at Geneseo State College, died Friday (Oct. 28, 1994) in Rochester General Hospital after a brief illness.
He retired from the communication department at Geneseo in 1991, ending a teaching career that took him from Kansas State University to the University of Colorado, Oregon State University and the University at Buffalo before joining the Geneseo faculty.
Born in Hammond, Ind., he served as a Ranger during World War II and took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
Goetzinger "was an exemplary teacher," said Lynda Rummel, a former student and then a friend, who works at Rochester …

A remembrance ceremony for Charles R. "Doc" Goetzinger, professor emeritus at Geneseo State College, will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday in Wyoming Village Hall, Route 19, Wyoming.
Goetzinger, 68, of Perry, died Oct. 28, 1994, in Rochester General Hospital after a brief illness.
He retired from the communication department at Geneseo in 1991, ending a teaching career that took him from Kansas State University to the University of Colorado, Oregon State University and …

 

(Genesco, where professor Goetzinger ended his career, is a part of the State University of New York, and is considered to be SUNY's honors college.)