May 2, 1994

I opened up the Daily Egyptian and found something interesting in the Police Blotter column- the names of 3 of my current students, one from my 2D class and two from the same section of one of my GEC classes. I had one of the students in common with another grad instructor, who revealed that the 4th student in the "gang" was in one of her classes. It involved a mugging, but they were caught trying to use checks taken from the student. One student (the girl in the middle represented by the elaborate hair style that she and her identical twin--also in my class--shared) missed no classes, bailed out by the twin I guess. Another (guy on right with the shiny gold accessories (I don't think the word "bling" hadn't been coined yet) missed one class, but I excused it when he came to the next meeting with copies of his various court papers. (the first time, but not the last, that I excused a student absence because they were incarcerated) The third student on the left (wearing the mask he had recently made for a class project) never returned to class. I ran into him several months later in a liquor store on the Strip, where he apologized for not finishing the semester, without naming the reason. For what it's worth, he seemed to be in the liquor store to buy something, not to rob it.