A Mentor Gone

I just found out that one of my favorite college professors died on Tuesday.

Though I took several courses from Dr. Art Kaul, my favorite was Journalism Ethics. The first day of that class, he opened with theses words:

"What do you call a ethical journalist?"

We all stared back at him with empty brains and slack tongues. After a couple of seconds, a mischievous smile took over his lips.

"Its okay, I don't know either," he said. "Personally, I've never met one!"

Then he laughed from his belly and turned and wrote his name on blackboard and the course number underneath.

Dr. Kaul smoked a pipe, which he carried around in his mouth even when it was unlit, and he always smelled of the sweet scent of fresh tobacco. He wore button up cardigans year round and would take smoke breaks on the stoop outside his office. He once saw me puffing on a Marlbro Light before class and whispered so only I could hear him: "That shit'll kill you, Wilson." Then he winked at me and asked me what I was going to write about in the paper that week.

At the end of my final year at Southern, I went to interview former President Shelby Thames about turkey hunting. No, I do not jest. He said I could ask him three questions, so the first one was about his inagural year in office. The second was about the turkeys. The third one, which I smartly saved for last, inquired what he thought of the Student Printz and the student media presence on campus.

As it turns out, Dr. Thames didn't think much of us journalists in training. In fact, he said that if it were up to him he'd sue the paper for slander and shut it down. Being young and brave and completely unaware of how the real world worked, I stood up to the short, round, red-faced man and politely explained to him the difference between slander and libel. (Slander is usually spoken and libel is mostly in print.) So technically he couldn't sue for sland.

Boy, let me tell you, THAT was NOT the thing to say to him. He turned red like a little cartoon character and for a moment I thought smoke would come pouring out his ears. Immediately he dismissed me from the his office and I hurried back to the newspaper office where I penned the first in a series of stories about the president of USM threatening to shut down the student paper.

That afternoon I went to Dr. Kaul's office, where he pulled me in amongst the piles of law and ethics books and stacks of student papers. He read my story but refused to offer any advice on the matter. He sat silently for a minute or so, then turned to me and said: "You know what to do. I will not interfere in anyway," he said, then noticed the shock on my face. This was the man I came to for insight.

"If I did tell you what I thought I'd be as bad as someone who wanted to censor the paper to begin with," he explained. "I've got tenure, I don't give a damn what anyone thinks of me. But I won't interfere. I won't stoop to that level. No man should."
Then tears started pouring down his face.

He said it hurt him to see a place of scholarship, research and learning come under such rule. That's not what education is, he said. He wouldn't stand by and watch the freedom of speech disappear from a public institution. But he'd fight his fights in other arenas, not in the student newspaper, then he told me to get out my pen and write down a quote. We were going on the record.

He gave me a professional, simple quote. Something witty about how he hoped the president would elaborate on the way the journalism department had failed in the education of the students. Then he told to me to always be true to myself. Never compromise what I knew was right and if it ever came to that then it was time to walk away.

As I left, for the first time I noticed a sign on Dr. Kaul's cluttered desk. It said: "If you're not pissed off then you're not paying attention."

And so it is five years later, I am married now and very much a different person than that idealistic girl who was convinced she could change world. My life took a different path than I ever anticipated. I worked for a couple of newspapers, and I hated it. I found that I wasn't willing to sacrifice myself for things I didn't believe in. So I took the best advice I've ever been given and I walked away.

I don't know if Dr. Kaul would be proud of me and what I've done with my career. I don't know if he'd understand the reasons I walked away from what I had spent my entire life swearing I wanted to do. But I have always been true to myself and my beliefs -- even if they are vastly different from what they were those many years ago. I think that was the lesson he really was trying to teach us, and if that is the case, Art Kaul was the most successful educator I have ever had.

In memory of Dr. Arthur Kaul, a gentleman and teacher.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBE DALE IV