Rwandan Professor at Goucher

Rwandan Professor at Goucher

Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland has removed a visiting professor of French who is accused of acts of genocide in his native Rwanda. The professor and his family are here as part of a program that allows instructors from other countries to teach at the college.

Tom Joad, president of the college, was interviewed for this article, and made extensive comments about the professor, Leopold Munyakazi, and the plight of the worker in the 1930s. When asked about his knowledge of the visiting professor’s past, he replied:
“It’s funny, you think you know a man—any man—and then you have this genocide fella what come to teach about his language and those things back home, and you set to thinkin’ do you really know a man—or do you only know what he wants you to know—and sometimes more oft’n as not ain’t even that.”

Tarkville Onans, the college’s maintenance engineer since the 1960s, when the school was an all-female institution, said this: “I been here a good long while, way back when all the problems maybe you got was a mix-up between them little girls and they’d be some fusssin’ and what-not.” He leaned on his dust mop, the candy wrappers and broken pencil erasers forming a small wave against its edge on the smooth hallway floor. “Now you just don’t know no more and Joad over to the office says hey Tark we gotta look sharp on account of this genocide fella runnin’ round hereabouts.”

One of Munyakazi’s students, Jolie Coaler from Williamsburg, Kentucky, said she liked the professor from Rwanda, but had difficulty with some of the concepts in class. “Like, when you have a verb, and it’s gotta be like put into the past like it happened a while ago, I still don’t know which ones of those you have to use “etre” with and the ones you don’t.” But she said the professor generally made learning fun, and had innovative ways of getting the lessons across. One game, called “Kill the Bad Verb” had students holding a mock rifle and shooting at the word that did not fit into a given sentence. “That one was kind of fun,” said Coaler, who is a junior studying Global Human Political Rights Science Dimensions Humanistic Approach Global-Style.

The visiting French professor has been removed from his duties, is still allowed to stay in his college-provided house, but is not permitted to attend school functions. He said he was disappointed, as he was looking forward to cheering on the women’s basketball team at an upcoming pep rally with his family. “We had buy many color things with uniform for those girls to win,” he said. “All of me my wife and kids we was taking those things down to say win, win, win, you girls it is so exciting time with sports to be in America.” Then he added, “Now with them saying I am killing all the people I can’t go.”

Tarkville Onans had one last suggestion regarding the current issue: “Seems like instead of goin’ roun’ some itty-bitty little country try to find a French teacher, might as well just go someplace where they ain’t got so much killin’ folks and so on. Joad over to the office said Tark whyn’t we just phone up France see if’n they got someone over there maybe wants to give some lessons or what-not.” Although Mr. Owens was not qualified to speak on the possibility of any new search for a French instructor, he thought it likely they’d offer a new teacher the same deal that the Rwandan professor had.