Derelict of the Year History
This 2001 file photo of our hero was recently
located after an exhaustive Google search.
Art Fortgang was a Haight-Ashbury flower child from San Francisco. He came to Arizona in the fall of 1973 hoping to find true meaning in mathematics. Instead, he found analysis, algebra, and a heavy-duty precalculus course, which he was required to teach five days a week.
After three weeks, Art stopped going to his own classes. Instead, he sat in his office on the 6th floor, eating banana bread, drinking Ripple, and writing poems such as Pourquoi la vie? Pourquoi la mort? For Art, the answer to such profound questions lay in Free Berkeley. So, cancelling a Friday and Monday class, Art headed to San Francisco in his beat up VW. As the semester rolled by, Art continued to take longer “research sabbatical” to the Golden Gate city.
On one particular trip he and nine other derelicts rented a Winnebago for a week. About 50 miles west of Phoenix, the motor home caught on fire (some say controlled substances were involved) and burned to a crisp. Art had to hitchhike back to Tucson. Later he told Ed Kingham, “Everything I owned was in that Winnebago. Do you think the insurance company will give me something for it? It ought to be worth 25 dollars.”
Over Thanksgiving, Art cancelled 10 straight Precalculus classes and spent two extra weeks in Frisco. His students didn't mind. They were happy to get an extra long break away from algebra and trig—all except one student—you know, the “Frank Burns” type who in 5th grade always had to “tell the teacher” about the spitball you just threw on the clock when the teacher stepped out of the room. Anyway, this tattle-tale whined to Hanno Rund, who was then head of the department, “Daddy's hard-earned dollars are paying for 25 missed classes and is a tuition rebate possible?” Hanno was not pleased. When Art finally returned to Tucson, sometime in December, Hanno informed him that he would not receive his December paychecks and, by the way, not to plan on having his assistantship renewed for the spring semester.
This latter punishment didn't bother Art. He was flunking all his classes anyway and had absolutely no intention of spending another month away from his beloved San Francisco. The part about no paychecks, however, did upset him. Christmas was coming up. But Art had a plan. After giving his final exam, he packed away all tests, all finals, his grade book, and assorted poems in the back of his VolksWagon and headed for California. He mailed the following letter: “Dear Professor Rund, I get my money--you get the grades. Sincerely, Art Fortgang.”
Grades held hostage—Day 1. Forty students who received a grade of “Y” (no grade reported) were calling the department wanting to know their grade. When asked, most of them were pretty sure they had an “A” going into the final.
In the end, to make a long story short, Art got his money, Hanno got the grades, and the downtrodden graduate students got a new hero: the original Derelict of the Year!
Years later, at the annual Derelict party, Art Fortgang received a long-distance phone call at 2 in the morning and was told “Art, there are 20 people here that love you and they never even met you”.
[You might want to read the e-mail from Art.]
Ed Kingham was the first winner in 1974. His victory was in large part due to the fact that a graduate assistant at that time making $70 a week was literally forced into a lifestyle that promoted dereliction. Ed showed that the selection committee made the right choice, however, in an incident that occurred a few years later. He was two weeks away from a double Master's Degree: previously in Mathematics, and this time in Economics, after two long years of study. And then at a Grateful Dead concert in Phoenix, while in an altered mental state, he announced “I'm never going back to school again”. True to his word, his books and papers sat on his desk until someone noticed the dust. Incidently, while driving home after that concert, Ed Clint Scovel, who hitched all the way from York City “to see the Dead, man”. Ed Kingham is also the only person I know whose VW van was arrested by the police and found guilty in a court of law.
John Chiasson was the 1975 winner of the D.O.Y. Award for his solution to the “generalized urn problem” on a take home exam in a graduate course in Probability and Statistics taught by R.N. Battacharya. In addition to four exam problems involving measure theory and probability and proofs, Professor Battacharya included an urn problem. Now this wasn't your typical 119 urn problem. It required Baye's formula and involved 3 or 4 urns. But John, thanks to his graduate training, realized that the secret was to generalize. So John solved all urn problems at once by writing the answer: “The probability that you would pick a black ball is zero, because I would piss in the urn and you wouldn't want to reach your hand in”. After getting a faculty member to translate this solution, Battacharya awarded Johnie C. an “F”.
An incident during the next semester nailed the lid on the coffin of John's career at the U.of A. For two years John had put aside a little of the $70 per week pittance he received from his assistantship. He had $900 saved when he spotted a Wildcat ad: “VW van, great shape, sacrifice, $1000”. When Johnnie C. saw the van he realized it was worth twice as much. The owner was even willing to drop the price by $100 for a cash deal, asking only if he could keep the van one more day to move some furniture. “I'll fill the tank and wash it”, he promised. So J.C. shelled over nine hundred dollar bills and they agreed to meet at noon the next day. That was the last John ever saw the van or his 900 bucks. Three days later during the departmental computer exam, John filled his test with pornographic drawings, and bolted out the door amid obscene screams, never to return. Epilogue: John Chiasson finally got a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (at some other school) and is on the faculty of Purdue University.
In 1976, Pat Deshazo won the award as the result of an incident so bizarre, and some might say tasteless, that the derelicts of the time feared persecution if they were associated with him. Thus his name was not engraved on the faculty of Purdue University.
Pat was a computer lab assistant associated with the 117 independent study program. This was the brainchild of Richard Thompson, who was determined to take Art Fortgang's original premise that undergraduate algebra students perform better on half-time class room instruction, to its logical conclusion. Thompson was out to prove that algebra students perform best without any instructor at all--just lots of tests. It was Pat's job to grade these tests. Pat Deshazo then started doing unsolicited favors for certain female students, giving them 30 out of 30 on quizzes that were less than perfect. The twisted plan in his mind is obvious. Just when he began to make his move on one of the beneficiaries, Jan McCoy, codirector of the program discovered a discrepancy in an entered grade purely by chance. Her suspicions aroused, she and Richard Thompson began an investigation which led to Pat and Lee Applebaum, another long time derelict who was guilty only of failing to rat on a friend. Thompson was determined to have Pat, Lee, and all 23 of the female students banished to New Jersey or some similarly horrible punishment. All parties involved appeared at an official university hearing. The presiding elderly professor opened the precedings by complimenting the “finest collection of young women” he'd seen gathered in one room. Pat had no scruples, but he did have good taste. In the end, all were cleared except Pat who was permanently banned from the U of A.
The derelict party was held at Gentle Ben's that year. A large crowd was expected. Many faculty members, making their first (and last) appearance, left when Pat offered “$100 for the first person to bring me Jan McCoy's panties”. To date, no one has collected.
Richard Blecksmith was the worthy winner in 1978. He arrived in Tucson in the fall, 1976 already an accomplished derelict. He was known to hitchhike back and forth from Tucson to Maine, often arriving in Tucson just in time to meet the first class period of the semester, and sometimes even a day or two later. Also, in the image of Art F., he kept a bottle of Old Grandad in his office. His acceptance speech contained the following words of wisdom: “If you make $90 and work 2 hours, then you're making $45 per hour. Now, which would you rather do?” The next year, after presenting the award to Clint Scovel, Richard proceeded to fall off the roof twice, both times onto Julius Blum's head. Neither was feeling any pain so no harm was done. Later that night he redecorated the house by coloring the carpet with recycled wine. He's a Hall of Famer.
Clint Scovel, the 1979 winner, lived in his office for a semester. His body on the 4th floor library couches was a frequent sight to the night custodians. Unfortunately, he left Arizona to move to New York City for health reasons. The trouser-dropping incident during his acceptance speech will long be remembered by those who were there.
Sid Raffer (1980) was one of our most talented graduate students. He had a very worn copy of Lang's Algebra, for God's sake. He had studied Gödel's and Cantor's original papers. He breezed through every graduate course he took. Before Thanksgiving Sid gave an excellent lecture in the Algebra-Number Theory seminar on a paper of Bill Velez. After the Turkey Day break, however, he informed Professor Velez that he didn't feel like finishing his lecture on the paper. Bill threatened that this was an important requirement for the Algebraic Number Theory course and failure to finish the lecture would mean failure in the course. Sid got the “F”. Meanwhile, the department noted his abilities and gave him two calculus classes to teach in the spring. After giving his final exam, Sid circled the grade of “A” for every student in both classes, handed the grade sheet to the supervisor, who perfunctorily signed it. The following year, Sid taught high school somewhere in Tucson, until he got into a bad motorcycle accident on his BMW.
Gail Dickerson (1981) was the first woman to win the award. Her selection was due partly to a lack of other qualified candidates and also to her numerous auto accidents in her Demolition-mobile.
Marty Engman (1982) moonlighted by delivering pizzas. With motivations similar to Pat Deshazo's, he hoped to get tips other than money from female customers. He needn't have bothered, however, for he met his future wife at that year's Derelict Party.
Chris Beattie won in 1983 on account of his long hair and tattooed girl friend.
Charles Roten (1984) can best be characterized by his absence of inhibition if almost all area of his life. Most notable is his raging temper and his colorful language. He was known to kick in walls, computers, and sluggish elevators, while ranting and raving against professors,God, students, and life in general. The following incident illustrates his lack of personal inhibition: He would arrive to teach class sweaty from riding his bicycle. He would come equipped with towels, remove his shirt, and dry off in front of the class while beginning his lecture with an anecdote about his retarded cats. Many times Charles stopped a colloquium speaker from erasing the blackboard before he could catch up in his notes with his Rapidograph pen and bottle of White-Out. He also carried a surgical scalpel in his pocket in case he was bitten by a snake in the Math building. These remarks might lead you to believe him selfish. This could not be further from the truth. Much of the abuse he hurled was on behalf of others and he was known by his friends to be a very charitable fellow--albeit a nut case.
In the tradition of Greg Forest before him, Steve Hammel (1985) won the award mainly because he was a long time supporter of the derelict philosophy. He maintained records, organized elections, and planned parties for several previous years. Also true to derelict tradition, he wasn't one of those people who finish their Ph.D. in two, at most, three years.
Steve Wright (1986) will perhaps best be remembered for introducing us to that breathtaking and thrilling sport known as cricket. The halls of the sixth floor have been much quieter since Steve took his corridor cricket show to North Carolina State. The janitors were no doubt overjoyed to see the move--this meant no more scrubbing the floors to remove the black scuff marks left there by serious bowlers.
Steve tried to shift gears from cricket to softball last spring. Not a successful move, I'm afraid. Coach Tom Gruszka made the mistake of inserting Steve into the lineup as pitcher. Steve had a no-hitter going, yet his team managed to trail 13-0 before the call to the bullpen was made.
Perhaps Steve's greatest claim to fame, however, took place last year at a conference in Phoenix. Surrounded by several prominent numerical analysts, he somehow managed to lose not one, but two, games of tic-tac-toe to a genius chicken. This certainly is where Steve's proof of dereliction comes to roost.