This prof hid $50 in a locker to see if his students read his syllabus. Nobody found it
‘I really think that spring of 2022 is going to be the most well-read syllabi of all time’
Kenyon Wilson wanted to test the age-old adage that nobody reads the syllabus.
The Tennessee music professor slipped a $50 US bill into a locker on his campus, and buried the location and combination in the syllabus for his performing arts seminar class.
The semester is over. The students have gone home. The cash remains unclaimed.
"I totally understand it. I'm not saying that when I was a student that I read the syllabus religiously, word for word," Wilson, the associate head of performing arts at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, told As It Happens host Carol Off.
"I knew going into this that there was a good chance that the money might go unclaimed — although I'd be just as happy if we were having this conversation where I was talking about the mad rush to get this money."
The professor finally revealed his ruse last week on Facebook.
"Some of the first to respond back were my students — all very good sports about it," he said.
One student shared a screenshot of the syllabus with the highlighted text alongside a laugh-cry emoji and the words: "Dang it."
A parenthetical Easter egg
Wilson says he's long suspected his syllabus goes mostly unread, even though he always tells his students to read it through. It's an online document, about three pages in length, outlining course expectations, grading scales and other bits of what Wilson calls "boilerplate language."
"The syllabus is kind of a dry document, of course. And I decided I wanted to have a little fun this semester," he said.
His syllabus doesn't change much semester to semester, he said. But this year's version contained some new information about COVID-19 safety protocols, as well as all the usual stuff.
That's where he slipped in a parenthetical Easter egg: "free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five."
In the locker, which is conveniently located just outside his classroom, he left a $50 bill and a note: "Congrats! Please leave your name and date so I know who found it."
Not only did nobody pocket the cash, Wilson says, but as far as he can tell, nobody so much as turned the combination lock from the position in which he left it.
"I thought there's a chance that students would reclaim the money. And you know, $50 is not life-changing, but it's enough to brighten someone's day."
Wilson says he bears his students no ill-will, and the experiment was all in good fun.
But he won't try it again next year. Now that his Facebook post has gone viral, the jig is up.
"People who have seen this are going, 'All right, maybe my professor has been inspired by this,'" he said. "I really think that spring of 2022 is going to be the most well-read syllabi of all time."
Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Mehek Mazhar.
