Update: Still Silent, Still Deadly

So it's been a week since my students approached me after class complaining about the anonymous flatulence of their peer, and the only good news to report is that they haven't approached me a second time, despite the lack of any impotently vague announcement in-class on my part. This silent killer continues to bombard the innocents around him/her with such unflinching persistence that WWII artillery metaphors spring unbidden to mind. The original plaintiffs who brought the matter to my attention have taken one of two courses: some suffer stoically, their jaw muscles taut as their breath hisses in and out between clenched teeth; others simply persevere until their all-too human willpower inevitably crumbles, and at this point, rise abruptly mid-lecture to re-seat themselves in a marginally better--and certainly further removed--location.

Charmingly enough, as of Wednesday another student has taken a slightly different approach. Stopping me as I was passing out their latest batch of quizzes, he opined that there must be something wrong with the ventilation system above the room, because an unfamiliar stench had been seeping down onto him from above. My first impression? That be it for reasons of delayed guilt or (if this young person is truly the virtuoso of biological warfare that I suspect he is) for reasons of barely restrained pride, the culprit himself had broached the subject with me, thereby elevating the game of cat, mouse, and expired brie to the next level. He was giving me a way out, an avenue to discuss the subject in class without attaching the onus (don't transplant vowels now, dear reader) to any particular individual. The fact that this may very well have been provided by the guilty party only underscores the point that he has no intention of stopping. The ritual has merely evolved, to a point now where the prodigy demands public acknowledgement, albeit obliquely so.

The only gesture to be made on my part, at least for the moment, will remain a passive one. By incrementally increasing the complexity (and thus the difficulty) of the grammar lessons, one by one my students should become so fixated on the gibberish on the board--and more importantly, on their woeful inability to adequately master those grammatical skills--that their concern over their course grade will snap them into an attention rapt enough, I would hope, to block out the more visceral stimuli surrounding them--namely the fact that they are forced, twice a week, to attend class in a Dutch oven.