Sophia Cornell

On 8 p.m. on a Monday this October, students trickle into Mathematics 509. Professor Ovidiu Savin, the director of undergraduate studies for the math department, walks in, and the room goes silent. Savin is tall and thin and somewhat wry. Today, it seems like his job is mostly to lower expectations.

1.

The man waiting to place his order at the register taps his fingers on the counter to the beat of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” which is playing over the ambient din of the restaurant. He is tan and wearing a circle scarf—dad-age, but the kind of dad who knows the difference between Kobe and Wagyu beef and who has been on the receiving end of a manicure. He looks a bit like what I imagine Barbie’s boyfriend would look like at 50.

Here I am on my mat, draped in a forward fold, rising slightly to a half lift, flinging myself upwards for a back bend. Magnified by a microphone, the teacher asks us to “open a dialogue with your bodies” and “to practice self-forgiveness,” to exhale in a “shhhhh” and to inhale until we can’t inhale anymore. She tells us to thank ourselves for “making it to your mats today.” As always, I’m torn between the urge to roll my eyes and the urge to nod emphatically.

Professor Erik Gray’s CULPA reviews walk a fine line between healthy admiration and cult-like hero worship. One person says Gray is the “best thing to happen to this world since Kraft mac and cheese.” Another asks for his hand in marriage. A reviewer admits that they “totally sip the [Erik Gray] Kool-Aid.” A fourth simply says, “Erik Gray is a God.”