A drama professor encouraged his students to strip. The college shrugged. | Opinion
A Mesa Community College instructor encourages his female drama students to strip for a class assignment. Two months later, he was still teaching and the school is playing duck and cover.
A Mesa Community College drama teacher in Arizona encouraged his young female students to strip on stage for their midterm exam.
The rest of the class was forced to watch.
Students complained and not for the first time.
For two months, Mace Archer was still teaching the class. And college officials?
They get an A in performance art – a farcical piece entitled "How to Look Like You’re Doing Something Without Doing Anything At All."
"Because this is an active personnel matter, we cannot provide specific details to protect the privacy of those involved," Lindsey Wilson, spokeswoman for Maricopa Community Colleges, assured Arizona Republic reporter Robert Anglen in a May 19 email.
"Our colleges," Wilson said, "take any allegations of misconduct seriously and are committed to fostering a safe, respectful, and supportive environment for students, faculty, and staff." So seriously, in fact, that Archer was allowed to finish out the semester, fully two months after the strip show, and was slotted in for fall classes.
'I ... sometimes can't muster up the courage to go'
The lights should have come on in February, when a student in Archer's modern drama class warned college officials that he was sexualizing her performances and touching females inappropriately.
Thea Moore, a musical theater major, told an administrator she dreaded going to class.
"I get severe anxiety everyday before attending and sometimes can't muster up the courage to go," she wrote in a Feb. 20 email to Puvana Ganesan, who chair's the communication, theater and film arts department. "A lot of his classes are requirements for our degree, which is difficult."
Ganesan replied the next day, saying she was "truly sorry" and asking for examples of Archer's behavior.
So Moore sent a five-point list and never heard back. Eventually, she dropped the class, prompting another email from Ganesan, saying she was “truly so sorry.”
"I completely understand that sometimes, we experience discomfort that can be too great to continue," Ganesan wrote March 6.
Take off your clothes for a grade
Apparently, Archer's female students experience a fair amount of discomfort – enough that they've compiled a shared file of complaints, ranging from sexual harassment to rude behavior to disturbing assignments.
Speaking of disturbing assignments, students in Archer’s Acting 2 class this spring were required to offer a performance in which they had to face a fear. One student, Gabrielle Monroe, said the teacher steered some of the younger females toward taking off their clothes on stage to complete the March midterm assignment.
"I have heard from other women that their initial idea was not enough of a fear risk, and he suggested that they remove articles of clothing," Monroe told Anglen.
Two young women stripped to their underwear under the glow of the theater's stage lights, as Archer and their classmates watched.
One got buck naked.
I guess if you’ve got to suffer for your art, you might as well do it for your 56-year-old teacher’s viewing pleasure.
Hopefully, they scored an A.
College officials ducked Anglen’s questions about the three strip shows, saying only that they launched a “formal investigation” in March after “receiving concerns.”
They offered no explanation for why Archer was allowed to continue teaching, finish the spring semester and was even listed as an instructor in the fall course catalogue until Anglen asked about it. (The catalogue was then changed, with the instructor listed as "staff".)
My guess is Mesa Community College’s "formal investigation” commenced with Anglen’s phone call.
My recommendation is the people who run the community colleges consider a career in comedy.
"Our colleges take any allegations of misconduct seriously and are committed to fostering a safe, respectful, and supportive environment for students, faculty, and staff,” they say?
Yeah, I’m still laughing at that one.
Laurie Roberts is a columnist for The Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared. Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @laurieroberts.bsky.social