I remember one man, Josh Gray, a professor of math at the University of South Carolina, standing up, his hair pulled back in a ponytail, and bringing this self-inflicted humiliation into view in a way that would never have occurred to me. “I can tell you, as a redneck who’s worked all over the world and met people from all over the world,” he said, “don’t make the perception that [the students] have to compete against worse by actions like this that do not reflect well on our community.”
