Report: Senior Auditor Has Unfair Advantage in Cold War History Class

Having some prior knowledge on the topic of a class is one thing, but what if you've lived through it?

Students in HIST-135, Cold War: Global History, say that senior auditor Michael Multen has an unfair advantage in the class, because he was alive for the entirety of the event in question.

Multen, 81, was born in 1936, and was old enough to understand what was going on for the majority of the Cold War, which began (arguably) around 1947. 

Undergraduates report that Multen answers every single question the professor asks. "He's not even referencing the reading," one sophomore told us. "He's just remembering what happened in the 70s, and stuff. It's not his fault, but no one else really gets to talk."

The senior auditor's life experiences aren't entirely helpful to him, though. 

Multen also has a habit of correcting the professor on matters of history, inserting his own memories into lectures. He also has been known to shout "I was there!" about situations in which his presence is considered highly unlikely, including the downing of a US spy-plane over the Soviet Union in the 1960 U-2 incident. 

"I get that he isn't going to hurt our grades," a freshman told us, "but he just hogs all the speaking time. You can't even go to office hours without seeing him there, and he mostly just talks about how different the Cold War would have been if selfies had existed. It's really disruptive."

Multen is also suspected of using electronics in class, despite a prohibition on the part of the professor. The senior auditor argues that there is an implied exception for pacemakers.