An MSU professor reportedly stripped naked Monday afternoon, Oct. 1, 2012, in the Engineering Building. Julia Nagy/The State News
Update, 6:20 p.m.: Mechanical engineering freshman Kyle Hillman said he was in the class of mathematics professor John McCarthy, who students say had what appeared to be a mental breakdown earlier this afternoon.
Hillman said McCarthy was explaining derivatives when he went off on a series of tangents Hillman did not fully understand. Such tangents ranged from McCarthy’s thoughts on former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and computers to his coworkers at MSU being actors.
“Not really any of it made sense,” Hillman said.
McCarthy left the classroom and pressed his body against the glass wall outside of the room, looking in at his students and yelling, Hillman said.
Hillman said the professor began to cry upon reentering the classroom seconds later and continued to interact with his students at the front of the class.
When McCarthy again left the classroom minutes later, yelling and swearing about God, Hillman got up and left the classroom as well, he said.
Cops and courts reporter Rebecca Ryan contributed to the report.
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Update, 4:30 p.m.: Computer science senior Hayden Boroski said he overheard the professor screaming, “God … how can no one do anything right,” in what seemed to be a mental breakdown Monday in the Engineering Building.
Boroski saw the incident through the large windows from his software engineering class a few doors down and the professor seemed to be “in his own little world,” he said.
After the professor became irate, he stripped down just to his socks in front of his students, Boroski said, referring to what he overheard from fellow classmates.
Police arrived 15 minutes after Boroski placed a call to 911. The professor was handcuffed and escorted off the property after police attempts to calm him down.
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Students took to social media during an incident where a professor began yelling and reportedly stripped naked Monday afternoon at the Engineering Building.
At 1:07 p.m., a call was received by the Ingham County Dispatch Center regarding a man screaming and yelling at the building, MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said.
Police arrived on the scene shortly thereafter, took the man into protected custody and transported him to a local hospital. No students were harmed, and the man has not yet been charged for any crime.
The State News received several tips of the incident this afternoon on Twitter. Reddit, a popular social news website, now has a post on its site detailing the incident.
The cause of the man’s bout remains unknown.
Keep checking statenews.com and tomorrow’s edition of The State News for more on this developing story.
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