“I’m doing my speech on ocean pollution,” the only student in the front row offered. I think his name is James. He’s always raising his hand. Sometimes his enthusiasm is a relief when the rest of the room is crickets.

“Great! What’s your proposition?”

“Um, that the oceans are polluted.” He winces and taps his pen onto his green binder.

I grind my teeth and plaster on my smile. “Yes, but the assignment is to argue a policy claim. Proving the oceans are polluted would prove a fact. That’s a fact claim.” We’ve gone over this for five weeks. I reach into my briefcase to check for my migraine medication. It’s inevitable that I will need it.

James frowns and flips open his lime green binder. The cover slaps onto the otherwise empty table and he scribbles unintelligible marks onto the first page of loose leaf. He raises his eyes but looks to my right. “So, what should my claim be, then?”

“You should be able to determine that. Can anyone help him?”

Crickets.

Dear God, I need bug spray. “Anyone?” I almost say Bueller. My hand locates the pill bottle. I sigh. “Anyone?”

The student I’m calling James raises his hand again. I wonder if his arm tires. He says, “So, that we should not pollute the oceans?”

Is he asking or stating? Sounds like a question. “Or you could argue that we should clean up ocean pollution.”

“That’s, like, the same thing,” he groans, still not meeting my gaze with his own.

I acquiesce. Class is only ten more minutes, and I only have so many migraine pills left. “Great. So, how will you prove it?”

He frowns and flips pages within his binder. Except for that first page, most pages appear blank. He pauses on a blank page. He flips to the last page of the binder and runs his fingers along some markings. “I will prove we have oceans.”

I pine for the fields. For rest. For a vacation. “You don’t need to prove presumptive evidence. Remember, facts we know – that are understood – to be true? The audience will know we have oceans.”

“Even kindergarteners?”

“Are you giving the speech to kindergarteners or to your peers?” He’s right in some ways, but I digress.

He nods. “Okay. Then I need more fact evidence to prove a fact.”

“Well, yes, you are going to prove the oceans are polluted. That will be the fact underlying the policy. And you will need to define pollution. Then you will need to prove why cleaning up the pollution is vital – the value underlying your argument. Only then can you persuade the audience that we need to clean up our oceans.”

He frowns. He’s going to not only have an achy arm, but wrinkles by the end of this class. He says, “I thought I’m motivating my audience to change a behavior. That’s a policy claim, right?”

His question is an accusation. I love students who try the entire semester to catch me in an error. They are so busy trying to outsmart me, or their classmates, they learn nothing. I need sleep. “Yes, that is a policy claim. But if you recall, to prove a policy, you must demonstrate why the person should change his or her behavior. Proving the underlying value will accomplish that.”

The scribbling starts. I watch his hand run up and down, leaving marks like a seismograph.

I scan my eyes over the room. The kid in the back corner is asleep. The kid next to him is high as a kite. I’m jealous, briefly. The three girls on the other side of the room are peering over a phone, which they hold under the table. It’s funny they don’t know the tables have no front piece. I can see the phone, their hands, and their inattention.

“Is it time for phones?”

The middle girl holding the phone snaps her head up and purses her lips. She slips the phone under a thigh. “Yes?”

“So what evidence can he use to persuade us not to pollute the ocean?”

She tilts her head and says, “Like, opinion.”

Like, yeah. “Yes, good. As you read for this week, evidence is either fact or opinion to support an argument. What kind of opinion should he use?”

She nods, without blinking, staring through me. She shifts her leg over the hidden phone. “I guess, like that, he’s been in the ocean and it had cups and stuff floating in it.”

I turn to my computer terminal and examine the seating chart. His name is James. “So, how do we trust James’ statement? That evidence would only be anecdotal.”

“Anec what?”

“Anecdotal. A story from a layperson. Not an expert, but someone who had a relevant experience. As the text says, anecdotes are great to form your narrative and bring pathos to the argument. But they are not dispositive.” I know the text says this. I wrote it. I also know Miss Thigh Phone did not read it because she looks around the room as if she’s searching for the fire.

I only wish. I continue, “Not every piece of anecdotal evidence is compelling. For example, a person may relate a story about the economic challenges his great-grandmother experienced after arriving in the United States. Although the story is nostalgic and entertaining, and moving, it is not as compelling as census statistics collected by the US government detailing every immigrant’s economic state during that same period.”

“That’s, like, statistics,” the girl with the pink sweater calls out.

It’s better than crickets, I consider. “Yes, not like. Is statistics. Mathematical data representing a condition.”

Fran, the girl who is always drawing while I lecture, shouts out, “I took stats last semester.”

“Great! I love stats.” Finally, a student who is paying attention and is engaged.

Fran, the artist girl, winces. “I didn’t. It was super confusing.”

“Yes, many people struggle in the class -”

“Oh, I got an A.”

“Of course you did.” I turn away and face the whiteboard. The overhead lights are hurting my eyes. Here it comes. The big pain. I turn back. “So, yes, James could use statistical data to show the amount of pollution per square mile of ocean. Or he could show measurement of the type of pollutants. Chemical. Medical waste. Plastics.”

“Fish.” Phone under thigh calls out.

I frown. “Are fish pollutants?”

She frowns. “Maybe?”

I can’t even. I just can’t. “Anyway. An excellent stat James could raise would be the amount of pollution today versus 100 years ago.”

Nick, our resident sleeper, has awoken. He calls out, “How can he find that out? We can’t, like, time-travel.”

Laughter from the entire class, except for James. I smile. Not at his comment. I hope they are going to the student center to get free condoms at today’s sex education fair. Dear God. “Ah, James can perform research and locate studies from 100 years ago. He can compare that data with today’s data. I’m sure he can also find academic research or scientific studies performing that exact comparison.”

“But he can just make that up, right?” Fran asks.

“No. No, that would be unethical.”

“But we made up numbers in my stats class. Like, the professor said, what if 100 people got a cold? He was making it up. You can make up stats just like that.”

“No, Fran. The professor did that to teach you. It’s a hypothetical. When you are presenting evidence to persuade others, you need to use reliable evidence. Statistics collected using scientific method. Random sampling. A significant amount of samples. It’s all in the text.”

“Professor? I haven’t gotten the text yet,” the girl next to the phone-hider calls out.

I shake my head. It’s week five. A third of the way through the semester. “You probably should get one.”

“Can we use a used text? My roommate has it from last year.”

I purse my lips. “Can we chat about this after class?”

“I guess.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Now my ears are ringing. “Let’s try something. It will help you put the information you read for this week into practice. Just call out the answer. How would you prove a disease is dangerous?”

“Twitter. The popular posts are the ones I believe.”

I stare at the young man in the athletic jersey. He’s very proud of himself. He’s never spoken in class before. I hope he never does again. I say, “No. You would consult a virologist. Or the CDC website. Compare expert medical opinions.” The ringing in my ears intensifies. I say, “How would you prove the value of a piece of property?”

“My dad.”

“Joan? Your dad is an appraiser?” I ask.

“No.”

“A real estate agent?”

“No. He’s a math teacher at the high school. He knows everything.”

I hold my breath. I have to. If I let it out, it will carry unpleasant words. I exhale. “That’s why the text teaches we need to only use expert opinions as evidence. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one.”

Sprinkles of laughter. One frowning kid who’s always recording me leans forward.

I continue. “An expert offers an opinion about factual data within his or her expertise. So when a pop star pines about the economy, I just laugh. Unless she’s an economist, we must disregard her opinion. The sad thing is she has influence. People will act because of her comments. Now, if she’s opining how to sing or become a pop star, we should listen to her. She’s an expert in that.”

Crickets.

Then the fracas begins with: “I like Molly Cyrus.”

“She’s so yesterday. Wow! Do you like seventies music, too?”

Laughter.

With a rehearsed smile, I raise my hand to quiet them. “Okay. Let’s get back on track. How would you prove someone was guilty of a crime?”

“Read the New York Times.”

“CNN.”

“They look guilty.”

I wince. “Don’t we need to wait for the trial? For hard evidence. DNA evidence? Fingerprints? Witnesses? Do we decide a person’s guilty based on the media? On social media chatter?”

Crickets. My filter melts away. “How would you prove a person’s thoughts? Like if you wanted to show a person thought badly about other people?”

“You check their social media feeds. Especially the comments part.”

“The comments part?” I ask. My heart has stopped. They continue to call out.

“Yeah, or if they’ve been banned from social media.”

“Depends on the person’s race. Or age.”

“Or if they voted Republican!”

Laughter again.

I reach into my bag, withdraw two migraine pills, and swallow them without water. “Aside from the fact that none of you have read and or understood the chapter on evidence, I am curious to see your outlines next class.”

The laughter subsides.

“I suggest you all read the evidence chapter. And the chapters on claims and outlining arguments. And review the chapters on cognitive biases. And fallacies.”

“How do you know we haven’t read those?” Miss Thigh Phone rings out.

I stare at her. Into her. She leans back in her chair. I lose control and sneer. “Evidence.”