In its first class of the fall semester, CSCI 150: “Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming and Computer Science” drew a crowd of 510 students who flooded into the Salomon Center auditorium.
Many in the room had no intention of taking the class. In fact, some audience members were alums who had already completed it.
Instead, they were there to watch the course’s opening skit, one of many humorous performances put on by four ‘humor TAs’: students responsible for writing the performances’ scripts, running “stretch break” exercises and managing the course’s TikTok page. The course’s skits have earned it a reputation as an entertaining class for an otherwise straightforward requirement for all computer science students.
“This year, I went into TAing knowing that I wanted to (become a) humor TA” said Jinho Lee ’26, one of the humor TAs. “It’s such a cool part of the culture.”
While the opening-day skit is written from scratch every year, others have been performed annually, with only minor updates, since Professor of Computer Science Andy van Dam began teaching the course in the 1960s.
The course’s long-form skits began in the late 60s or early 70s, when van Dam instructed his TAs to pitch their final projects to the class through a humorous lens. In one of the early years, a group of TAs appeared on stage in pink tutus and did pirouettes to introduce their projects, van Dam said.
“I thought it was really charming, and it got a big laugh out of the kids taking the course,” van Dam added. So, he thought, maybe the course “should always have people dress up and do something silly to promote their final projects.”
One recurring type of skit, the “water skit,” is at least 40 years old. It began when TAs brought van Dam water during class, and as a joke, started bringing water in outlandish containers like a cowboy boot and a beer hat.
One skit in the 1990s featured a string quartet. In another, around a decade ago, TAs brought kittens on stage. The next day, they brought puppies.
For a TA’s birthday around that time, van Dam hired a belly dancer to perform on stage. On van Dam’s birthday, that same TA got the Brown band to show up during a class and march around the classroom.
In 2021, when the course was centered around reality competition series “Survivor,” TAs brought two-time show champion and former TA Shirin Oskooi ’05 to perform their opening-day skit.
And earlier this year, a humor TA licked peanut butter out of Lee’s armpit in a skit. “It was really gross,” Lee said. “But the gasps were really satisfying.”
“We have a saying that laughs are cheap, but gasps are invaluable,” Lee added.
This year’s humor TAs began planning the opening-day skit last May and met weekly during the summer to write the script, Lee explained. Every few weeks, they submitted drafts to the course’s head TAs, who reviewed them with van Dam. to determine whether the jokes were funny and appropriate.
The opening-day skit is always based on CSCI 0150’s theme of the year. This year’s centered around the animated series “Avatar and the Last Airbender.” Last year, it was based on “The Hunger Games,” the dystopian book and movie franchise.
The humor TAs finished writing the script by the end of August, when all the course’s TAs met for a week-long “TA bootcamp.” At TA camp, all TAs in the skit participated in a read-through, practiced their parts and filmed the pre-recorded scenes for the performance. Generally, half of each skit is pre-recorded, while the other half is performed live in class.
Grace Marshburn ’25, former humor TA and current head TA, said that while she didn’t originally decide to take the class because of the skits, they “played a big role in me wanting to TA the class, and they played a big role in my engagement as a student.”
“It made the lecture a bit more fun, which I think is totally the goal of them, and so it kept me engaged with the class a lot more,” she said.
And Alexander Reyes ’28, a current student in the CSCI 0150, said the skits offer “energy to keep on staying focused in the class.”
Gordon Beckler ’28, another current student, shared that his favorite skit so far this semester was a parody of “Nonstop,” a song in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton.”
The skits “disproportionately” help people who come into the course with the “most anxiety about whether they can really do this,” van Dam said. “The fact that there is some comic relief and some tomfoolery really helps them.”
“You don’t have to be solemn even when you’re being intense,” van Dam added. “You can have fun. You cannot take yourself too seriously.”
Leah Koritz is a senior staff writer covering student government beat. Leah is from Dover, Massachusetts and studies Public Health and Judaic Studies. In her free time, Leah enjoys hiking, watching the Red Sox and playing with her dog, Boba.
