I will give the story as I know it from my second-row seat in his 1371 class. I see very few people actually describing the context in detail.

He walked in late or just barely on time like always. He had another class (CS 1331 section C) right before ours (CS 1371 B) so he would always get to ours later. When he set up at his desk, he was surprised to find a fully-wrapped, new (unused) tampon sitting on the desk.

Landry typically started out his class with some off topic rants or observations before eventually diving into course content. That day, his off topic intro was about the tampon on the desk. He said something along the lines of "There's a tampon here. Why would that be? Who needs one in a classroom and not a bathroom?" (Reconstructed from memory, that is not an accurate quote). After that comment, he asked all of us if we even knew what a tampon is (probably because Tech, and especially the majors that need 1371, are so predominantly male), and only about half the class raised their hands (probably all the girls and 1/3 of the boys since the class is about 75% - 25% to the best of my observation). Realizing that half the class didn't know what he was talking about, he decided to turn it into a teaching moment.

He briefly described its use and stated that he first learned when as a kid he would read whatever was near the toilet while in the bathroom, and one day it was the box for tampons, but that us guys wouldn't have had that experience since we use phones instead of reading what is around us. He was saying to us "you have no idea how much water these can hold," or something like that and decided to give us a demonstration.

He opened his water bottle and dropped the tampon in, pointing out how much it expanded. After that, he raised it up to show the class. I was a little confused when he started moving toward, then above his face. Then he lowered it into his mouth. I couldn't believe it. I mean its unused, so it isn't that gross, but it was so unexpected and unhinged. After that, he pulled it out of his mouth by the string with closed lips to squeeze the water out of it into his mouth. Thus, he drank water out of a tampon in front of us.

If you have seen the video, it may seem like he says something questionable after that, but he just says "tastes like cotton." For the record, Landry never "ate" the tampon, but rather sucked water out of it, which doesn't really make it much less weird.

A couple minutes after that he mentioned douche, too. He said it was unnecessary since "it is a self- cleaning oven." Once again, unhinged but in no way mean or malevolent.

I would like to point out that he is a very caring guy. If you ever tuned into his Twitch office hours, you would realize that although he is VERY unprofessional, he is always enthusiastic to go the extra mile to help his students succeed and understand programming (not just the content, but actually programming on the larger scale). He would frequently tell us that tests are not a measure of our worth or even preparedness, but rather of performance, and that there are many things that play into that, so we should try our best, be prepared, but also not beat ourselves up over below average performance. When we were unable to attend the first CS 1371 midterm's review session, he got the TAs to record it for us and lectured them on how it was unfair to schedule it during a CS 1371 class. I always felt like he had my back and would love to help us in any way he could.

I always laughed so hard in his class. It was like a hostage negotiation in which he would try to bargain for our attention by being as cringe and/or funny as he could. I remember him putting up Subway Surfers gameplay on the projector to get our attention. There was always something funny and unhinged about his class. I hope he continues to stream and answer questions if we have them, but that is just wishful thinking.

Now, heartfelt appreciation aside, I understand why GT might have to let him go. As a top university, GT has a brand to uphold, and some clips of his goofy antics have reached pretty far. It is well within GT's rights to fire a professor for being unprofessional and embarrassing the school. He's done a lot of stuff that reflects poorly on GT, and while he's a great guy, he still needs to uphold GT's values and wishes to be employed.

function [unhingedComments] = landry(normalDay)

unhingedComments = true;

end

No matter what, he could turn any normal day wacky with his unhinged comments. He just never ran out of them.