I remember one time he came into the room – I remember it very vividly because he had some outside visitors. We occasionally had visitors from other colleges who came to see what Williams was all about. There were a couple of people from another school there sitting in the back of the room, so Prof. Gaudino comes in and says, “You know gentlemen,” and he points to these men, “you are strangers in our midst,” he would talk like Socrates in the classroom, “You are strangers in our midst, you should not be sitting in the rear of the room. We greet you. We embrace you. Come sit with us.” Well these folks were very taken aback by this. They didn’t want to sit with us. And they were sort of astonished by the way this guy was talking like Socrates rather than an American professor.

Anyway, they very embarrassedly came and sat with the students. But then Gaudino went on. It was Election Day and he had this way of talking that was provocative and he said, “Gentlemen the most amazing thing happened to me this morning. I went to the polling booth to vote and you know the official there gave me a ballot and I said to him, ‘Sir, my name is Professor Robert Gaudino. I’m a professor of Political Science at Williams College. I’m an expert on political matters. I know much more than other people. I believe I deserve 10 ballots!’” And Gaudino looked at us, and he said, “And gentlemen, he didn’t give me 10 ballots, and he didn’t even want to give me one ballot. He thought I was a strange person. What do you think of this experience?”

So we all thought he was great but also a little nutty. Of course these strangers in the room, they thought he was completely nutty, you know? So he used this as a teaching device. Is a professor of Political Science who knows 10 times more than anyone else about political matters entitled to 10 ballots?

Now I always wondered whether he was he was just making this up or he really did it. He might really have done it.

Matt Nimetz '60