University Of Toronto Engineering Class Stage Les Miserables Flash Mob

What is better than the struggles of the 19th century French proletariat set to music? Many people say nothing is. The University of Toronto engineers, however, make a compelling case for the narrative primacy of engineers taking a test.

This year, UT students staged a flash mob right before an engineering test, singing about their study anxiety to the tune of Les Miserables songs. This initially made the professor mad, but eventually he started singing along.

WATCH:

Comments

[MeVeryBad]

01:44 AM on 10/04/2011

@realpragmatist -- For what it's worth, agencies like Times Higher and QS put Toronto first in Canada by a fair margin for engineering and related disciplines. Your fave, Waterloo, sits fourth, behind McGill and UBC. Not sure, however, that Toronto would fare as well in rankings of vocal performance...

[Parkite]

03:50 PM on 09/30/2011

Gesunheit! Good thing these guys aren't in Vacaville, CA. Good ole Steve Cuckovich would have failed them all.

[Nancy66]

02:07 PM on 09/30/2011

I love it!! Being a music major, I would have loved to have done this in another class, but when I was school, they didn't have Flash Mobs!

[Leif D Erickson]

11:37 AM on 09/30/2011

For my two engineering students. This is awesome!

[haileyschwebbs]

11:18 AM on 09/30/2011

yes that was friggin awesome

[realpragmatist]

07:37 AM on 09/30/2011

Cool and refreshing ;-)
Engineering school and flash mobs - world is changing for the better.
BTW, University of Toronto is a very elite Canadian university, along with McGill. Probably the second best Canadian University for Engineering after the "Canada's own MIT" - the University of Waterloo.

[Pierre Harfouche]

11:04 PM on 10/04/2011

You must be kidding right?
Waterloo students are sent straight to the work place where they are copy boys for the first two years until they get actual jobs in 3rd,4th and 5th year.
MIT is a very research oriented school (Why do you think they have the best rankings in the school) and waterloo not so much. Check the rankings again (and please don't use Mclains) use international tenure for ranking and please look at U of T's rank. 10 - 13th on the global scale. Mcgill is also pretty high up (top 50 i believe) but please check your facts.

[500 a]

02:29 AM on 09/30/2011

....And I know professors who have staged other classroom disruptions. Including:
-Someone runs in and steals a briefcase
        -Chairs are taken out of the room
        -Pieces of a machine or device are dumped in the classroom and students have to assemble it 
  .....I do wonder if some of the students are Theatre students....good voices .

CheerS!

[500 a]

02:15 AM on 09/30/2011

Notice the student in the second row. The guy with the beard.  He insisted on staying on task and not buying into the 'experiment in design engineering disruption.  He probably thinks he's smarter than everyone else.  That the others are not serious students or engineer material. What he doesn't realize that engineering is creative, non-linear and requires the ability to gather and analyze data that IS from unpredictable sources.
I wouldn't be surprised if the professor put a few items on the test to determine who could do some quick calculations or observations.  He was probably a programming student!  LOL! 

[Rootytootytoot]

01:20 AM on 09/30/2011

This made my day! FANTASTIC!!!!! Everyone should have a sense of humor and be like this once in a while!

LOVED IT! And yes, I am a huge Les Miz fan too!

[petzl]

01:19 AM on 09/30/2011

Uh, obviously the professor was in on the joke.

[500 a]

02:16 AM on 09/30/2011

And pulled it off.

[verylargehat]

01:19 AM on 09/30/2011

Although the prof was clearly in on it, the entire class didn't seem to be in on it. For all those crying "fake," this does make it legit.

[Joel Kent Melville]

12:56 AM on 09/30/2011

faaaaake sorry this whole thing was staged otherwise the teach wouldnt have sang lol

[Tara Hunkoff]

10:03 PM on 09/30/2011

Thank you, young man.

Class, what is the past perfect of "sing"? Anyone, anyone?

[grope and change]

11:23 PM on 09/29/2011

All the attention seeking fools should be shunned by society. If I were in the class I would have thrown things at them for interrupting the class I was attending. Hopefully these idiots get hit by a bus soon.

[ariph]

12:02 AM on 09/30/2011

That's pretty extreme...maybe you need to learn to relax. yeesh.

[davemartin7777]

12:20 AM on 09/30/2011

Good grief, are you always on?

[benji85]

10:27 PM on 09/29/2011

Would have been better if the professor really wasn't in on it, and then decided to jump into song, but that wasn't the case.

[Saliva2Spit]

10:22 PM on 09/29/2011

I love flash mobs, even musical ones. I just wish all the kids could sing, some of that was a little hard to hear.