Oh, the good old times when both faculty and students yearned to stay at AUBG longer. When one of the students came back as a professor, taught history by shooting imaginary guns in classes, acquired his own cult following, won an award for being an eccentric dresser, and left amidst cries that AUBG wouldn’t be the same without him. And it’s not. If you’re a freshman, you’ve never met him, but you surely heard of him. Meet James Frusetta throughout the years: first a student, then a professor, and, always, an opinionated individual.

Frusetta, a regular AUBGer:

“I came to AUBG for Bulgarian language training in 1999. The Institute for Foreign Students in Sofia is better, but it was impossible to contact back in the 1990s unless you knew someone there. Since my advisor had no idea how to contact them, I ended up going with AUBG since they had a web page I could contact people through. My student experience at AUBG was pretty lame - I was only taking 8 credits of Bulgarian, so I wasn't allowed to live in the dorms, and I never met a lot of people since I wasn't in regular classes.

Probably the most interesting thing [about AUBG] was getting a really good first-hand view of a variety of people's backgrounds. I'd already lived in Macedonia for a year, earlier, but I mostly met a certain clique of people, NGO elite types. AUBG was interesting in expanding who I knew - except I only ever met Romanians, Albanians, Hungarians!  This is where the old rumor about "James only likes Romanians" comes from - most of my close friends at AUBG back then were Romanians, so when I returned to teach, I ended up doing a lot with that community.”

Frusetta, an AUBG faculty member:

“I came back to Bulgaria on a Fulbright [scholarship] to do research. I knew a couple of students, and so I'd visit. I was chatting with one, Andreea Chelaru, about a class I was going to teach in the USA. She liked the syllabus, and asked if I'd teach it at AUBG, which I agreed to do, if she'd set it up. She talked to the Dean, who was happy I'd do it for travel expenses, and there you go. I always like to credit her on this, since it shows that students can affect change. Of course, then I got to know the SG better…

I then came back, later, in 2004 when Ilya Vinkovetsky urged me to, because of a need for more history classes. Since I'd already taught at AUBG, it was easy to bring me back as a multiple-course adjunct, and I was frustrated about trying to do dissertation writing in the US. In retrospect, this was a terrible decision, as I got very little writing done at AUBG.”

Frusetta and SG:

“I found out what the SG was in 1999, when I had a friend who was a senator. The basic concept was, of course, familiar to me: I'd done four years of student media in the US, where the media relation to student governance is akin to that of mongoose and cobra. This helps to explain why I hate SGs: I was writing scathing diatribes about student governance when most of you were learning how to walk.

Later, when I was at AUBG longer I was critical [about SG] because someone needs to speak up when things happen. AUBG has a tradition of “everything being the best” because AUBGers know they're the “best.” [It is ] the AUBG version of [being] “politically correct.” Every media article, play, presentation, short story, SG initiative, etc., is done by an AUBGer, and is thus “good.” The only way for something to be “bad” is if an administrator has a hand in it. But it ain't always true. Some SGers really have tried to serve their community. For some All Star Kids it's a way to be kewl, get a line on a CV, etc. However, this is admittedly the function of much of politics everywhere.

So why not just say this? Hey, it's not like students or faculty don't say this behind SGers' backs, so why not be honest?

Frusetta and More Honors

I [attended] More Honors in 1999, 2002 and 2005. In 2004 and 2007, I was at conferences in the US. (I'm not sure where the rumor started that I was in hiding because I hated MH so much, but go look it up -- Association for the Study of Nationalities is every April.) 

I was amused and quite happy to receive the Mojo Style award [in 2007]. If you live by mockery, you have to be able to take the mockery. Plus, in the birthplace of chalga, there's a chance that I am relatively stylish. Now, I keep the award in my office. Given American sensibilities, however, I bought it one of the Ultimate Soldier uniforms, "German Infantryman." If a student here ever asks, I'll tell them it's an award for excellence in ethnic cleansing.

The coolest non-student nominations, I could have done without. I'm not about to get weepy about winning a popularity contest.

It's been amusing that the odd colleague who knows nothing much about AUBG, may know of More Honors because of You Tube. (I've gotten status points from having a statue, in fact.)

[When I was at AUBG] More Honors used to be more about mocking people, which I rather liked; when AUBG was smaller, it was more personal. Over time, it got old for me.