“Even When the Music Was Wrong” by Kari Burroughs Kraakevik

I double majored at a Christian university. People told me not to.

One of those majors led me into a room with no windows and a professor I trusted.

One required sequence was Aural Skills and Conducting. It was the kind of coursework that separates talent from training. I had the test scores to be placed in advanced classes. What I did not have was the foundation.

After my first exam, a 70 percent, I did what high-achieving students are trained to do. I sought help. I hadn’t yet learned how to seek wisely. But I was found.

The professor offered additional meetings in his office twice a week. I assumed they were open sessions, like office hours. When I arrived, I was the only student there. I told myself that meant I was the one who needed it most.

I didn’t yet understand how power works behind closed doors.

I had spent years being taught that good students seek help, respect authority, and assume the best of their teachers. I did not realize those same lessons could make students vulnerable.

The door closed differently than it did in class.

Softer. Like a secret.

There were no windows in his office door the way there were in the practice rooms. The windows to the outside were covered in heavy curtains, maroon velvet, theatrical and thick, like stage curtains waiting for a performance to begin.

The room felt older than the music.

The first few meetings seemed harmless. He sat across from me. We went over exercises. He pointed out deficiencies in my training, ones I hadn’t known how to name. He was patient. He was thorough.

I was grateful.

I even told my roommate, “This is what it feels like to be mentored.” I finally had someone in my corner.

Until I was cornered. 

It happened during a conducting exercise. I struggled with mirroring; I never did well with that in dance either — I relied on actual mirrors. There were none in his office.

He stepped behind me to guide my arms. He told me to let them go limp so he could demonstrate the motion. I did.

He was the professor. The expert. The one who had offered help.

At first, I told myself this was instruction. That discomfort was part of learning. That proximity was normal in a discipline built on movement.

Then something in the contact changed.

I had no language for what I felt had happened. So I did what high-achieving students are trained to do: I assumed I was mistaken.

The following lesson confirmed I was not.

I will not recount what happened in detail. What matters is what followed: the meetings, the careful phrasing, the subtle redirection of concern.

I thought it was reconciliation. Years later, I recognized it as choreography.

In too many institutions, preservation masquerades as accountability.

I stopped attending his classes, citing health issues. Normally, a doctor’s note would have been required. No one asked for one. No one followed up. No one questioned how I could attend every other class on campus but not his. We were allowed two unexcused absences per semester. I had fourteen.

At the end of the semester, I received an A-.

The remaining courses he taught were quietly rearranged. I shifted into independent studies. I retested out of requirements. I enrolled with a brand-new instructor, less experienced, perhaps, simply to avoid his classroom.

None of these unusual accommodations were questioned. Not once.

Silence, I would later understand, was the institution’s preferred instrument.

By my second semester sophomore year, I was paying for college on my own. My parents had withdrawn financial support due to my "abhorrent sexuality.” Determined to stay enrolled, I took on three additional jobs alongside my work as a music theory tutor, while carrying twenty-one credit hours. Most students required formal approval to take that many credits or to work that many hours. I did not.

No one asked for documentation. No one raised concerns.

By the end of that year, I was approximately fifteen thousand dollars short of tuition. I remember calculating the number over and over, trying to imagine how to earn that amount in five weeks.

Then the balance disappeared.

The funds appeared in my account. It was marked as a donation.

Then he asked to meet with me and made sure to tell me he had spoken with his wife.

That’s when it hit me.

Something had already happened.

I tried to minimize it. To reinterpret it. To tell myself I had misunderstood. I had been raised not to question authority, especially authority framed in Christian language.

Eventually, I was called into a meeting.

He spoke first. He described his behavior as a "struggle." He cried. He asked for forgiveness. I remember his wife holding his hand while he spoke.

I remember her eyes more than his words.

I felt an unfamiliar inversion: I was the one being watched. Evaluated. Contained.

He asked if I would return to this specialty choir. There was mention of additional financial support if I did. I said I would think about it.

I returned.

I told myself it was resolution. That repentance meant restoration. That forgiveness required proximity. I had been trained to accept apology as closure.

The funding remained. I resumed choir. The semester continued. Nothing was ever formally addressed.

What I experienced was not unique. I would later recognize the same choreography elsewhere: confession framed as resolution, tears framed as repentance, silence framed as discretion.

The details changed, but the structure remained familiar. Harm was treated as a private matter between individuals rather than a question about systems. Accountability became something performed quietly, behind closed doors, where the institution could preserve both its reputation and its sense of itself as fundamentally good.

Students were often expected to interpret reconciliation as resolution. If an apology had been offered, what more was there to discuss? If everyone appeared gracious and forgiving, why revisit the discomfort?

The lesson was rarely stated outright. We learned it by watching.

After I graduated, that professor received a nationally recognized teaching award. It made the paper. I studied the photo. His smiling face. His wife beside him.

For a long time, I wondered whether returning made me complicit.

I had been trained to follow the pattern.

I understand now it made me obedient.

Even when the music was wrong.

Written by

Share

Copied