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Undercover in the cults, USU grad student researches Utah-Idaho doomsayers By
Heather Fredrickson
Kirk covers his inch-long hair with a bandana, slips on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, dresses from head to toe in leather, hangs handcuffs from the back seat of his bike, straps a knife to his boot, hops on his motorcycle, and sets out to do a little personal research. "It's easy for me to change character," he said, "(and) it's funny to me . . . to watch the reaction of mothers puling their children away when I walk into Hasting's just because I have saddle bags slung over my shoulder and a bandana tied around my head. People say, 'I'm sorry, man' . . . and that's interesting to me as a sociologist." Kirk Mauldin, a doctoral student in the sociology department known as "Professor" to some of his Utah State University students, enjoys taking a step back to look at the world around him from a different perspective once in a while. He's used personal time to join, and study from inside, three cults throughout Utah and Idaho. The cults, all involved with preparing for the Y2K disaster, consisted of members who were "superficially normal," Mauldin said. "For the most part, they try to maintain a normal existence except in the evenings and stuff when they would prepare for the eventual demise of civilization as we know it," he said. Some of the groups got together to share dreams, or "prophecies," with the group to devise a consensual agreement on their meanings. These groups were more equal in their hierarchies with no charismatic leaders, Mauldin said, but not everyone in the group received prophecies. "I never faked prophecies," he flatly said. "When I offered interpretations (of other prophecies) I tried to offer a kind of middle road between what I'd already heard to try to not influence it one way or another." Mauldin made it a point to be as "non-commental" as possible during group meetings so as to not influence the group, but he said no matter what he did, his presence influenced the meeting. "The only way to not influence is to watch through a glass window," he said. Contact with cult members has usually been difficult, as groups are often quiet about meetings and activities. But with the Internet, anonymous contact is easier and "perfect" for contacting some groups such as survivalists, he said. "They're trying to conceal everything anyway, right," Mauldin said. Although contact is easier through the Internet, it's not the way Mauldin makes contact with his groups. Having an ear trained for listening and being in an area cult members might go helps things along, he said. For example, Mauldin said the groups he studied could be found at bulk-food distributors or Army & Navy stores. Eventually, the same people start appearing at these places and contact will happen, he said. Mauldin was quick to dispel the myth that cults are necessarily negative or bad for someone to be involved in. He said the U.S. Armed Forces fits the definition of a cult -- strong identification with the group and control by a person other than the member -- but is not looked down on. In fact, Mauldin's father is an officer in the Navy and is posted to a division in the Pentagon having to do with computers and communication. Before landing this post, Kirk's father took his family around the world with him. At one point, Mauldin attended high school in Japan. He said he was fascinated by the history and organization of social systems there which may have sparked his interest in sociology. Having skipped grade five, Mauldin said he felt somewhat like a "dork" in high school. He was a member of his school's council and was invited to parties, but Mauldin said he wasn't one of the "cool" people. As a child, he spent more hours sitting in trees watching people and playing with the microscope he was given when he was 8 years old than anything else. "I was in the lowest reading group in second grade." Mauldin said he has always wanted to be a teacher. His high school yearbooks show him leading classes on days where students and teachers switched places, and he claims he's never been intimidated in front of a class. In front of his Research Methods class, taught through the sociology department, Mauldin seemed quite at home. Before class got under way, Mauldin handed back some rough drafts. One girl walked slowly back to her seat after picking up her paper, turning each page only after she'd read through his comments. When she reached her seat, Mauldin spoke up. "When I wrote 'You Suck' on Page 3, I meant that in an uplifting way," he said with a smile. As his students trickled through the door, Mauldin busied himself with preparing his lecture. He laid a black, soft-sided briefcase down on its side on the table at the front of the room. With one hand on each zipper, he unzipped the pocket from the middle so that each hand ended on a different side of the pocket. He lifted the cover. With both hands, he pulled a laptop from his briefcase and set it on the table to the left of the case. A tangle of about five cords followed the laptop, and Mauldin plugged one into the back of his computer and one into the pulpit. Then, with each hand on a corner of the laptop screen, he paused. This long. Then he bent at the knees and slightly forward at the waist as he lifted the computer screen. Class may now begin. "He's so enthusiastic," Brittney Parsons, a student in Mauldin's Methods class, said. "It's a methods class. It should be boring but it's not. We've learned to question everything. He's just a really good teacher." A former student of his, Katie Milner, had nothing but praise for Mauldin. "I think Mauldin is one of the few professors I've had that actually knows what they are talking about," she said. Mauldin stresses the importance of college is to teach, but he said somewhere along the line, professors get wrapped up in research and forget to teach students how to learn throughout their lives. To ease the potential loss of focus, Mauldin said he will never teach a class with more than 50 students, or an upper-division class with more than 30. Ideally, he said he wants to move to a small university in the West, after his graduation in May 2001, with an enrollment of about 8,000 where he can teach rather than research. But isn't that what a sociologist does -- research? "It's natural at this point," he said. "We're all curious and come to tentative conclusions. Then, we're forced to see if our suppositions are correct; see how on track I am. I have a hard time operating under what could be misconceptions." Mauldin married his high school sweetheart in Maryland the year after he graduated. Sherri was a year behind him in school, so they waited. People might get the wrong idea. "We didn't get married for the reason most young couples in high school get married," Mauldin said. "She wasn't pregnant or anything." Mauldin reached across his desk for the tape dispenser. He pulled off a strip about 3 inches long and began rolling it around between his fingers, over his fingers and eventually into a little ball that he continued to play with for about 20 minutes. His office is a large one compared to many professor's dwellings on campus. From one end to another, the room is about 15 feet square. Fifty-five shelves, each about 1 foot deep and 2 feet long, line three walls holding manilla folders stuffed with papers, books stacked in rows along the back of the shelves and more books stacked in front of those. His desk is beige metal that looks like a fifth grade teacher's desk. It supports one picture frame, a phone, the tape dispenser, a stapler, five books, and an inch-thick stack of papers. The desk takes up at least half the room. Mauldin leans back in the only splash room -- a burnt-orange chair -- and continues to roll the tape around in his hands. While his office resembles a library, there is no hint of the stale, acrid mustiness that often permeates such rooms. His office smells neutral. Shortly after they married, Sherri was transferred through Radio Shack to Utah. While he was here, Mauldin figured he might as well go to school. He attended Weber State where he studied English, history and sociology, and then brought his bachelor's up to Utah State to get a master's degree in American Studies. Mauldin will graduate from USU with a doctorate in international development, gender and criminology. When he goes on to teach at a small-scale university, Mauldin said he will make it a priority not to assign useless homework or have time constraints on tests. He insists students prove they've learned something by doing the work. One assignment in his Methods class is to devise a method of study and then write a paper describing the method and how it did or did not work. Tests also don't prove anything when there is time limitation, he said. "Does that mean you know it better because you can write faster," he asked. Mauldin also changes characters with his students. He wants them to recognize him as an authority figure so that they'll accept his criticism of their work easier, he said. Some students call him "Professor," others call him "Mauldin," and one calls him "Coach." "Whatever works for them," he said.
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