EAST LANSING, MI -- Professor John McCarthy has always seemed a bit odd to Kyle Hillman, but nothing could have prepared the Michigan State University freshman for what happened Monday afternoon.

McCarthy was walking his Calculus I class through a practice problem about 1 p.m., finding a particular derivative, when he asked his students whether a potential solution he found was correct.

"Someone said it looked right, so (McCarthy) said, 'Thanks, I need some reassurance sometimes,'" Hillman recounted. "'Math is all about questions and answers. And Steve Jobs invented the computer, but what do computers do? They ask questions and we answer them.'"

McCarthy pronounced Jobs' surname as if it rhymed with robes, Hillman said. That kind of deviation from the subject matter was not out of the ordinary.

"He always goes on tangents like this that don't really make sense to the math that we're learning," Hillman said. "He said this four times in a row. That's what he does."

But what happened next was out of the ordinary.

"He started talking about his colleagues and how they're all actors," Hillman said. "He said, 'It's all an act and none of it's real.' Then he ran out of the classroom."

Hillman, 17, said McCarthy pressed his face against the window to the classroom from the hallway, saying, "I'm not yelling. See, I'm not yelling." Then he ran back into the classroom, put his head in his hands and began crying.

"He said, 'It's all just an act, we're all acting,'" Hillman recollected.

McCarthy then began shouting and swearing about God and religion, Hillman said. The professor pulled out his wallet and removed a $1 bill, waving it around. After that, he ran out of the classroom again.

Hillman said he and about half of his 30 classmates left after that.

"He ran out of the classroom and some people walked by -- they didn't seem to be part of anything -- and said, 'Class is dismissed, you can leave,'" Hillman said, noting he had never seen the group before.

"I left at that point, because it was pretty terrifying."

Hillman said McCarthy remained clothed as half of the class exited. Within minutes, however, the professor had stripped down and continued his rant down the halls of MSU's Engineering Building, according to multiple witness accounts.

The class is Hillman's first with McCarthy, but he said he picked up quickly on the professor's quirkiness.

"Since the beginning of the semester, he seemed off, he didn't seem right," Hillman said. "He didn't seem like he was always with it."

Hillman said Monday's was the first class of the semester to which McCarthy didn't wear the same outfit: a yellow T-shirt with the word "Alaska" in print, surrounded by an eagle, a canoe and a mountain range, as well as a loose pair of blue jeans. McCarthy wore formal clothes Monday with "very casual dress shoes," Hillman said.

The class meets from 12:40 to 1:30 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Hillman said McCarthy's tangents, like the one Monday about Jobs, happen frequently in class.

"Earlier in the class (Monday), he made a mistake ... and said, 'I'm sorry. I say sorry a lot. People say I say sorry too much. I should probably stop saying it,'" Hillman recalled. "He basically does that on pretty much everything."

Students initially reacted with laughter as events unfolded Monday afternoon, Hillman said. But that changed quickly.

"When he walked out of the classroom, people started laughing," he said. "When he ran back in, we calmed down. When he didn't seem to come back ... people were kind of worried and scared."

Campus police placed McCarthy in protected custody and transported him to a local hospital. He will not be charged with a crime, police said.

A Sparrow Hospital spokesperson could not confirm nor deny whether McCarthy was taken to the downtown Lansing hospital.

McCarthy has served on the MSU faculty since 1985. He holds a bachelor's, two master's and a doctoral degree in mathematics, according to his MSU faculty profile.

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