"... and now they’re abusers of power avant la lettre. I suspect you can barely throw a stone on most campuses around the country without hitting a few of these neo-miscreants. Who knows what coercions they deployed back in the day to corral those students into submission; at least that’s the fear evinced by today’s new campus dating policies. And think how their kids must feel! A friend of mine is the offspring of such a coupling—does she look at her father a little differently now, I wonder. It’s been barely a year since the Great Prohibition took effect in my own workplace. Before that, students and professors could date whomever we wanted; the next day we were off-limits to one another—verboten, traife, dangerous (and perhaps, therefore, all the more alluring)."
So begins Laura Kipnis, in a piece titled "Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe."
For the record, I do not think professors should have sexual relationships with students, and therefore I support that particular "Great Prohibition," but I think Kipnis's writing is interesting, and that paragraph hits on something that had been pretty obvious for a long time: It's hard to ban something that should be banned when to do so casts aspersions on the marriages of many prestigious professors.
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The married ones would be the good guys. The professor takes the financial risk in the normal order of things with no fault divorce.
So a Professor needs help grading tests. That can be so romantic.
A feature in the movie "Boyhood" and from the get go you could tell bad things will happen.
We had several of those scenarios at my school, a small liberal arts college in a small town. Many of these marriages came from relationships that happened in the 1970s; by the time the 1980s rolled around, it was already getting to be a no-no. It's tough to square the power relationship and the biological imperative, especially if you're in a place with limited options.
Never trust your College professor. Or never tryst your College professor. One or the other.
I am Laslo.
Professor - do you think it should be strictly forbidden by written policy? or simply something one should just not do?
Anything that casts aspersions on the prestigious can't be all bad.
Wow, Kipnis is hilarious. That is very good writing indeed.
Yea, I think that paragraph highlights the problems with Great Prohibition.. I think people should naturally thwart such impulses and it is not hard. In spite of it, if it happens, face the music -- have a scarlet letter pinned on you. It is like people dating or having affairs with married men or women. If one does not start it, it does not happen. Why have such 'Great Prohibition'?
I had an English Professor who, evidently, was big into bukkake. She would go into her office with a half-dozen male students, then come to the classroom glazed with ejaculate and recite Eliza Cook's "The Old Armchair."
As the class went on it was hard not to be distracted by the slow oozy dribble that eased its way down her forehead. Students would leave boxes of Kleenex on her desk as a hint, but to no avail: this was part of her method.
As an aside: it was better to take her courses in the colder months; the classroom in hot weather would begin to smell funky.
I am Laslo.
Lefties are quick to legislate on morality.
I don't feel sorry for them. I thought they were pervs as an undergrad and I still do.
I think it should be forbidden by the ethical sensibilities of every professor. You need to treat your students equally, not play favorites. No student should get special access to the professor through being physically attractive or by offering physical pleasure to the professor. The very idea is loathsome.
Policies and punishments are for professors who lack personal ethics. It's shameful that a policy should be needed.
Professor, how do you feel about engaging in relationships with former students?
Spending several hours a week being a charismatic lecturer can be very attractive. Add to that knowledge and support during office hours, and the general prestige of the position. It's not surprising that some students seek out relationships with professors.
Should this ethics ideal be applied to gay Catholic Priests? Think before you answer.
No student should get special access to the professor through being physically attractive or by offering physical pleasure to the professor. The very idea is loathsome.
What! you are now making it all one-sided. I have for a fact a story where the professor pursued the student and eventually married her. She was Iranian and just too beautiful for words and didn't have to lift a finger to make herself attractive (maybe it was the nose job, heh). She did very well because of that connection -- she is a tenured prof because of him somewhere, and without him she would not even have got a PhD, let alone become a tenured prof.
People in power positions should completely abstain from it. And profs are in a power position.
But for the general populace, the most telling sentences in the piece:
"No. 1 on the list was: "Do not make unwanted sexual advances."
Someone demanded querulously from the back, "But how do you know they’re unwanted until you try?" (OK, it was me.) David seemed oddly flustered by the question ..."
When a teacher loves a student
Can't keep his mind on nothin' else
He'd trade his tenure
For a good thing he's found
If she is bad, he can't see it
She can do no wrong
Turn his back on his fellow professor
If he puts her down
I am Laslo.
The word 'prestigious' is the problem. Goodness, come back down to earth. Everybody poops.
And from the reflection on these prestigious professor / student marriages, it seems that sex with a 20 something collegiate hotty is a broader desire than admitted.
But the lefty campus elite don't actually care about this; demonstrated by Bill Clinton's free pass on Lewinsky.
Maybe the slutty students should stop trying to advance themselves by tempting the poor, vulnerable, prestigious professors.
These student brides were all raped into submission. They just haven't realized it yet.
When the divorce attorneys hook the victims up with the rape counselors, it will become obvious to them.
If the left isn't banning something, somewhere, it doesn't know what to do with itself.
My favorite college professor married one of my classmates. They lived happily ever after. Obviously this as in the 70's, before Party officials told you who to fall in love with.
"When I was in college, hooking up with professors was more or less part of the curriculum."
So, when you've self-identified as a slu-, er, sexual adventurer, does that disqualify you from participating in campus sexual abuse tribunals?
"You need to treat your students equally, not play favorites."
It's pretty clear that the author has other priorities which compete with academic ethics.
The bukkake teacher was most likely making a silent point about the relentless oppression of the Patriarchy.
As a woman, men are always symbolically ejaculating all over you: a woman can stand Strong, but there will always be jizz in her hair. Not always metaphorically.
Or she simply doesn't like to swallow. That could be it, too.
I am Laslo.
"What! you are now making it all one-sided."
No, I didn't.
"The word 'prestigious' is the problem. Goodness, come back down to earth. Everybody poops. And from the reflection on these prestigious professor / student marriages, it seems that sex with a 20 something collegiate hotty is a broader desire than admitted. But the lefty campus elite don't actually care about this; demonstrated by Bill Clinton's free pass on Lewinsky. Maybe the slutty students should stop trying to advance themselves by tempting the poor, vulnerable, prestigious professors."
I don't like the way you are acting like you're perceiving an angle that I missed. This problem was completely recognized and referred to in my post. If I was too subtle, I assure you that I completely see this point.
This is why I stress the special access of the chosen student. There is unfairness to all the other students. Similarly, in the Lewinsky situation, it doesn't matter how much Lewinsky knew what she wanted and pursued and snagged the President of the United States. You have to think of all the other underlings who didn't get to leap up in the hierarchy when she got her special attention.
The issue certainly is not one-sided.
I worked with a lady, Sandy Cline. After several unwarranted promotions, she was known throughout the work place as Sandy Re-Cline
Can't help but be reminded by this thread of seeing Professor Donald Sutherland's ass when he came out of the bedroom after sleeping with Boon's girlfriend in Animal House.
Having students perform bukkake on the female teacher obviously favors the male students. I guess the female students could argue for the right to give the teacher Golden Showers, but is not the same thing and we know it.
I am Laslo.
"Can't help but be reminded... [of] Animal House."
Hmm.... now I'm thinking of Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School." He's the student, of course, having a romance with a beautiful teacher here at the University of Wisconsin/Great Lakes University. That's argument enough for the "Great Prohibition," no?
How about other forms of asymmetrical warfare? May the provost ask out an assistant professor at the same college? May the department chair pal around at night with a faculty member in her department? When a grad student is also a paid lecturer, which role should take precedence in a dating situation, student or faculty member?
I hate these zero tolerance policies.
How about this situation: 24-year-old assistant professor and his 21-year-old student are attracted to each other. When she is no longer his student, but before she graduates, they start dating, fall in love. After she graduates, they marry, have children.
I see nothing unethical or inappropriate here. You know, sometimes love does happen.
I want to point out that the 'bukkake' teacher did not fellate her male students: all projections from their anatomy were accomplished by their own hands.
Everyone knows a teacher performing fellatio on six students at a time is wrong.
Under most circumstances.
This, of course, is different with hot librarians wearing glasses.
I am Laslo.
Professor: I really didn't think you missed anything.
Guess I see these insular campus problems as self fulfilling ridiculousness. Including prestige. The desire for, and the assignment of.
I'm just finding it hard to feel sorry for the 'prestigious'. Seems they have fostered the overkill of the current environment.
And although real lives are affected by all this, I must then apologize for viewing current campus issues in general as eye rolling comedy.
Bill Powers, a young professor at Texas Law School who taught while I was there, married one of my law school contemporaries not long after my graduation in 1980, and they're still married, apparently happily, in 2015.
Powers is now the embattled president of UT-Austin, and he's the focus of outrage -- which I emphatically share -- regarding the systematic and long-term rigging of UT-Austin's and UT Law's admissions criteria to admit objectively less qualified kids of important people (like state lawmakers of both parties).
Before this controversy, I don't recall hearing anyone criticize Powers for marrying a student, nor anyone criticize the student for marrying Powers. (There may well have been whispers I didn't hear, but -- I didn't hear them.) Knowing her slightly, it's inconceivable to me that their marriage had any roots in a coercive or otherwise inappropriate abuse of their respective positions at the law school; indeed, I feel insulted on both their behalves by that suggestion, and especially on her behalf.
Yet now that Powers is under fire on the admissions scandal, I've seen more than one very public mention of Powers' marriage to a student, with the implication -- never backed up -- that there was something unholy or wrong about their romance. And that now includes some classmates and other UT-Law grads of whom I would have expected better critical reasoning and more personal compassion, despite their outrage about the admissions scandal.
I'm more in a voltage position than a power position, especially in the dry winter months.
For a college professor planning an on-campus bukkake session it is vitally important for her to select a group that refects the diversity of the student body.
As such, you obviously need a black guy or two -- muscular types with dreadlocks would be good. Also: a Native American, if you have one.
And you might as well include that short Asian guy with the thick glasses and buck teeth.
I can't help it if the last guy sounds like a stereotype: it is what he looks like.
I am Laslo.
I don't see why colleges don't follow the same ethical standards that the vast majority of other government entities or private corporations do --
No dating people in your chain of command. Period.
It doesn't stop affairs from happening, but it also allows for disciplining people by transfers or even firing.
What the couple involved often dismiss or ignore is that their affair causes morale problems due to perceived favoritism.
So. what's the basis for this "problem"? Inappropriate "influence" due to a student/teacher relationship? Or, simply bias against age disparity?
Is there really "influence" if the Art History major is banging a prof in the Physics Department? Age-wise; do 40 and 50-year-old professors have a better chance of scoring 20-year-old 'tang, than other 20-year-olds? Seriously?
Student/teacher flings that result in good or even bad marriages are the exception, I suspect.
Young people are often drawn to taking a walk on the wild side and 'older' faculty members confronted with so much truth and beauty in the workplace... well, sometimes they just wanna have fun, too.
If the subject was inter-racial or same-sex relationships we'd be expected to keep our noses out of other people's lives. The Campus Sex Police State is about as kinky as it gets.
There's something erotic about power imbalances for both the man and the woman......In the case of a teaching assistant working for his PhD for an absurdly low salary, he needs the advantage of every power imbalance he can get. I can see the point of a prohibition on dating a current student, but where's the harm in asking out last semester's student.
The inside of America's trousers has been the Wild West for too long. Its time we tamed that last frontier.
All romantic and sexual activity should be subject to a permitting process and governed by a nationally standardized code enforced by inspectors.
And the inspectors should wear a leather policeman's uniform and carry a vibrating billy club.
I finally read the article and it is pretty good. One comment.
" He says she sent friendly texts in the days after and wanted to meet. She says she attempted suicide two days later, now has PTSD, and has had to take medical leave."
Obviously, this professor was unacquainted with The Hot Crazy Matrix.
She was well above the line on the crazy scale.
In loco parentis should go away.
Everyone is an adult here.
Lecturers are hired to lecture, just as singers are hired to sing and plumbers are hired to fix toilets.
Nobody cares if singers have affairs with members of their audience.
BTW, I think in university grades should be 100% by examination and end of term papers, and these should be graded by departments and not by lecturers.
My father's father married a woman who had been his 3rd grade student. Was that wrong? Neither had married another person before they wed. He had moved several states away while she grew up, and started courting her long after she had grown up. It makes a great story for those of modern squeamish sensibilities.
Toy
Bob Boyd said...
"And the inspectors should wear a leather policeman's uniform and carry a vibrating billy club."
Don't forget the cucumber.
I am laslo.
Isn't the real problem here that we have a system where being a professor is perceived as a powerful position which must be regulated?
This policy will not be equally enforced so it shouldn't be adopted in the first place. No university will discipline a top faculty member just as no employer will discipline a top performer. The rules will only be enforced against the expendables.
This isn't about female professors marrying students, but male professors. Like most modern feminism, it perpetuates the bullshit that men are predators and women victims of the dainty flower type. Why do women go along with this shit?
"Don't forget the cucumber."
Don't forget the cucumber permit.
If you intend to use a cucumber. specifics must be included on your plans at the time your application form is submitted so the appropriate fees may assessed.*
* In some jurisdictions the higher cost of organic cucumbers may be offset by federal subsidies. To receive these subsidies additional forms are required. For more information and to download these forms visit www.cucumberintheass.gov
Freedom from someone else's religion or moral philosophy.
Nobody cares if singers have affairs with members of their audience.
I guess I missed where singers were awarding educational credits towards degrees to audience members.
"This isn't about female professors marrying students, but male professors."
Quite a bit of the article was about female professors and male students.
She was also describing her own adventures with professors when she was a grad student.
Blogger rhhardin said...
I'm more in a voltage position than a power position, especially in the dry winter months.
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University professors should not personally be awarding anything to students. They should not be grading the way they are now doing it in the US. Its a juvenile system.
Maybe school administrations are going about this backwards.
Instead of saying nobody can sleep with the professor how about any of his students can sleep with him. Equal access.
Call it Nut Neutrality
The real power imbalance is between bloggers and their commenters.
That's the sort of abuse that must be stopped...
"Maybe the slutty students should stop trying to advance themselves by tempting the poor, vulnerable, prestigious professors."
Some of this is behind the stories of Army sex abuse with male sergeants sleeping with female recruits and privates.
It's hard to know what fraction is abuse and what fraction is favor seeking by the underling.
how about Professors married to several students (in succession) ?
I agree with Althouse. When I was in grad school the prof was living with one of the female students. She got 100% in that course. No repurcussions.
He was at least 25 years older. I wonder who was using whom, if either was. That's an egregious case, but who can say what happens in other cases? Is that A- earned?
"No student should get special access to the professor through being physically attractive..."
...at Castle in the Air Community College.
You can put your D in my C so my F can B an A
I can assure you the politics of this works both ways.
I'm a Finance prof at (as they say) a large midwestern university that often plays Wisconsin in sports.
I recall a particularly attractive young woman (constant yoga pants, leather boots, big blue eyes, long wavy blonde hair) who received a couple of very poor grades about 5 years ago in Corporate Finance. Near the end of the semester she came up to see me in my office and put on quite a show, concluding with an open-ended supplication for a passing grade.
I still recall the astonishment on her face when she realized it wasn't working. Priceless!
Of course, funny thing is, it was definitely working! I just didn't change her grade.
Happy ending: she took the course again, did much better and my wife, daughter and I will be attending her wedding in few months as she made a point to stay in touch.
That's what they call "growing up".
It's like actors who date or have an affair with their personal assistants, nannies, agent, career manager, a past director or gardener. Most likely it'll be a disaster. But rarely is an actor, if ever, having a relationship with their financial adviser.
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