Let’s see if I can manage a smidgen of coherence today; I’m knee-deep in odd projects, the miscellany that descends upon all professorial folk at semester’s end, and my caffeine threshold is seriously out of whack. I think that the last week of April will find me pumping bonobo adrenalin directly into my forebrain. I haven’t let him log all that time on the Wii for nothing.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m more than a little bit fascinated with the keyword searches that bring people here. Now that academic job market activity has largely subsided, more and more visitors arrive here as a result of various formulations of the same question: “under what circumstances is it permissible to get jiggy with my professor/student?” They also inquire quite often about “naughty narwhals,” but I’m not prepared to go there. And I may never be.
I’ve also engaged in ongoing dialogues with a couple of readers regarding their own sexytime scenarios. As always, individual dynamics–matters of policy, of ethics, of emotion–should be the sovereign terms when it comes to considering such matters. I’m more than happy to share with you my idiosyncratic perspective, but if you actually need that perspective…well, godspeed.
I’d like first to address one common question that has stemmed from my own avowed bachelorhood, since a couple of kindly folk have written me and urged me to keep that tidbit on the down-low. That kindness dovetails quite nicely with another common question that has come my way: how prevalent is professorial prurience when it comes to canoodling with students? (Folks playing at home should note that the last sentence constitutes a “full house” in alliteration/assonance Yahtzee.)
I plumbed my memory pretty thoroughly, and I was able to dredge up eight cases of clear-cut professor/student sexual relationships. That number may strike some as a little high (a little low if you live on the West Coast), in which case I should also let you know that I set some pretty restrictive parameters. The connections in question involved professors and students in direct vertical relationships–either profs and their current students, profs and their advisees, or profs with some transparent role in the supervision of the student in question (as an oral examiner, dissertation or thesis reader, or teaching mentor). Most universities consider such relationships verboten. Of these eight connections, five involved married men and one involved a recently-divorced feller (I can’t be certain if the relationship with the student predated the divorce); one involved a single feller, and one involved a gay couple. For the comfort of the parents out in the blogosphere, I should also note that my computation features the faculty of seven separate institutions.
That’s not an especially strong defense of the integrity of single folks in the professoriat, I know (given that married folks outnumber singles by a ratio of about 4:1), but I do think it may help to puncture the bubble that would suggest bachelors represent an especially predatory population. The folks who’ve urged me to keep mum on the subject–and I would emphasize again that I recognize that their counsel comes from a real concern for my welfare, professional and otherwise–reckon the perception of singles rightly, I think, but I think it’s also fair to infer that a wedding band does not guarantee the wearer’s virtue.
The second batch of curiosities that interest me today center on matters of tactics and timing. That might sound a little crass and calculating, but given that the prompt “should I sleep with my prof for a good grade?” has appeared in my keyword bin three times in the past two weeks, the phrase “tactics and timing” sums things up quite nicely. Let us take, for example, the situation of Stella, one of my correspondents.
Stella (and I’m both anonymizing here and writing with the express written permission of my correspondent and Major League Baseball) hearts Stanley. In many contexts theirs would be the heartwarmingest of narratives. Stella, aged 29ish, is a member of that common crop of career academics that tabled a variety of desires in pursuit of her Ph.D. and a tenure-track job. Stanley is a youngish twentysomething in her seminar on Modernist poetry (that’s totally fabricated, by the bye, as is her age; I anonymize at the 12th-grade level), and they felt an instant connection. Stanley gets Stella’s jokes about Ford Madox Ford, and he was the only one who could follow along when she went on a strange, unrelated tangent about Klute; Stanley regularly stops by her office hours, and their conversations cover a variety of mutual interests and passions; when they share spaghetti, Stanley routinely nudges the last meatball toward her with his nose. Okay, I made that last part up. Probably.
Some readers might be appalled for a variety of reasons; some might be pulling for a Stella/Stanley love connection replete with fireworks and ice cream cake. Please feel welcome to project at your leisure. What interests me about the scenario, however, is Stella’s fear that she’s becoming swept up, that she might act on the associated impulses in some untimely way–an especially compelling apprehension, she knows, since she can’t be perfectly certain of the depth of Stanley’s affections. She feels that the reasonable thing to do is wait (and it’s worth noting that Stella began writing me on the subject in late February, when she had two long months in front of her), since Stanley will be all but finished with his English major in May (and he can avoid Stella’s classes next year if he so chooses), but exercising self-restraint represents a daily challenge.
Stella’s predicament involves all sorts of variables I’m in no position to respond to, though I hope I’ve been of some help to her. (I’ll also note that she’s read and approved of the parts of this post that pertain to her; she has come to accept, I think, my limitations.) I will, however, commit to at least one position: I just don’t think there’s any responsible, ethical way for a prof to approach a student who’s currently under his or her care. That’s trebly true when evaluation is at stake: no student should have to wrangle with advances that might influence course or program outcomes, for better or for worse.
That’s certainly not the most compelling cri de coeur you’re likely to come across when assessing the ethics of such situations, but my correspondence and keywords tell me that such pressure is among the more prevalent concerns that attends the question.
Believe me, I’m somewhat human myself: I appreciate how difficult it can be to deny desire, especially on those rare occasions when a prof (and let’s face it: profs are an odd lot) feels a deep connection to a man or woman who just happens to be a student. When a prof acts on such desires in the midst of an ongoing academic relationship, however, he or she fundamentally changes the nature of the student’s experience, fouling both the evaluative process and the integrity of that felt connection itself. Color me old-fashioned, but students probably deserve the chance to sound their own desires without the prospect of tangible benefits or the threat of repercussions muddying the existential waters.
And to those students asking that pointed question themselves–”should I sleep with a prof if doing so will secure me the grades I crave?” I reckon you can guess my answer to that.
