The Chronicle of Higher Education (c)
Date: February 24, 1995
Section: Opinion
Page: B1
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When Students Make Sexual Advances
By David R. Pichaske
Recent bans on professor-student relationships are founded on two
assumptions: that sex between teachers and students generally is
initiated by experienced male professors with naive female students
and that a power imbalance between vulnerable students and powerful
faculty members renders even consensual relationships essentially
non-consensual. Like mantras, both assumptions owe their power more to
frequent chanting than to thoughtful analysis.
One of the many things about sex that the Neo-Puritans who support
such bans don't understand is that many sexual encounters are
initiated by female students, even the most sheltered of whom are less
naive than their protectors seem to believe -- especially if "sexual
encounter" is understood to include gestures, dress, suggestive jokes
and stories, body language, and deliberate "accidental" touching. Such
behavior traditionally has been understood to be cognitively ambiguous
-- that prolonged stare, that racy joke, that arm around the shoulder
might be invitations, but they also might not be. Recently, such
gestures have been redefined by harassment theorists as unambiguous
indications of sexual interest, and therefore objectionable, and
therefore proscribed. But to be fair, if such actions are defined as
sexual overtures when initiated by professors, they should be defined
as sexual overtures when initiated by students.
Among the non-traditional students on our campuses are some mature
women who view signing up for a course at the university as one way
for a single mother to meet eligible men, not excluding her professor.
The campus is seen as one step above the bar circuit, one step below
the church choir. To younger women exploring their sexual powers, a
male teacher can offer a substitute for father in working through
Electra complexes.
My own experience, which reaches back to the 1960's, has been that
sexual interaction is more often student-initiated than
professor-initiated. While I'm no hunk and while I don't want to
overgeneralize, I can say that in the late 60's, the 70's, and even
the early 80's, I was "hit on," more or less explicitly, about twice a
month. Now that I'm in my 50's, expressions of interest come maybe
once a month.
Some invitations have been relatively ambiguous: drinks, lunch, a
picnic or drive, a party, casual late-Friday-afternoon visits to my
office. Others have been quite direct. Some of the milder ones
include: "I know you're married, but would you like to just fool
around?" and "I think you're divine; my husband doesn't want me; every
night I fantasize about making love with you."
Somewhere between game and earnest, half a dozen female students have
proposed marriage. Three have requested children. One former student
offered a trip to Europe. In the mid-80's, one well-heeled, divorced
older student showed up with a contract in which she promised to
provide me with $30,000 a year, plus room and board, in return for
sex. (This is absolutely true; I'm not exaggerating.)
I say this not to boast and certainly not to complain. Like most
harassment, it sounds more serious in the telling than in the fact.
And my experience does span 25 years. Yet the record should show: A
good deal of what the harassment police would define as sexual
attention goes from female to male, student to teacher, female
colleague to male colleague.
I've conducted no formal poll of either teachers or students, but I
did once muse to a group of male and female colleagues, "If we asked
how many female students have fantasized or even initiated sexual
relationships with male teachers, we'd probably get a pretty high
number." Every woman at the table agreed with my statement.
One's response to sexual overtures varies, of course. It seems to me
that any sexual invitation, however subtle and whether it is male to
female or female to male, renders the tenderer quite vulnerable and
requires enormous courage; an appropriate first response is not
righteous indignation and a written report to the harassment officer.
To their credit, male teachers generally have remained tactfully
silent regarding the sexual propositions they have received, refusing
to report them despite the dictates of some current harassment
guidelines.
Still, love can be true and sex satisfying despite imbalances of power
between the participants (and the number of couples between whom no
power imbalance exists is probably zero). In Evolution of Desire
(Basic Books, 1994), the psychologist David Buss asserts that while
men universally seek youth and beauty in a partner, women in all
cultures "seek providers -- men with money, power, maturity,
ambition." So secretaries marry their bosses; coeds fantasize about,
date, and sometimes marry their teachers. Off the top of my head, I
can list a dozen or more student-teacher marriages, including my own.
Not one of them has ended in divorce -- a remarkable record and a good
indication that student-teacher relationships that lead to marriage
are worth risking the wrath of the Neo-Puritans.
Of course, there are numerous real dangers in student-teacher
relationships. First, and most obvious, any student willing to trade
sex for a grade, recommendation, or other form of advancement may,
once that grade is in the registrar's office or the letter is in her
file, terminate the relationship. This may seriously damage the
self-esteem of her naive and befuddled professor, who finds himself
"in the fool's position of having love left over which I'd like to
lose. ... candy ungiven after Halloween," as William Gass put it in
his short story "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country."
Teacher-student love affairs can be fraught with pain, even for the
professor who is said to have all the power. The grace, expertise,
and, yes, power that are his in a classroom can evaporate all too
easily in a bedroom, revealing him to be slightly inept, slightly
aging, slightly overweight -- no longer attractive to the student. Or
he may find himself acting half his age: working out in the gym,
playing Sting tapes on his office boom box, trading his wing tips for
a pair of black Nike Airs. There's no fool like an old fool, as the
saying goes -- but how long can he keep it up?
Conversely, the student may take the relationship more seriously than
does her instructor. In 25 years of teaching, I've known of only one
actual sex-for-grade trade -- and then it was only the professor who
considered it in that light. The student initiated the relationship,
but while the professor was thinking quid pro quo, she was thinking
true love. The lady was not easily discouraged. She haunted my
colleague's office for hours, days, weeks. He tried being polite; then
he tried ignoring her; then he tried insulting her. Nothing drove her
away. It was a very bad scene.
A student who misreads a professor's response to her overture later
may charge the instructor with harassment. As a pamphlet published by
the Minnesota State University System put it: "A university employee
who enters into a sexual relationship with a student or subordinate
where a professional power relationship exists is warned that, if a
charge of sexual harassment is subsequently made, the student or
subordinate may assert that the relationship was not one of mutual or
voluntary consent."
Another problem, of course, is the potential jealousy of other
students, administrators, and colleagues -- ranging from the frumpy,
middle-aged female colleague scorned for a 22-year-old coed to the
19-year-old rocker whose girl dumped him for her sociology professor.
Even unmarried faculty members are subject to complaints by unfriendly
students, colleagues, and administrators. Using the "hostile working
environment" clause of sexual-harassment law, individuals not involved
in the amorous relationship can and do file complaints and lawsuits
citing "improper student-teacher relationships" as part of a hostile
atmosphere.
In one 1993 case, a student who was involved in an affair with a
professor (and had registered no complaint herself) found parts of her
freshman composition describing the relationship published in the
Minneapolis Star Tribune. She'd been caught in political crossfire
that had nothing to do with love.
And what of the relationship that works better in bed than in class,
presenting the teacher with the painful choice between giving the
lover an undeserved A or the C she might deserve? Similar hard
choices, of course, confront all faculty members who teach children of
colleagues, spouses of friends, famous or soon-to-be-famous athletes,
or students whom they just happen to like -- but the choice is no less
painful for being common.
Finally, there is the hassle, which we've seen a perfect example of
recently in the case of Donald J. Silva at the University of New
Hampshire. Although he recently was reinstated, Mr. Silva was
suspended from teaching for refusing to undergo counseling after he
was accused of harassing students with sexually suggestive comments
during a classroom lecture. It can take only an insensitive remark or
a racy metaphor to energize an enormous campus bureaucracy to
investigate every detail of a teacher's life (and his students'
lives). With even the most marginal complaint, everyone gets
interviewed; journals and diaries may be subpoenaed and read;
colleagues are questioned about lunchroom remarks. It's a mess.
Standard legal procedure frequently is not applied. Administrators,
governing boards, and even faculty-union officials are perfectly
willing to cashier a few cranky professors (replacements by the
hundreds clamor outside the university gates) if doing so will protect
the university's reputation or purse. Nor can an accused teacher
expect much support from colleagues anxious to protect their own jobs.
Such a threatening, clearly hostile environment should be more than
enough to make any intelligent and prudent male teacher spurn coeds'
advances -- and maybe even request "men only in my classes, from now
on, please."
David R. Pichaske is professor of English at Southwest State
University in Minnesota.
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Copyright (c) 1995 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.
http://chronicle.com
Title: When Students Make Sexual Advances
Published: 95/02/24