At the moment there is much debate about the sexual harassment of graduate students by university professors. You can read about Jason Lieb, who just stepped down from the University of Chicago, and Geoff Marcy, who did the same at the University of California at Berkeley. Both left their posts amid flurries of complaints by former graduate students and colleagues that the men had allegedly harassed, abused, and in one case, raped, graduate students. Few are defending these men.
But in other cases, the situation seems less clear-cut. The University of California-Riverside fired English professor Rob Latham in January of 2016, according to Inside Higher Education, “over alleged violations of the university’s sexual harassment and drug and alcohol use policies.” Debates raged on the American Association of University Professors “Academe” blog and other websites that featured the story, often focusing on the propriety of student-professor relationships in the first place. On one side, folks have argued that policing relationships between graduate students and professors infantilizes graduate students. On the other, folks have argued that the power imbalance in such relationships can blur the lines of consent.
I have my own story to tell. You might call it a story of blurred lines, perhaps, but the lines weren’t blurry to me. I was terrified that I would be kicked out of my graduate program because a professor wanted a sexual relationship with me and I turned him down. After I turned him down, after his wife found out he was after me, after rumors started in the department that I was trying to seduce him—I thought for sure that my career was over.
I’m lucky. I managed to get help from outside of the department and graduate without anyone standing in my way. The professor quickly moved on from me to start sleeping with a former undergraduate. Last I checked, he still had tenure.
I have one undergraduate degree and three graduate degrees. That makes me terminally educated. This is a story about one of those degrees. I will be vague on purpose to protect as many people as I can—including the professor’s own family. This story takes place in a town with a university in it, one that I attended. The town could be Durham, Baltimore, Greensboro, or Chapel Hill.
The very worst part of this story is that it really could be any one of those towns: I have a similar story from all of them. In each of these towns, at each of these institutions, a professor I thought believed in me as a student, as a thinker, as a human, only wanted to get in my pants. Maybe he also thought I was smart—but he definitely wanted to get in my pants, too.
Each time it happened, I had the same terrible feeling when I realized I’d been duped. I had the same terrible feeling when I realized that my professors believed I only had one thing to contribute to the intellectual life of my community, and it had little to do with the intellectual life of my community.
All of the stories are terrible.
The worst of the stories is this one.
During the final months of my academic program, my serious boyfriend and I broke up. Newly single, I was dating, but not seriously. I was focusing on my work, not on anyone else’s feelings.
Every Tuesday afternoon, the students in my program had a standing get-together at a cafe near campus. The cafe served coffee, of course, but it also served booze. Certain professors would often drop by. We graduate students all knew what that meant. They were looking to flirt, to feel young again, to get the student gossip.
I believed, hubristically, that I was above that sort of flirting. I believed I could see through these professors’ nonsense. I was a very practical person, very direct, very plainspoken. Sometimes very bitchy. Usually, I was right.
But I had a weakness. I didn’t want to be studying what I was studying. I wanted to be writing novels. I write novels now, but I didn’t know then that I could. I thought I needed a “real job.” I thought there was such a thing as a “real job.” So I’d chosen a track that was more practical. At the cafe on Tuesdays, the poets sat together. The novelists sat together. And I sat alone at the bar, writing my novel and drinking Wild Turkey.
One Tuesday, a professor sat down next to me at the bar. I didn’t know that this professor, with his speciality in fiction writing, would be able to charm me. I still believed I was beyond being charmed.
He ordered, gesturing at my glass. “Whatever she’s having.”
The bartender poured the Turkey, neat.
“Well.” He assessed the beverage with admiration. “She’ll be having another one. On me.”
He didn’t introduce himself. Didn’t need to. Even though he wasn’t in my area of study, he was still a senior member of my department. I knew who he was. He wrote books for a living. His job was to do what I wanted to do more than anything.
I set down my pen and finished the first glass of whiskey, pulling the second one closer. He lifted his in a toast. “To Tuesdays. And new friends.”
“Isn’t that a little over the top?”
“Maybe.”
He wasn’t physically attractive. Not in the slightest. He probably thought he was cool. He was charming, though, and he was smart. He was also a good writer—I’d been to his readings. Most importantly, though, he wanted to hang out with me. Not with the fiction kids sitting at their table. With me.
I made an error that many a university woman makes when a male professor pays attention to her outside the classroom. I believed he wanted to talk to me because he found me smart and interesting.
After our toast, we talked about breakups. I realize, now, that this part of the conversation might have raised red flags for some people. But we’d been talking about writing and work, and we were surrounded by other students. There didn’t appear to be any danger. There didn’t seem to be any reason for me to look for flags, red or otherwise. We discussed my recent breakup with my former boyfriend, and he mentioned he just been through one, too—he’d separated from his wife. I didn’t examine his words closely, though, because I wasn’t interested in him romantically. Who cared whether he was married. I certainly didn’t. He was a professor, a novelist. I wanted to learn about the trade.
Starting that day, and over the course of some more afternoons, we became what I considered friends. We talked about writing, the novel I was laboring through with no guidance from anyone—from anyone besides him. We talked about his current projects. To me, we felt like colleagues.
I don’t know what he thought we were.
At the time, I was living in a typical graduate school apartment with three other people. The apartment was little better than a flop-house, and we loved it. It was located walking distance from campus, which is all that really matters. The only thing more expensive than rent in a college town is parking. If this story were set in Baltimore, the area is Charles Village or Homewood; if this story were set in Durham, the area is Trinity Park; if this story were set in Greensboro, the area is College Park; if this story were set in Chapel Hill, the area is Westwood or Cameron-McCauley. You get the idea. Every college town has its just off-campus neighborhoods, its apartments where students cram themselves tight to save money on expenses and, perhaps, to stave off loneliness.
One night, after a departmental event, the professor invited himself back to the apartment. I didn’t think anything of it. I had three roommates. I thought he wanted to hang out with us. It would be just like the Tuesday afternoon café gatherings. What was going to happen?
When we got to my apartment, though, no one else was home. So the professor and I sat in my living room and talked. We ate cheese.
After about twenty minutes, he jumped to his feet and ran to the far side of the room. “Oh my god,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I think that’s my wife outside.”
Through the curtains, the professor had spied the headlights of his wife’s car, parked on the street. “I thought you were separated?” I yelled. To myself, I thought: Where are my roommates? Why is no one here with me? I was distraught about my terrible luck.
“We’re separated, but we’re still living together.” He sounded small. He looked small. And he looked like a coward.
“That means you are not separated, you idiot,” I spat. Then I kicked him out of my apartment.
And then, once I’d locked the door, I started to worry about my future in my academic program.
The next day, a friend told me why the professor’s wife ended up outside my apartment. One of the professor’s students had seen him leave the school event with me. The student had called his wife at home and told her where he’d gone. The caller had speculated about why he’d gone to my apartment. The speculations had been inaccurate, but they’d been enough to send his wife after her husband.
She’d been watching us through the curtains in my living room. For a while. She’d seen nothing, of course, except two people talking. It didn’t matter what she’d seen. His wife was really angry with me. Really, really angry.
The speculations had also started rumors. That I was breaking up a marriage. That I was a seducer of professors. That I was a slut. That I was a troublemaker. And it wasn’t just students that heard these rumors. Other professors did too.
I still needed to graduate and get references for jobs. This man’s colleagues were my gatekeepers. How many of them were friends with his wife? How many of them were angry enough with me to stand in my way?
At the time, I was not angry at the professor’s wife for being mad at me. I would have been angry at me, too. She thought I was breaking up her marriage. I wasn’t, but she didn’t know that. I placed the blame on his shoulders completely—on his, and those of the rumormongers.
And today, I’m certainly not angry at his wife for being angry at me. Since this incident occurred, I’ve gotten married and had two children. I know what lengths I would go to to protect my family.
At the time, though, I was scared of her, just like I was scared of him. I feared for my diploma. I worried that either he or his wife would stand in the way of my graduation and job prospects afterward. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what they would do to me.
The next day, while I was out of the apartment, I got a phone call from one of my roommates. “Something weird just happened. This woman came to the door with her kid.”
I knew what she was going to say next. I just knew.
“She said, ‘Are you Kate?’ And I laughed, because, you know, we look nothing alike.”
I tried to laugh too, and failed.
“I said no. But it’s like she didn’t believe me. She said, ‘I have children!’ And she pulled her kid in front of her and said, ‘This is my child!’ It was weird.”
I could barely breathe. “Then what?”
“She made me write down a note for you. I have it here. It has her name on it, and her phone number. I think she wants you to call her.”
I asked, “What kind of car was she driving?” I needed to know who was after me.
She didn’t know what I looked like, and I didn’t know what she looked like. It felt like she was an unknown assassin and I was her unknown target.
I was truly terrified—all of my hard work and all of my student loans, they would be for nothing. He had all of the power, and I had none. He wasn’t even in my field, but that didn’t matter—I knew that all of the negative consequences would fall on me. I was an expendable graduate student. He was a tenured professor.
When I should have been working on my thesis, I was worrying about whether I needed to protect myself legally.
When I couldn’t take the worry any more, I consulted an attorney.
The entire time I sat in the attorney’s office, I felt humiliated. The man was very fatherly, and respectable, and kind. And there I was, telling him about this ugly fake-love-triangle that I was caught in the middle of. I was Hester Prynne. I was dirty. I cried. I couldn’t help it. “Can he stop me from graduating?”
“No way.” He sounded very certain.
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” I admitted.
He looked surprised. “Why? Do you honestly think you’re the first student he’s tried this on?”
No, I realized. I did not think I was the first student he’d tried this on.
For the first time since the headlights appeared outside my apartment that awful night, I started to relax.
The lawyer helped me make a plan. He gave me his mobile number, and he told me to call him if either the professor or his wife approached me again. “Let me handle it.” I knew I was lucky that I had the means to consult a lawyer.
I’ve since found out that the professor slept with young female students on a regular basis. I know of two young women from that one year alone. One sexual relationship had ended right before he took aim at me, and one began right after me. The reason his marriage ended was because of an affair with a girl younger than I was. His wife had found suspicious credit card receipts.
But here’s the deal, the worst part of it all: I had been afraid that I would get in trouble for turning down the advances of a tenured professor, for false rumors, as there were many of those. I was terrified, yet absolutely nothing had happened between him and me.
But what if I’d been a little more vulnerable, or a little attracted to him? What if I’d kissed him? What if I’d slept with him, believing him to be separated or divorced? Then what? Would that have made me? Would I have deserved the scorn and trouble? Would I have deserved censure by my department? Would I have deserved to have my own advisors turn their backs on me for hurting their friend, his wife? Would that have made me the seductress, the slut, like the rumor-mongers insisted?
Or was he a predator, like my lawyer said?
Of course he was. A predator with lifetime job security and easy access to prey.
Thank you for sharing, this story really hit home.
Reminds me of this thought-provoking piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/…
“…male colleagues will sputter with gall, appalled by the actions of bad apples so rare they have been encountered by every single woman I know.”
This is an incredibly powerful line
I am so relieved and glad for you that you were able to graduate and that you felt safe enough to write this story. Academia is rotten and the tenure system is a major cause of the corruption. I know that some of the professors I pass in the halls every day (perhaps even professors in my department) are guilty of this behavior. It’s horrifying.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Thank you for this. As you say, there have been a number of pieces on this issue recently, all of which are horrifying and worrying, but I appreciated hearing one person’s experience described with breadth and consideration. As someone starting a PhD program next year, reading stories like this reminds me to be very, very careful in drawing my personal and professional boundaries, but also that, if I find myself in a situation like yours, I am, as your lawyer pointed out, almost certainly not the only one.
Thanks for sharing this. So shameful how common it is to hear stories like this (not to take away at all from the pain of yours).
I was very lucky that I didn’t fall prey to the two professors, known for inappropriate behavior/relationships with students, who seemed to “ping” me for receptiveness. Mostly because I was dense at the time and didn’t really realize what they were doing until I mentioned it to people who warned me off them.
One of those them once assigned us a book of Ted Hughes poems, specifically many of the ones wherein he redirects the narrative of their relationship, commonly assumed to be abusive. I find that suspicious to this day. Grooming can be so awfully subtle.
I was never a professor, but I did attend two well regarded graduate schools (transfered to follow my sig other after one year). Both places had training for graduate student teachers, and both covered possible romantic relationships with students. I was amazed how different they were. The second school was “Never date undergrads, ever. They might not be in your class, but their roommate or friend might, just don’t do it. EVER” The other one was “um, don’t do it when they are in your class”
I am not sure if the first was that much more sensitive, or more likely had come across a problem before and didn’t want a repeat.
He ordered, gesturing at my glass. “Whatever she’s having.”
Is it just me or did everyone else get to this line and immediately think “UGH” in utter disgust?
Actually, for me it was the line just after that one that made my skin crawl:
“She’ll be having another one. On me.”
NOOO DO NOT WANT
Oh she will? Interesting.
In my head, that second drink is going literally ON him. In his face. Abruptly.
In my head now, yes, absolutely.
In the head of my 22 year old self? Even without my own (age-appropriate) romantic entanglements, I’d probably have been flattered. Also, glad to not have to pay to get another drink. I was way oblivious to predator behavior in my late teens / early 20s.
Oh, me too. I’m really lucky no one tried to prey on me, because as a youngin’ I would have been completely oblivious to what they were doing and even when it became obvious would not have known how to thwart predatory advances.
Yep, absolutely. And after all, dudes like this were in charge of making all the films we saw as kids and teenagers, so we were all primed to see it as romantic.
I was more “UGH” at his approval for drinking whiskey served neat. But yeah.
Neat whiskey is great.
The look on a guy’s face who’s not expecting you to be drinking whiskey neat is super funny and then immediately suuuuuuper annoying.
Exactly. And then the grand finale, “a woman after my own–”
DON’T YOU DARE FINISH THAT SENTENCE
UGH. I get this a lot. To the point where I don’t actually want unchaperoned guys to see or hear me ordering, receiving or drinking my whiskey. If only they had an auxilary bar in the women’s restroom. 😛
Ahhh we need to bring back the snug. One of the historic uses was for ladies who wanted a quiet, private drink because GASP LADIES SHOULDN’T BE DRINKING. It would be so nice to just enjoy one’s drink of choice in peace away from the everpresent Professor I’ll Have What She’s Having So I Can Condescendingly Approve Or Explain To Her Why Her Choice Is Bad.
“I like beer and whiskey. I also have a vagina. Your surprised delight at this juxtaposition is less of a compliment than you think it is.”
This is so chilling, and so real. I’m so sorry that this happens.
Thank you for this, and for the lack of equivocation.
A personal digression, I’m currently wondering whether or not I should stay in my field because someone in it took advantage of me when I thought he just wanted me to see him for friendship matters. I never want to see him again but if I stay in this field I’m going to have to, and I don’t want to bring this matter to higher up people because it’ll be a he said, she said situation and I don’t want to have to argue about or talk about it. But there’s no excuse for preying on vulnerable people, and it’s always good to hear that and be reminded of that.
Myself, I’d stay in the field just out of spite. I hope you are able to reach a decision that brings you peace and satisfaction.
That’s the current plan. Just be so fabulous and accomplished and only look on him with disdain.
Living well is the best revenge.
Keep in touch with your feelings, though – you don’t want to stay beyond the pint where you’re actually done just to prove something to some dickhead. Don’t give him more space in your head than you need to!
You’re much more gracious toward his wife than I feel like being as I read the story. Obviously, the blame rests squarely on HIS shoulders, but I get so confused when a woman suspects her husband of cheating and reacts by raging against the “other woman.” Like bringing her child to show you? As if you were involved with him just because you didn’t realize he had children (I realize you weren’t involved with him at all). This was a pattern. She must have suspected him before when he was involved with students before he met you. Why wasn’t she wondering how it was that HE was so forgetful of the fact that he had a family?
I can see how it would be easier to construct a narrative in which your poor spouse was pulled away from you by some sneaky seductress with no respect for families rather than have to admit that your spouse who is supposed to love you and be loyal to you is not acting like a loving, loyal person. But still I always wonder why the anger gets so misdirected. Not that I blame her, exactly. I just get really frustrated by misdirected anger.
I get so confused when a woman suspects her husband of cheating and reacts by raging against the “other woman.”
Because that’s what we’re taught to do. That’s what we’re shown in books, movies, television, heck, even songs. Internalized misogyny is a hell of a thing.
I’d add it’s also because blaming the “other woman” allows the wife to keep the fantasy that if she can just lasso her man tight enough, her comfy world won’t blow up. By which I mean, she won’t have to acknowledge that it was already blown up.
Right. Jolene, please stay away from my man who apparently needs a new belt because he can’t keep his pants on to save his life.
It’s SO good, and SO awful, that song.
Some of those songs are truly great, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMpZcBcKaFc
Sure, and one of my favorites is Charlene Arthur’s Just Look, Don’t Touch, He’s Mine, which isn’t even about cheating, but the women who want to cheat with her man. Talk about subtle misogyny. All women are a threat! Don’t let a woman near your man–she’ll try to steal him! These things almost always portray the woman as the sole guilty party, so that’s what we’re taught to believe. Blame the woman, always. It’s important to acknowledge that we’re bombarded with examples of systemic misogyny and that misogynist songs don’t always come with Giant Anti-Woman Warning Alarms.
Everyone sing along: It’s okay to like problematic things! But don’t defend the content just because you love it!
Someone somewhere needs to study why so many of these songs appear in some genres so very often, and not so much in others.
They tend to be the genres in which women have more artistic control, depressingly.
I had not made that connection before, so thank you. I think.
Yeah, it seems to go for both genders, and it’s super weird. The Skynyrd classic Gimme Three Steps came on the radio the other day, and I was thinking how bizarre it is that the official old-fashioned macho-man response, when you find out your girl is runnin’ around on you, is to go beat the crap out of *the guy she’s sleeping with.* I mean obviously you shouldn’t be beating up anybody; but if your partner is cheating on you, unless you have reason to believe that they’re being coerced, shouldn’t you be talking to them first?
…Actually, even if you *do* think they’re being coerced, to offer support and get the facts straight before you go raring off and assaulting someone.
I think you can get to a point where you don’t trust that HE can behave like a responsible, caring adult, but you can hope that SHE might, if you make this pathetic showing… Like, you might be appealing to her humanity, and not necessarily be trying to get her branded as a slut-demon.
You may or may not have actual rage or anger directly at her (situations may vary)–you might even know that she’s been blind-sided by some outrageous assholery as much as you have been. But you might be in a rage-panic because your life is falling apart, as well as your ability to protect and support your tiny humans, and now that rage-panic is going to spill everywhere.
I may or may not have seen this play out as a kid from both sides of the door…
Yeah, I could see appealing to her humanity or just trying to prove that her husband’s lies about separation and divorce were just that … not that I think it’s a particularly good idea, but I can see why you might do that.
I also think it’s very generous-hearted of Katie not to be angry at her over it, though. What a terrible thing to go through.
Oh, sorry about your position at the door. That was a heartbreak moment from the tale here, the repercussions for the kid dragged as Exhibit A.
rage-panic is so rough, and impossible to direct “constructively” 99% of the time.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.
i’m angry at his wife. i’m angry at the rumor-mongers. i’m angry at HIM above all, as they all should have been too.
Well, I get it a little bit. Then again, the woman my husband had an affair with (and subsequently left me and our three kids for) was someone I considered my friend, too. Though I’ll admit that of the two of them, I felt far more betrayed by HIM than her.
See, that I get. Cause you expect a friend to respect the boundary, and perhaps more importantly, you expect a friend to KNOW ABOUT the boundary. A random stranger though? Almost every time, the cheater told them some version of the above “we’re separated” lie. If all someone knows about your family is what one person has told them, I’d get angrier at that one person for lying than at the person who honestly thought everything was fine.
But yeah, a friend is so, so much worse.
I think that it’s easier to believe that one’s husband is a fundamentally good person who has been led astray, rather than someone who doesn’t respect his wife and their family. Acknowledging the latter would require a huge life change and is terrifying. Denial is powerful. I also think this is related to our society’s refusal to place sexual responsibility on men in general. Dress codes so as “not to distract the boys,” questioning a rape victim’s attire, and the general “boys will be boys” nonsense that absolves boys and men of any obligation for impulse control.
I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry for the professor’s behavior, his wife’s behavior and the (all too predictable) response of your community. You deserved absolutely none of this.
That is a major way in which the Patriarchy reinforces itself. Men tend to consider each other bros, and seducing another guy’s SO is a violation of the bro code, but (a) that’s not necessarily a huge offense, and (b) they are also willing to credit their SO with agency in the cheating. Women are more likely to be all “F that B” and absolve their man of all blame.
Thus in both cases, the woman gets slut-shamed and the man gets away with it, regardless of who is right. The men stay united and the women are divided and conquered.
Excellent dissection of the grooming deployed by a serial predator!
Thanks for writing this. I had a similar experience as an undergrad…messy, blurry, beyond confusing, resulting in pitchforks from all sides the semester before I graduated. It’s comforting to read your perspective. When the pursuer is 39 and a professor and the pursued is 21 and a student, the responsibility falls on the older professional. Not to mention that when you’re 21 you don’t know jack. Happened more than 10 years ago and I still wrestle with what happened.
I am so, SO sorry that you had to deal with that.
Hey professors!
Don’t date students!
DON’T DATE STUDENTS
DoN’t DaTe StuDeNts
Dooooooon’t ddaaaaaaaate stuuuuuuuuuudents!
Don’t! ♪┌| ∵|┘♪ Date! ♪└| ∵|┐♪ Students! ♪┌| ∵|┘♪
Yep. This is it. Never, ever, ever, ever date your student. All you have to do is NOT DO IT. IT IS NEVER RIGHT.
Don’t date your students. Don’t approach them sexually in any way. The end.
ETA: Or any student at your institution, or any undergraduate at anywhere ever if you are a professor.
Hey, while you’re at it, just steer clear of the bars where students hang out, and don’t insist on serving alcohol at student-attended mixer evening type events, and just for fun, also don’t offer your students a ride home out of fake concern that she’s had a bit too much to drink.
Again with the wishing I could apply multiple thumbs up to a comment. Here is my best approximation: +1M
BUT THEY’RE AN OLD SOUL
excuse me while I vomit up my lunch
Professor student relationships should only involve covering one another for multiple murders and/or having very weird boundary crossing internships.
But seriously (and sorry if no one gets my reference above), SERIOUSLY. This comment is A++ perfect.
“I made an error that many a university woman makes when a male professor pays attention to her outside the classroom. I believed he wanted to talk to me because he found me smart and interesting.”
This is the part of these stories that always breaks my heart. I’m sure you *are* smart and interesting. Some predatory asshole faking interest so he can maneuver you into an opportunity for sex does not invalidate that.
This is what resonated with me, too, but if I wrote it, it would be more general: “I made an error that many a woman makes when a male pays attention to her. I believed he wanted to talk to me because he found me smart and interesting.”
Like, just a few days ago, i was telling a male acquaintance how i thought he was rad and could we still be friends once the thing that we mutually do is no longer a thing that we mutually do. His response: “flattered, but taken”. I _actually_ had the wherewithal to respond with “dude. I did not say I wanted to fuck you. I asked if we could be friends. Those are not the same things”. *weeps*
Thanks for telling the truth about this, Katie.
I only ever had one prof who really wanted the students (undergrads) to hang out with him, and NONE OF US DID IT. Even though he sometimes whined in class about how no one wanted to hang out with him.
I honestly don’t know a single woman in academia who, when this subject has come up, said “nope, nothing like this has ever happened to me. Can’t think of a single instance. My entire career, all of the men above me have been 100% appropriate.” #yesallwomen, amiright?
The apprenticeship structure of graduate degrees combined with the godlike power of recommendation letters plus tenure means that there’s a whoooooole lot of room for abuse in academia, and a lot of incentive for professors to close ranks. And even if the other professors know that one their own is a sleazy dirtbag and shun him at parties? So what? That guy stays in a position that people these days would step over their mothers for, and the student, if she’s strong and lucky, gets a permanent shadow in her thoughts to go with the degree.
In searching for something positive in this, I am heartened by how much coverage this is getting and that women are telling their stories. Don’t let them make you doubt that you’re smart and worthy! You ARE intelligent. You ARE interesting. You ARE worth more than your body. THAT’S WHY YOU’RE A GODDAMN PHD. (Insert “MFA”, “MS/MA”, “grad student or candidate” as fits.)
I’m beginning to think I’m an ugly troll person because I have a Masters and PhD and no one has ever hit on me. That said, I am far enough in my career that the opportunity for someone to exert their power over me in a sexual harassment kind of way has since past and now HAHA I get to be one of the women who makes it and is in charge and can thwart these stupid sexually harassing colleagues with a stick. Get ready, future mentees! I’m here to support you!
No, I’m certain you’re not. I was never hit upon by profs/others as well, and we’re both not trolls. I know this.
But the experiences other female student friends made had me reconsider my plans of getting a PHD, so please, go forth and thwart evil colleagues with all your might! Do it for the both of us, and for our less fortunate friends.
I would not take the absence of sexual harassment in your academic life as a commentary on your looks. I think that predators tend to go for people that they think they can easily charm or manipulate, and that they do that regardless of what their victim looks like.
Also, comments like this on articles about sexual harassment are not rare, and I find them pretty unpalatable. It seems disrespectful to reduce someone else’s harmful and traumatic experience into the butt of a joke about one’s own appearance. Also, the construction of the comment (“I guess I’m so ugly that EVEN SEXUAL PREDATORS don’t find me attractive”) makes it seem like the speaker is fishing for compliments and perversely elevates the point of view of the sexual predator. It also puts a weird, pointed focus on looks and appearance, tainting the discussion with that gross patriarchal runoff that we women are so used to dealing with no matter what we’re talking about. I find that off-putting no matter what context it’s happening in, but especially in the framework of a discussion about someone else’s harassment.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to go all mad dog on you personally about this. It’s just a phenomenon I’ve seen quite often when an article’s subject matter is sexual harassment, and this is the article where I finally decided to say something about it. I am legitimately stoked that you are high up enough in the academic power structure that you can support female students and provide a mentorship for them where they don’t have to deal with sexual harassment and its effects. We need more female professors for exactly this reason. And serious congratulations on both the Masters and the PhD!
This is so much more articulate than I could have been! I completely agree. It’s one more facet of internalized misogyny.
We need more women in high places. We need more people being vigilant and vocal, fighting the good fight.
Fair point. I’m rather disappointed in myself that my first thought was I was somehow unworthy of being sexually harassed because of my appearance. Well shit. I hope others hear that there ARE women who do not endure these sorts of experiences in academia. The experience is not universal which was what prompted my reply to the earlier comment.
I’m rather disappointed in myself that my first thought was I was somehow unworthy of being sexually harassed because of my appearance.
Girl, don’t be disappointed in yourself. We swim in this fetid bog of misogyny day in and day out; unfortunately, some of it is bound to get absorbed into the psyche.
# (╯°□°)╯︵ ʎɥɔɹɐıɹʇɐd
I am so glad that you have not experienced sexual harassment in academia, and I’m also really happy that you are becoming part of the system so that someday, hopefully, your experience will be the experience of every student.
I’m so glad that you haven’t had bad experiences like that! I really am, and I’m even more glad that you’re there in a position to help guide and mentor young academics. It’s honestly wonderful to see how many other people have chimed in to say that they haven’t had bad experiences either.
It’s a totally fair critique to me that human reality is rarely as reductive as “all” or “none”, and I overgeneralized with yesallwomen. I’ve just been frustrated by having to explain to other people that it’s not just me or that one time or that one friend, that it’s systemic problem that affects a lot of people. But a lot of people isn’t *everyone*, and I lost sight of that in my statement.
This is amazingly well said, and thank you for it.
I agree with you that absence of harassment has nothing to do with looks–and I respect that it’s not a good comment to make in a discussion about the harassment of others. But, hm, while I support #yesallwomen and think it’s sending an important message that so many people (mostly men) are clueless about, I often have a similar reaction when I see comments saying that EVERY woman has these experiences–maybe I’m not thinking “maybe I’m ugly,” but wondering if I’m clueless? If I’m oblivious to my surroundings? If something is wrong with me that I’m not seeing these things?
Obviously this discussion is not about me personally (or about Hillabee personally), and my questioning of myself is rooted in our old friends patriarchy and internalized misogyny, but….I don’t know. Is a correct response to these comments to think “actually, no, I can’t think of an instance when I’ve directly observed a man above me being inappropriate, but this is a case where my unusual perspective doesn’t need to be heard so I’ll stay quiet and count myself lucky and/or look more critically at the men around me”?
You have a fair point, and like I said below, I’m glad that there are others who haven’t had bad experiences. And I lost sight a little bit of the fact that my/my friends’ experiences aren’t universal, even if they are a part of a larger problem.
I think there should be some space to say “this hasn’t happened to me” because one of the biggest reasons we’re talking about this (at least, the biggest reason I’m talking about this!) is to bring these stories to light. When something happened to me, my first reaction was to wonder what I did wrong to deserve it. What was it about me that brought that on? What can I change about myself to be better? And it was only through talking about it and listening to other women’s stories that I came to know that I *wasn’t* the only one it happened to, that other women had their own stories. That it was condescension or a come-on that I didn’t deserve and didn’t ask for. And the solidarity that came from that was tremendously powerful in helping me move forward. It’s a big reason why I feel it’s important to speak up now–because I want others to know they’re not alone either, and because only if we make enough noise do we have the chance to make some change, too.
But that shouldn’t mean that there isn’t room for other people’s stories. The personal is political here, and we should feel safe to tell our own stories while respecting the stories of others. So I think it’s a fair point to me not to over-generalize and to remind us that the presence or absence of harassment does NOT define whether there is something wrong with any of us. There should be solidarity enough for all of us.
I’m so glad every day that there is a place like The Toast where we can have these conversations, and I think that’s something we can all agree on!
I had experiences like that in high school, but not college or grad school. So my impression is that I wasn’t generally clueless or oblivious, but that my college was relatively good about not nurturing the kind of environment where profs hitting on students is “normal” (the only example of such behavior I remember hearing about was from a recent hire who was immediately fired — which does NOT mean it didn’t happen otherwise, but at least it wasn’t a constant thing the way I’ve heard of in some environments). In grad school l was in a small department that happened to be pretty okay in that regard, and it was a relatively low-pressure field.
100% yes. In the course of my academic career, the two men who served as my advisers and mentors were awesome. My adviser as an undergrad was kindly and paternal (just what I needed as an insecure young adult from out of state) and my grad school adviser pushed me hard but also provided a calm place for me to say what I was worrying about (again, just what I needed).
HOWEVER there was another male professor in my grad school program who clearly had a type: skinny and willing to blindly conform to his views. I do not fulfill either of those characteristics, so he basically ignored me or (when I wouldn’t shut up in class one day) heavily implied that I was a racist.* He treated all the other non-conforming ladies and the male students the same way. Those women that he liked received an inappropriate amount of attention from him, down to having very public conversations with them about their sex lives and “private” parties at his apartment. The women in question seemed consenting, but the entire situation illustrates how difficult it is to be viewed as a STUDENT not a WOMAN STUDENT by many male faculty members.
*I’m white. He’s white. But he thought anyone who disagreed with him was clearly racist. Because as a white man who personified “Ivory Tower”, he was clearly the person society needed to fix its race problem.
I *thought* my undergrad adviser was kindly & we were pals – and maybe it’s true, maybe I should have taken him at his word – but the day it was just the two of up in his office & he asked if he could see my dorm room so he could get realistic detail for his next book still casts a shadow on all the encouraging things he said about my thesis work.
(I said no, it was too messy, and he never asked again. And there was a dorm in his next book, though it was not an important setting.)
ew ew ew ew ew ew ew. Maybe he was being totally up front and honest – MAYBE – but my initial reaction is a series of ew.
I want to go back in time and high five Past You for saying no, and then hug you and take you out for a coffee/beer/whiskey/treat-yo-self because dammit, why the hell is this is a thing we have to do?
(Patriarchy & power is why, but you know what I mean.)
me! i’ve had the stunning luck to never feel threatened by male supervisors (though i have by other grad students), but i’ve certainly witnessed this sort of behavior. i often think about how grateful i am that my relationships with my male professors have been uncontaminated — but then also how incredibly sad it is that that’s a thing i should feel grateful for.
As students we would always warn each other of profs who were sketchy in their interactions with students. So you knew who to avoid at social events.
Fun story. I was a brand new graduate student going to a meeting in another city with a bunch of professors and they were asking how I found the school compared to the others I’d attended before and bla-bla. I kinda got to talking about in small schools there tends to be more personal relationships that develop from professional relationships with power dynamics (or at least that these are more glaring in small universities where socializing between profs and students tends to be more casual) and that this was something that made me uncomfortable. And then this awkward silence settled in. I learned soon afterwards that my supervisor’s girlfriend (and now wife) was a grad student of his and their relationship started while she was a student. How wonderful. I mean it’s a bit different and he’s not a bad guy but still ugh…
Yep. One of my favorite* undergrad professors was married to one of his former undergrad students. When questioned, he was obviously proud of it. There was at least a 20-year age difference. He taught ethics, among other things.
(* He gave good lecture, what can I say)
ha ha ha my parents did this (26 year age difference) please no one do this
I relate to this more than I can tell you. I’m sure many, many other women will too. Thank you for writing it.
I am so sorry that this happened to you. This is on my mind all the time. I consider myself super lucky that I’ve made it to assistant professor status with largely male but also appropriate mentors and advisors. However, lots and lots haven’t. Another geoscientist has compiled an overview of documented cases that I find depressing and somewhat helpful because a lot of people have been fired at least: https://geocognitionresearchlaboratory.wordpress…. though this obviously wouldn’t include anything like this one written here or a lot of the other stories that people are stepping forward to share. I know there are a ton of different discussions going on about sexual harassment in academia (at least based on my twitter feed). I get driven to tears by the defenders of harassers losing their jobs because they were in “promising careers” because fuck their careers. How many careers did they derail and ruin along the way?
In order to function in my field, I have to tell myself that these discussions and discussions in other fields with similar problems, like the NPS/Forest Service thing from a few days ago, are going to do some good. That the hate and vitrol that people are throwing at victims are just the patriarchy in its death spasms.
” I get driven to tears by the defenders of harassers losing their jobs because they were in ‘promising careers’ because fuck their careers. How many careers did they derail and ruin along the way?”
ARGH. SO MUCH THIS. Victims of this type of behavior are forced to leave university, their fields, academia totally–all because someone felt entitled to cross their boundaries.
Careers get derailed even if harassers finally get a clue and stop harassing. I know a junior faculty member who has absolutely zero hope of advancement because the full professor she works with had a reputation 20+ years ago of being a creepy lech. He behaves with the utmost propriety now, but the damage was done years ago.
Thanks for writing this. I’m heading to grad school in the fall and sadly this is a great reminder than men are not to be trusted– I had a great undergrad experience (I consider myself massively lucky) and now I’m at a job where, even though harassment 100% does occur, there’s enough risk of litigation that the company responds pretty well to it, so I’ve gotten out of practice.
I’m so mad that this happened to you, but I’m so happy to see in your biography that you are both an attorney and a writer– I’m so glad that this dirtbag didn’t turn you off of your dream of getting published, and I’m glad that someone with your perspective is practicing law, because we really need more of that in the world.
Thanks – that would be really helpful!
First off, I’m so, so sorry this happened to you. I also wanted to say that a very similar scenario happened to a friend of mine at a law firm. A married partner (twice her age, of course) set his sights on her, she didn’t get involved with him, but he basically let it be known that they were fucking in order to punish her for NOT sleeping with him. It effectively drove her from the firm.
I read a very valuable piece of advice when someone lies that X is sleeping with Y. Don’t get embarrassed and deny it. They’ve handed you the ball – RUN WITH IT.
“Y looooves him some adult diapers and Similac. We haven’t found the right diaper cream/baby wipe combo yet, but we’re still looking.”
“I’ve tried everything I can think of, but when all he’s packing is a cocktail weenie, and even THAT’S not functional most days, one’s options are limited.”
“Would you believe he whimpers ‘No, Mommy!’ and sobs every time he comes?!”
“His fondness for coffee enemas can’t be healthy.”
Make him regret he was ever BORN.
EXCELLENT idea! Remember the episode of “Taxi” where leering dispatcher Louie tells driver Elaine that it doesn’t matter if she won’t sleep with him because he’ll tell everyone she did anyway? She smiles and replies, “I’ll tell them you couldn’t.” Mic drop.
great idea in fantasy, not very practical in real life.
(Also, kinda gross to shame people for their sexual preferences or their bodies.)
So you’d allow someone to lie about your sex life and derail your academic path just because you want to be nice and civilized? Let us all know how that works out…
News flash: it’s not “shaming” anyone if you’re MAKING IT UP. Anyone who tries to punish a woman for not sleeping with him deserves everything she can throw at him. I’m not “shaming” anyone who actually enjoys those practices or who is not well-endowed, because they’re aren’t the issue.
Yeah, it is. If someone taunts a straight woman with homophobic slurs, that’s still a pretty clear message about how you view queer people.
But the main thing is that that kind of response rarely works in practice. If it was that simple to turn the tables and humiliate the more powerful person, and doing so wasn’t dangerous, these predators wouldn’t do what they do. When it actually happens, though, the perpetrators are protected by their position and their power. If someone in a much weaker position tried to challenge that power, they get crushed. Or maybe the reverse-slander “works”, and you manage to humiliate the bloke, but now you’ve got a different sort of reputation and your career is still fucked.
This is just like the fantasy of “fighting back” when someone tries to assault you. It is a GREAT fantasy. We’d all like to think we are Buffy or whatever. But it’s dangerous to think that it’s a realistic option. Women can’t defeat patriarchy by being sassy, and we shouldn’t give survivors more guilt by suggesting they could have seen their abuser punished if only they’d thought of a witty enough comeback.
So I hope this guy eventually just falls in a hole and never climbs back out, but can I take a second to applaud younger you for this?
“That means you are not separated, you idiot,” I spat. Then I kicked him out of my apartment.
Because that is a CHOICE reaction.
There’s a part of me that imagines a type of heaven where all of our versions of ourselves who do badass things when it was hard (or when we could’ve just as easily done something else) are all together drinking wine (or bev of choice) and laughing and high-fiving each other.
My 26-year-old Me who turned Evil Ex out of the house when he had driven many hours in the snow to “return a jewelry box” (read: harass me into forgiving him for being an ass) would be there high-fiving the heck out of the author.
I went to a small, prestigious women’s college. Very dedicated to creating a safe and happy environment for all the attendees.
And my math professor had QUITE the habit of sleeping with lots of undergrads. Some of which were long-term, some of which were not. It was barely a secret, if you could even call it that. We all knew, all told each other to watch for it, not to go to his office hours alone, not to accept his offers of “tutoring.”
At the time, it made 19yo me uncomfortable but I didn’t necessarily see it as wrong. I figured these women who were sleeping with him were doing it because they wanted to, and that I shouldn’t question what they did with their own bodies.
These days, 27yo me recognizes him for the predator he was. That when I thought I shouldn’t be questioning the decisions of these young women, I SHOULD have been questioning what would lead a mid-40s tenured professor to fairly exclusively sleep with 18-21yo women that were under his charge.
I don’t want it to be women’s jobs to be 1000% vigilant against predators, but I do want there to be SUCH a huge change in perception about predators, and effective ways of teaching college-age women what they are.
I was so clueless, and recognize so many ways in which men were creeps, in retrospect. And not vague “that guy looked at me funny once” ways – like, it didn’t occur to me to put a stop to the guy who memorized my schedule and got people to let him into my dorm so he could follow me from room to class on a regular basis.
“That’s just Paul,” I thought. Nope. That’s just a stalker, young Mel, and you had the right to be free of him. I think/hope things in this regard are better than in my long-ago youth, but meanwhile I’ve altered my ‘going off to college’ advice from ‘be sure to take advantage of your prof’s office hours!’ to ‘be sure to take advantage of your prof’s office hours, but bring a friend, esp if he’s male, and never shut the door!’
It is heartbreaking how many times I have had female friends describe a guy’s “weird” behavior to me and I’ve had to say “Uh? What you’re describing? That’s … that’s stalking.”
*siiiiigh*
Haha. I went there too and know exactly who you mean. He really did a number on a good friend of mine. Asshole. Is he still there? He shouldn’t be.
Tried to reply anonymously before, but may have accidentally spoofed someone’s account by accident. Anyway, I initially said I think we went to the same place and I know exactly who you mean, and said asshole is still there (I just checked) and I graduated well ahead of you, so, that is problematic.
But on further reflection, I think we may not share an alma mater so much as a genre of alma mater, in which case, there’s a lot of that going around, which is also problematic. 🙁
I am so SO glad that any of this bullshit passed me by at university, by a huge margin. Not certain if I was socially oblivious or simply not interesting to them – I only had pleasant interactions with my professors, usually related to academic topics. I was the one who bonded with my boss about comics, not get tangled up in relationship dramas.
My friend J., on the other hand, had to switch both her job in academia due to a colleague (who had “fallen in love with her” and accused her of leading him on) and her planned advisor for her master thesis (because the man approached her in a wholly unprofessional manner because he mistook her interest in his lecturs for personal interest and she was afraid to set him right). We shared an office at this job, and we both attended the same lectures by her master thesis advisor, and for the life of me, I cannot say why she was, well, targeted and I wasn’t. Maybe her undisguised intellect, enthusiasm and determination for an awesome carreer in academia marked her out? Maybe they didn’t like my blue hair and deceptive “meh” attitude? I don’t know. But I got serious chills when she told me what has been going on, especially the bits where she insisted she had no other choice but to “be friendly” to them to get an ok post-doc job later on in the department. It made me sick to hear an otherwise brilliant woman say such things.
And that was when I realized an university career wasn’t the thing for me.
This is truly awful, and truly unsurprising, and truly sad. Thank you for sharing it.
Hope Jahren (author of the NYT piece) is currently tweeting excerpts from emails she’s received from men about her article. It’s both highly amusing and extremely depressing. Eg “The most unreported “harassment” is females asking special favors from teaching assts’ or mentors.” Anyhow, follow it at #TearsofBlonde
That hashtag is simultaneously the best laugh I’ve had all week and also so, so descriptive of the actual situation. I want to drive an 18-wheeler over these dudes while hollering “WE ARE NOT THINGS.”
This is such a well written and well thought out piece about something so difficult. Thank you for writing it and for sharing it.
Thank you so much for writing this. I read this with a knot in my stomach. Last fall (so, y’know, seven months ago) I was the student who thought I was in total control of a situation that I’d choose to be in. He’d never been /my/ professor, we were in a social circle together, and he was teaching at a different college now. I tried so hard to convince myself that it was fun, and I was fine, and there wasn’t any manipulation and his interest in me was in ME and who I was (even after he told me that he liked me because I made him feel young and I felt like an escape from his worries. And then told me he was worried I was only interested in him because of my poor relationship with my dad. Why the fuck was I so stupid.)
He tried to justify to me why it was okay for him to date students. He told me he’d been interested in me since he’d met me two years ago. I was 19 when we met! I’m 21 now and he’s in his mid 30s.
Ugh. I’m glad it’s over and I hope things are getting better for you!
Also, you weren’t stupid, you were normal. It is not normal to already know how to spot manipulative, predatory older men when you’re nineteen or however old and encountering them for the first time. Our culture doesn’t give us that information, and that’s exactly why predatory older men target younger women. Don’t blame yourself for being a completely normal young person!
“I was the student who thought I was in total control of a situation that I’d choose to be in.”
This so perfectly encapsulates my look back on the thing that happened to me.
Ugh. I hope you’ve resolved things satisfactorily. That feeling of it being your fault, though? It’s not. It’s not your fault.
This was a powerful article.
When I was about 30 I got a job as a tutor in a university department via a female friend who, although she didn’t work there, knew the department was seeking someone with my qualifications because her husband worked there and had told her they needed another tutor. I applied, got the job and worked there a year before finding a permanent job elsewhere on campus.
The husband occasionally turned up uninvited at my house and got angry when I wouldn’t let him in. He also kept inviting me for coffee. I declined. Eventually her retired, but would still send me messages I interpreted as semi-seductive. They made me very uncomfortable and also very angry. I never told his wife because she was a friend and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I did however discover that he had a reputation for “flirting” with female students. The “flirtations” seemed to be unwelcome and the student flirtees I was aware of felt victimised.
The last time I heard from him he was careful to “remind” me that he had got me the tutoring job. The subtext seemed to be that he believed I owed him for this generosity. I did not respond and have not heard from him since. He had not got me the job. I had the right qualifications, could start at once and passed the interview. The interview was a panel interview. He wasn’t on it that I recall. I earned the job and I did an excellent job, which is why the department was so sorry to see me go.
Reading this article I now feel I should have replied to him and made this clear. But at the time I just didn’t want to have to engage with him or to have a distorted version of this get back to his wife.
Whichever office deals with Clery Act, Title IX, and Equal Opportunity issues on your campus should also have advice and resources.
I, for instance, reported second-hand knowledge of harrassment of female students to my university's EO office, and they were actually really pleased. The ex-Marine harassing said female students disappeared from campus. I'm not saying every experience will be this positive, but it definitely could be something to investigate.
and absolutely add a touch of "morality is a social contract, and very much beneath US"
I don’t have a story about an actual affair, per se, but there was a prof in my department who I have no problem believing would do this stuff if his wife wasn’t so constantly on his ass. He used to get very drunk and inappropriate with the female students at department parties and she would circle him like a hawk, very pointedly separating him from them when necessary. We all knew to steer clear when he got drunk (and sometimes when he was sober)
One time, at a cast party (he was a drama prof) I was sitting with my boyfriend at the time and he had his arm around me. I was wearing a skirt above the knee. The prof came up to us, and ran a hand over my bare knee. “This skirt is very nice.” He leaned over to my boyfriend, gave him a lecherous look, and very audibly said, “Nice work!”
I was so uncomfortable I had to leave the party.
Is your friend Buffy Summers?
I know just how you feel. One of my most frustrating, humiliating moments as a professor was having to tell a student being harassed by one of my male colleagues that her only remedy would be to avoid my colleague outside of class — don't be alone in his office with him — and if that wasn't enough, to drop his class. Yes, there was a policy and code of conduct, and yes, he was violating them. But I knew from past experience that the department chair and the other tenured male faculty would take no action, and that the senior female professor in the department would say that this was just one of those experiences female students had to learn to manage. It was so, so, icky. Even now, 20 years later, I replay that moment, unable to believe that I couldn't find a better solution for her.
Thanks for this piece, especially its honesty and clarity. I’ve watched this story unfold repeatedly over many years from both sides — as a graduate student and as a professor (and even, as a child, a faculty brat, overhearing the faculty wives gossip) — and I’ve never understood why universities don’t make it a condition of continued employment that professors refrain entirely from intimate relationships with students who take their classes and pursue degrees in their programs.
It’s not a difficult concept — most professions have an explicit professional ethics against secondary relationships with people with whom you already have professional relationships. In short, you are prohibited from engaging in sexual behavior with any individual over whom you hold professional power (the power of granting grades, the opportunity to praise/scold/ignore in front of his/her peers, the power to promote or derail a graduate student’s professional path, etc.). Your job, in relation to your students, is to provide a safe space in which to learn that subject matter in which you presumably have expertise — and any secondary relationship by definition undermines that safety and thus is contrary to your students’ best interests, no matter how old or how agreeable they appear.
Students aren’t sexually available to you, period. And if you treat the freedom to make sexual overtures to female students as a job perk, or an entitlement of your position, you get fired. Full stop. Even in the case of apparently consensual relationship between professors and grad students relatively close in age: In regard to anyone whose dissertation committee you serve on, who will be eligible for the fellowships you help disperse, or who will need a glowing letter from you to get their first job, you may not engage in a sexually intimate relationship — at least until you no longer hold institutional and professional power over them. For the student in your class or program, informed consent is not possible, no matter what you and she believe. If you believe that desire impels you to violate this prohibition, quit your damn job first.
The vast majority of sexual overtures are made by male professors to younger women, and if that has something to do with fragile masculinity or the discrepancy between a tenured professor’s power in the world of his university and his/her relative cultural powerlessness in the world, then that is a good reason to get therapy. But an unacceptable reason to violate your agreement to act in your students’ best interest.
Maybe faculty members need regular continuing education on this topic, much as lawyers (the profession with the highest rate of alcohol and drug abuse) take mandatory courses on recognizing and prevents substance abuse. Seriously, if every three years professors were required to take a refresher on informed consent and when it exists (with case studies, so that we all understand the nuances), perhaps we could abolish the periodic institutional blindness that comes over university departments between what chairs and deans think of as “scandals” but which we ought to term ”violations” if not “crimes.”
Universities’ refusal to see faculty sexual misconduct as a serious problem is simultaneously a failure to keep female students physically safe and to reassure them that they are entitled to a safe learning environment. When the university circles its wagons around accused professors, it’s saying that providing a safe environment for female students is not important — at least when compared with protecting the jobs of male faculty. The whole experience, then, becomes, from the student’s perspective, an object lesson in female powerlessness.
If you’ve been a woman in academia, it will be no surprise to you that at least some of your male colleagues believe, (no matter what they say) that you’re innately inferior and that your behavior should publicly acknowledge of their superiority. What IS surprising is that even as female professors gain in number and status, even as we have family leave for both men and women and departments refrain from holding meetings after three so that all faculty, male and female, can get their children after school, even as we trust that our male colleague really IS a feminist fellow traveler, the institution as a whole permits and privately condones the exploitation of female students. Even now, there are places where female faculty must tell female students, if they’re being frank, that the best thing they can do about a male professor’s advances — best in terms of completing her course of study and pursuing her career, as well as her own emotional equilibrium — is to avoid the offender and refrain from pursuing remediation.
They have to say this, because they know from experience that the university tacitly believes that sexual harassment of female students is nothing more than an unpleasant experience along the lines of losing your meal card or dropping your expensive textbook in a puddle or having a fight with your roommate. Oops! They’re sure women students will find a way to deal with faculty sexual harassment the same way they deal with having their bodies publicly rated when they pass in front of frat houses, with the rapes which occur every semester off the path from the dorms to the library, and with the roofies in drinks at frat parties. The bottom line is that the safety and welfare of female students simply isn’t considered important to the institution as a whole, not when compared to safeguarding the school’s brand, faculty reputations and alumni donations. And that’s just sick.