Ms. Mentor

Notes on a Potential Scandal

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines First Person The Rejection Letter I Wish I Could Send If we had to make up a story for why you might be interested in our position, then interviewing you was too risky. Peer Review Hirings and Firings The new law school at the University of California at Irvine gets some high-profile hires ... and other appointment news. Ms. Mentor Does This Make Me Look Old? Advice on how best to dress, and act, when you look as young as your students. Career News Gone, and Being Forgotten Why are some of the greatest thinkers being expelled from their disciplines? Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

Question: A dear friend is in her first full-time teaching job at a community college. She is also having an affair with one of her students. He's 26, so it's not illegal and "not against the rules," she keeps saying. Since the fall semester is over and he's no longer in her class, she says I shouldn't object -- but I do. I think she's starting her career in the worst possible way.

Background: Her degree is from a university where the writing professors have been sleeping with graduate students for years. One serial offender is department chairman now, and openly living with his latest young thing. But those are male professors, and the rules are always different for women.

Is there any possible way to talk her out of this? She is teaching a heavy courseload of writing classes, she doesn't know very many people in her new location, and I think this affair is her only source of fun. I don't want to be a pill, but I don't want to watch her torpedo her career, either. Oh, also, she's a poet, if that makes a difference. I suspect it does.

Answer: Some poets are romantic, some are pigheaded, and some are saintly. In short, they are like most people, full of trembling emotions and inconsistent principles that collide and sweat against each other -- especially on such loaded topics as "sexual harassment" or "fraternization" or "true love at any age." Even nonpoets can be pilloried as heartless prudes or hopeless romantics.

Ms. Mentor chooses to be a fuddy-duddy.

She thinks teachers and students shouldn't touch each other with anything stronger than their own minds.

Underaged students should always be protected, especially now that female teachers and their boy toys are becoming media sensations. Notes on a Scandal is an elegant, chilling film about an art teacher and her teenaged protégé. Meanwhile, in real life, there is Mary Kay LeTourneau, the teacher who went to jail for statutory rape, and then married the young man who, at 13, had fathered her child.

Ms. Mentor remains unmoved by the usual excuses: "I was lonely" or "I'm a free spirit, and rules are for fools" or "I couldn't help myself. S/he's so hopelessly hot."

Ms. Mentor believes that students deserve to be taught, not groped -- but some artistic souls, mostly men in certain avant garde and very high-tuition programs in woodsy areas, have always viewed students as their "playground." Yet what seems like paradise to certain philandering men can be a pit of jealousy, grief, self-loathing, and wrist-slitting, especially for vulnerable young women -- the ones most likely to be poets. ("A woman who writes feels too much," wrote the gifted, suicidal Anne Sexton.)

Perhaps there's no such angst going on with your friend (call her "Miranda," since she needs her rights explained). One could argue that Miranda is generously bringing to a community college the free-loving mores of elite, artsy colleges. But vulnerable students at Artsy U. usually have family money, access to therapy, and ways to escape from painful emotional cesspools. They can graduate or drop out, leave town, and start anew.

Miranda's young man probably does not have such escape hatches. He presumably lives in the community, has family and friendship ties -- a chorus of people to cheer, judge, and snicker about his romance with Miranda. There may also be awkward and serious class differences which can't be ignored.

But Ms. Mentor digresses, since the young man in this scenario has not asked for her advice. Nor has Miranda, who should have. Professors who indulge in sexual dalliances with students are much more condemned nowadays. And while Ms. Mentor finds the double standard abhorrent, she nonetheless believes that female faculty members in that situation would be much more harshly criticized than men. Dignity and discretion matter more. Lawsuits and scandals loom. And after a bitter breakup, even academic nerds are sometimes driven to stalking, threats, middle-of-the-night phone calls, and brutal confrontations in fast-food restaurants.

You, as Miranda's friend, are the one who asked for the magic words to get through to her. But those in the throes of passion rarely see clearly. You can recommend books and movies and counseling. You can suggest that Miranda sublimate her desires into frenzied, excited grading of student compositions. (Yes, Ms. Mentor knows that won't work.)

Ultimately, you're faced with what it means to be a good friend. Can you watch your friend head toward what looks like a wildly exciting train wreck -- minus the flashing lights, crossing gate, and shrill whistling?

Even the impeccably wise Ms. Mentor is often not heeded. Until she began publishing her pellets of wisdom, she was often ignored or accused of bad motives. ("You can't possibly know how I feel, because you're a rational person.") But academics who will not listen will often read. Print makes advice more serious, possibly even sage.

You might pass on Ms. Mentor's advice to Miranda: Stop now, before you embarrass yourself and create a trail of rumors that will bedevil you for the rest of your career. ("Helen," who made a habit of seducing teaching assistants years ago at her Big Ten school, still hasn't been promoted to full professor, despite a huge publication record . . . perhaps because people whinny and blush when her name is mentioned.)

There are few secrets in academe, and a reputation for sexual harassment can keep you from getting another job, or grants, or a relatively serene life. You may be addicted to the excitement, but it is a far, far better thing to regard it as literary material. Countless poems have been wrung out of emotion recollected in tranquillity.

Yes, scholars do "date" and marry students. Some have successful long-term relationships. But some end very badly.

In the short run, you may have to decide whether you can be Miranda's confidante. Sometimes tough love means leaving the scene until the storm stops swirling. If her life makes you ache and shudder, you have to protect yourself first.

And, yes, there will always be people who consider you a hopeless meddler and busybody, trying to force your ideas on others, as if you have superior wisdom.

Ms. Mentor doesn't listen to them, either.

Question: Can it possibly be true that superstar Proust scholars, as in Little Miss Sunshine, wrangle over sex and prize money just like normal academics do?

Answer: Smirk.

Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor's mailbox brims with soul-satisfying as well as savage epistles. Academics, like civilians, grow snarly in winter, frantic in spring, and wildly witty in the summer. She looks forward to all.

As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes pontifications, queries, rants, and gossip on matters academical. She rarely answers letters personally, and cannot be rushed. All identifying details are smudged, but you are always free to believe that your nemesis across the hall wrote that evil missive about you. S/he certainly wanted to.

Ms. Mentor directs eager readers to The Chronicle's forums as well as to her archive and her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com

Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Chronicle.