Professor-Student Relationships: How Close Is Too Close?

[Eigen]

Because I think it's something worth putting out there, and this seemed like as natural of a place to discuss it as anywhere else.

By and large, this community "dies" from year to year, with only a handful of people that stay on. So yes, it would be possible to just wait for the current crop to move on, but after the events this week, I think it's worth pointedly addressing.

[DontHate]

It's been fairly thoroughly addressed at this point. I think we all hear you.

[thestage]

maybe I just come from the rougher parts of the internet (omg I typoed this as 'hinternet' I should have just kept it I'm using this portmanteau for the rest of my life), but I don't even know what you guys are talking about in regards to hostility. the closest thing I've seen is rems' bout with capslockia last page, which near as I can tell came from the ether.

and I was here last year and I see no real difference between now and then. maybe there are just some people who think any argument is terrible. I dunno.

Edited December 12, 2012 by thestage

[DontHate]

i feel like i'm in summer camp being lectured after a food fight

[rosales]

maybe I just come from the rougher parts of the internet (omg I typoed this as 'hinternet' I should have just kept it I'm using this portmanteau for the rest of my life), but I don't even know what you guys are talking about in regards to hostility. the closest thing I've seen is rems' bout with capslockia last page, which near as I can tell came from the ether.

You might understand if you spent some more time reading different posts on this forum that go back a few days. I don't want to draw out any comments that have been argued over elsewhere, but rest assured that the capitalized outburst was the least of it. In any case, it seems to have abated. Perhaps unfortunate errors in judgement were realized.

Edited December 12, 2012 by rosales

[DontHate]

oy gevalt.

[Imogene]

Wow a lot happened here today. Are you guys ok?

But, on another note, if I can step out and be part of the assessment crew, I think a positive take away from this is that people clearly care about this forum. They care about what they get out of it, how it impacts their feelings -- and I think folks care about each other on here.

But with that care comes other strong feelings -- like anger and defensiveness, especially when a threat to the "good stuff" is perceived.

And when you build an online community, you have to expect that folks start acting like a community -- you can't expect community members to forget who individual posters are or what they have posted previously when they start new threads or post in different threads. These aren't just one-off "posts" -- these are discussions and even relationships.

And I'm just talking about our online behaviour and community dynamics here -- I'm not even touching the online/off-line identities thing.

[DontHate]

[Eigen]

I realize people can't just forget what happened, but there's a difference between forgetting and quoting an argument from one thread into a completely unrelated one.

And giuyuighjjhf78f67f- no one is scolding you. Posting every other post with your exasperation at this discussion really isn't necessary. If you aren't interested in the discussion, you don't have to read it.

[DontHate]

It was originally my discussion topic, and it's gotten kind of far from the point. I just don't feel like there's any need for more of this.

[Eigen]

You don't generally retain ownership of a topic or where it goes on a discussion board.

And you've made it quite clear that you, personally don't see the need for any more discussion.

I guess I just don't see why, if you don't see the point in the discussion, you keep participating in it. Frequently.

[DontHate]

I have one word for you: boredom

[DontHate]

In an effort to return to the topic: has anyone ever had a crush on a prof? If so, how did that play out? Anyone ever dated a prof or TA? Ever been a TA/lecturer/prof and had a crush on or dated a student?

[rosales]

I don't know why this topic is being downvoted. I've seen very similar discussions take place in academic journals, such as Critical Inquiry, by respected scholars. It's interesting and important.

To answer the question, yes I've had a crush on a professor. I said nothing and nothing happened, as it should have. I believe relationships between professors and students, be them undergraduate or graduate, are fundamentally wrong. The imbalance in power belies any notions of consent on the less senior party. Also, if something in the relationship goes wrong, perhaps general unease or anger over being spurned, a professor has innumerable ways to professionally crush their sweetheart. No bueno.

Edited December 12, 2012 by rosales

[ktwho]

When I was about 20--and taking grad courses--one professor often invited me and others to events. But once, he called me at home and left a vmail to go to a cultural event. Just the two of us. In a different city. I didn't respond, he wasn't offended, and I earned A's in his classes for several years afterwards.

Oh--let me mention that yes, he was single and more than twice my age, but he'd also fathered a child with a former grad student the previous year.

Moral of the story--use common sense, people!

[DontHate]

" he'd also fathered a child with a former grad student the previous year." Umm damn. How did he manage to do that with no career repercussions? That seems like pretty questionable behavior

[rosales]

" he'd also fathered a child with a former grad student the previous year." Umm damn. How did he manage to do that with no career repercussions? That seems like pretty questionable behavior

Tenure.

[rising_star]

In my MA program, there were three professors that married their former grad students. In the most recent of those (the only I knew about in any detail), she was originally his advisee, he went through a nasty divorce, and then they got closer. She switched to having another advisor for her research. He's a full professor with tenure and she now has a nonacademic job in the same city.

[gilbertrollins]

I think what everyone's concerned about here is the "young impressionable female advisee or undergraduate meets the older, wiser, and hip-er professor" stereotype. And I think that's narrow, saying very little about the intelligence and agency of young women, and very little about the ethics and motivations of older men. Innocent little girl / dirty old man binaries don't get us very far here.

Outside direct conflicts of interest, I do not see the problem with people finding romantic or sexual partners at work, whether in the academy or not.

[DontHate]

I think what everyone's concerned about here is the "young impressionable female advisee or undergraduate meets the older, wiser, and hip-er professor" stereotype. And I think that's narrow, saying very little about the intelligence and agency of young women, and very little about the ethics and motivations of older men. Innocent little girl / dirty old man binaries don't get us very far here.

Outside direct conflicts of interest, I do not see the problem with people finding romantic or sexual partners at work, whether in the academy or not.

I couldn't agree more

[NowMoreSerious]

I think what everyone's concerned about here is the "young impressionable female advisee or undergraduate meets the older, wiser, and hip-er professor" stereotype. And I think that's narrow, saying very little about the intelligence and agency of young women, and very little about the ethics and motivations of older men. Innocent little girl / dirty old man binaries don't get us very far here.

Outside direct conflicts of interest, I do not see the problem with people finding romantic or sexual partners at work, whether in the academy or not.

Edited December 20, 2012 by ImWantHazPhD

[DontHate]

I want to preface this by saying that I'm not trying to be a troll, so please don't read this that way. I feel like many people take things on this forum far too personally. I am merely trying to state facts. Keep in mind that I don't know any of you, or anything about your personal lives, so there's no way that I could be seeking to insult you with my words.

Academia is heavily male-dominated. And female sexual currency is largely determined by physical attractiveness. In our culture, much of a woman's physical attractiveness is governed by the appearance of youth. Therefore, logically, sexual tensions and ambiguously romantic situations are far more likely to arise between a professor and a student if the student is an attractive young woman (because statistically the professor is more likely to be a man).

Anecdotally, from my own experience and the experience of my friends, this seems to be the case. It also seems to be a cultural truism that older women are not as drawn to younger men, and vice versa, as much as older men and younger women are drawn to each other. We seem, as a species, to be conditioned to pair off in a certain way: older men with distinguished careers match up with younger women with many fertile years ahead of them, due to a mutual attraction between both parties. So, in a way, academia is the perfect breeding ground (pun intended) for this kind of relationship. Which makes it a place rife with sexual tensions -- much more than your average workplace.

I know that these assertions may sound sexist, and I'm not saying that they're in any way fair to either gender. They just seem to be true, and they feel true to me. Anyone else have thoughts about this?

[gilbertrollins]

Why is it sexist to note that people have sex, and often times with people they work with? On balance I don't think that's a problem. Producing and environment where people systematically deny those tendencies and frown on it only serves to limit the transparency that is necessary to adjudicate legitimate conflicts of interest.

[gilbertrollins]

Female sexual currency is largely determined by physical attractiveness. In our culture, much of a woman's physical attractiveness is governed by the appearance of youth.

Women don't prefer attractive and youthful men? Do women that prefer older men prefer them because they look like Grandpa, or because of their ostensible (and often times questionable) existential maturity?

To your first statement there:

"Sexual currency" imputes some sort of materialistic and economistic corruption onto women's sexuality. In less pretentious terms: it's an allusion to prostitution. I suppose I could write a very long and upset diatribe about why I don't like the usage and think it's uncharitable to both womens' and mens' framing of their relationships, but I won't. Gender scholarship tends on my (very small) reading to thrive on this sort of out-of-control cynicism.

And your assertion that the currency is predicated on looks implies that men have basal, one-dimensional sexualities. In less pretentious terms: all men want is a fuck. Again I think that's not just uncharitable, but empirically incorrect.

As it happens, a majority of the aggressive male / coy female binaries originated very recently in Victorian England. Yet these of course have been anachronistically painted on the rest of history, have fueled an outrageous public discourse that makes both men and women untrusting of one another, and have even been anthropomorphized into sociobiology. In this view then, "in the beginning" early hominids like the rest of the animal kingdom ran around raping their way to genetic proliferation, a situation which putatively has only made minor improvements over 10,000 years of civilized history, and only really since 1st wave feminism cracked the DiVinci Code in the 1970s.

[DontHate]

Women don't prefer attractive and youthful men? Do women that prefer older men prefer them because they look like Grandpa, or because of their ostensible (and often times questionable) existential maturity?

While women may indeed be attracted to youthful men, they don't seem to prefer them as long-term partners. Most opt for men who seem older, more established, more mature, with more resources etc...

In response to your whole post: I wasn't trying to give a full, accurate genealogy of gendered sexual preferences, merely stating what I perceive about what people tend to like today. Maybe "currency" was the wrong choice of words, but physical attractiveness definitely seems to be a major factor in who men want to date. And most men find it perfectly acceptable/preferable to date someone younger than themselves, whereas women tend to do the opposite. If you think this isn't true, then feel free to say so.