Jodi Dean: Sex With Students

A good post and discussion--a controversial subject in academia, its good to see some thought applied to the issue:

Sex with Students
Jodi Dean

I mentioned yesterday that I just finished Francine Prose's The Blue Angel. One of the best elements of the book is the way that it captures the dynamics of a small liberal arts college, the suppositions that guide faculty life, suppositions that are supposed to go unstated: no one enjoys reading undergraduate work; spending any time with students is a chore. These suppositions underlie another set of politically correct notions: students should be praised and encouraged--but not criticized; all students are vulnerable and in need of protection from more powerful, predatory professors; female students are particularly vulnerable to the sexual urges of male faculty members.

All of these assumptions powerfully inform life in small liberal arts colleges. As general claims, they are also all false. Moreover, they should be rejected for the ways that they continue to infantalize college students, preventing them from seeing themselves as adults responsible for their own education and choices.

In the novel, a creative writing professor becomes infatuated with one of his female students. The infatuation begins with his admiration for her writing. As the novel unfolds, there is sexual tension, and seeming desire, between the two. After asking the professor to drive her to a nearby city so that she can buy a computer, and then asking him to come to her room offer moral support while she puts the computer together, the student initiates sex. Soon thereafter she asks the professor to take her novel to his editor in NY. When it seems that the editor isn't interested in reading the manuscript, the student tapes a conversation with the professor that suggests an exchange of sex for favors and, with this evidence in hand, brings forth a sexual harassment suit. The professor's wife leaves him and he loses his job. The student, meanwhile, gets her novel published. The end.

To Read the Rest of the Post and the Comments