What seems to distinguish this case from others like the one in Florida last year is the way that L affirmatively contradicts her version of events, as opposed to the more usual evasions and qualifications and assertions that it was "a misunderstanding" & etc.
Not being a lawyer, can any of unfogged's resident pettifoggers enlighten me about what kind of additional trouble (relative to whatever would have happened if just shut up) L is in for if his version is found to be B.S.?
That riveting description link isn't working for me.
I was an undergraduate in philosophy (and religious studies) when Ludlow was teaching there though I never took a course from him. There were other professors I heard stories about and one I had some crazy interactions with (though not of the sleeping around variety). However I don't recall anything about Ludlow and I probably would have since most of my friends were grad students in the philosophy department then and I lived with a couple of them. I'll have to ask them if they remember anything.
Is it working for anyone else? It opens for me, but it was originally sent to me, so maybe I have permission or something.
3: It works for me. It certainly is riveting.
Works for me too. Maybe you need to be logged into Google?
Crap, I keep getting "too many redirects." Maybe when I try from home.
It's wigging out for me too, Barry. Hovering over it looks like it's trying to throw a
and extra nonsense in there that's throwing it off. Try this one.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9etoTst5TwXOWNGZXgxZ0N5U0k
An extra break html code is what I meant.
I signed in and it works, thanks Minivet. Signed out again and tried gswift's link which worked for me as well, thanks.
An eighteen year old with the kind of crazy non-platonic crush that would conceivably make her lash out in the form of a false sexual assault charge would almost certainly provided some sort of evidence of that, e.g. e-mails and/or conversations with friends and acquaintances and/or electronic communications with the prof. Absent anything like that I'd believe the student.
My most intense reaction to this is that IL civil procedure is weird. I've never seen an answer in a format like that.
Some may remember, from the other place, that Ludlow is the philosopher who claimed that the Fibonacci series doesn't exhibit exponential growth and, when challenged on this point, said that what he meant was that the fibonnaci series grows less quickly than 2**x. He also approvingly cites Ray Kurzweil.
None of which is really relevant to the allegations.
I was on the professor's side until: "Defendant admits that he and Plaintiff fell asleep on his bed fully clothed and on top of the sheets."
Wait, no one is intoxicated in any way, she's been propositioning you, telling you she's "down to fuck", you've said you would not have sex with her, and yet the two of you fell asleep next to each other on the same bed?
If this is a 400 sqft. apartment, then okay maybe, but if there was a couch in the apartment anywhere, then something about this story is very fishy.
My god, 15K a quarter for classes like "philosophy of cyberspace" and then professor "Urizenus Sklar" can try and bone your kid. That's some top flight education right there.
12 was my main reaction too. That's the most substantive answer I've ever seen.
My most intense reaction to this is that IL civil procedure is weird. I've never seen an answer in a format like that.
I got thrown off a couple of times when (I think) it said "Plaintiff" when it should have said "Defendant." For example:
Defendant admits that Paintiff asked him, "do you think I'm hot" to which Plaintiff responded, "is that even a serious question."
12 was also my immediate thought. Does Illinois law not permit general denials?
Come on, urple, that happens all the time. He was probably so fatigued by resisting her advances that he passed out, then she assaulted him. Tragic, really.
Because I am old and tired, I'm more interested in the Nazereth case, where negotiating attempts were met by the college's withdrawing an offer. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/13/lost-faculty-job-offer-raises-questions-about-negotiation-strategy
Defendant retreated to his daughter's farm in a remote area, where a violent incident prompted him to ponder themes of exploitation and redemption.
Is 21 an allusion to that Coetzee novel I couldn't get more than five pages into?
20 is kind of shocking.
Holy shit
he's on his way to another tenured position at Rutgers University--his fourth such position in 12 years.
Philosophy majors, now would be the time to open a bottle or a vein.
There was very little about that evening that the professor should have convinced himself was appropriate.
22.1: It is a reference to a Coetzee novel, which I will assume is the one you couldn't get more than five pages into.
18 is a perfectly standard typo -- a mistake, but that I see all the time.
17, 19: I actually do substantive answers all the time; more than half of what I do is a type of special proceeding where the answer is a meaningful pleading. But we still do general admit/deny/deny knowledge and information sufficient to form a belief to the petitioner's allegations, we just make our own substantive averments afterward.
I was on the professor's side until: "Defendant admits that he and Plaintiff fell asleep on his bed fully clothed and on top of the sheets."
Why did you start off on his side?
23: It's worth noting that Rutgers hired him before these allegation were public. There's no reason to assume that they knew about these allegations.
Prof seems supaguilty, no reason for them to have been going to the art museum together in the first place
18 is a perfectly standard typo -- a mistake, but that I see all the time.
No, "Paintiff" is a term of art in Illinois law.
1 was my reaction too. I wouldn't have expected say the time that he dropped her off the next morning to be a point of factual dispute.
15, 24: Yeah, even giving the professor the benefit of the doubt on all the credibility issues, which I'm not naturally inclined to, the story as he tells it sounds like the college should have disciplined him for it. Once one of your students is making a pass at you which you're nobly turning down, don't take her home with you and get in bed with her.
31: Right. If you go to view art, as these two did, and then complain, you're the paintiff.
Why did you start off on his side?
Because his story seemed more credible than hers, up through that point.
Northwestern investigated this and gave out some genuine punishments that go well beyond a slap on the wrist (though arguably still insufficient). This indicates to me that he's almost certainly guilty.
what the fuck is this bullshit
Defendant admits that during the evening he and Plaintiff attended three art shows but denies that any were in a "remote location." Defendant, instead, affirmatively states that they were all in the city of Chicago.
35: The fact that he went to an art event with a student who kept saying she was DTF seemed like good judgment?
"story revealing good judgment" =/= "credible story"
(And by "credible" in 35, I only mean that he was referring to more objective facts--email exchanges and other hard evidence (photographs, etc.)--that corroborated his story. Whereas her allegations were basically all her own narrative. At least up through that point in the complaint.)
Urple said he was on L's side up to that point. He didn't say that L seemed more credible up to that point. I'm pointing out that L seems questionably skeezy much earlier.
23: It's worth noting that Rutgers hired him before these allegation were public. There's no reason to assume that they knew about these allegations.
I wasn't thinking about the allegations, just that it must be demoralizing in the academic job market to watch all these good positions go to a guy whose work appears to be a total wankfest.
Oh, he did say "credible". Learn to read, heebie. Also, learn to sign your comments.
Northwestern investigated this and gave out some genuine punishments that go well beyond a slap on the wrist (though arguably still insufficient). This indicates to me that he's almost certainly guilty.
"Guilty" could mean different things here, though, as LB mentions in 32. He could have reasonably been disciplined just based on the events in his side of the story.
I don't actually think that urple is being awful - I was just curious as to why he'd started out there, because I'd started out on her side, for not much of a reason besides general allegiance.
I was initially biased only slightly against him, but then I read 13 and I was completely on her side.
More seriously, I don't usually read court documents of this sort (and the line-by-line rebuttal is particularly unusual?) and so reading a document written from his perspective made it easier to take his side, even though this is a situation where I should be wary of the defendant's claims.
I don't actually think that urple is being awful - I was just curious as to why he'd started out there, because I'd started out on her side, for not much of a reason besides general allegiance.
No, not general allegience. All I meant was that, in reading the wildly different competing narratives of the events of the night, his seemed more believable (to me) through that point, because he was pointing to a lot more things (emails and the like, all of which will presumably eventually be introducted into evidence) that seemed to support his story. But then his story itself sort of fell apart, in light of which all of his earlier corroborating evidence becomes much less persuasive.
As people have noted, she was in his bed, so he already fucked up. His best defense can only be, "Hey, I'm not that skeezy." GUILTY. Punishment: forced to convert to Scientology.
42:
In the past he's done solid work in, e.g., formal semantics, and Rutgers is certainly hiring him on that basis. (I've no idea if he's continued to produce non-wankish work, though.)
I'm not prepared for a world where the stereotypical trendy techno-BS buzzword professors with goatees are 57. That's supposed to be the age of the stereotypical aging holistic-BS buzzword professors with ponytails.
I would actually tend to believe that his version of the drinking is more plausible than hers, although probably neither version is perfectly accurate. Someone trying to get someone else drunk without their consent, a drink with dinner and one drink each at a couple of bars doesn't sound as if that was what was happening. This doesn't do all that much to rescue him from skeeziness, and I'm not sure how necessary it is to her legal position.
Unfortunately, what surprises me most about this is the realization that Second Life still exists and has enough of a fanbase to generate relatively large conventions.
I also reflect that all that cybergoth/shaved-head-and-round-sunglasses/"mysterious"-internet-alias stuff seemed pretty naff even in the nineties when it was current.
For a young/small enough woman, it would certainly do it, though. If one glass of wine got her noticeably tipsy, he might have figured he could get her shitfaced with just one or two drinks more.
what surprises me most about this is the realization that Second Life still exists and has enough of a fanbase to generate relatively large conventions
I was just about to post exactly this comment.
53: Oh, not implausible that she was drunker than she had meant to be, and once she was, he certainly had no excuse for not getting her home.
Even if the "getting her drunk, and then kissing and groping her while she blacked out" part is untrue and the "she spiraled into depression and attempted suicide" part is totally unrelated to him, the violation of college sexual harassment policy seems obvious. The legal case, quite different.
I can't cut and paste from the doc, but it says that Slavin's investigation found sufficient evidence that the defendant initiated kissing, French kissing, etc. So he should have been punished for more than just the violations in his version of events.
Also, isn't there something sort of hypocritical? self-contradictory? about a Second Life convention taking place in Chicago rather than in the obvious virtual location?
53: I am neither young nor small, but I drink perhaps two glasses of wine a year and if I had a few drinks plus not-much-to-eat after a day of walking when I was perhaps a bit dehydrated and also kind of wound up by the whole "oh I am at a cool [for some values of cool] event with my favorite professor who I want to impress" thing, well, my judgment would be impaired. Probably not impaired enough to cozy up to ol' My-Online-Alter-Ego-Looks-Like-Poorly-Photoshopped-Voldemort, but I could easily see a small girl who didn't drink often being in that state.
This may or may not be a factor, but given that they didn't redact her previous university, she may have a genetic predisposition not to be able to handle alcohol well.
I can't cut and paste from the doc, but it says that Slavin's investigation found sufficient evidence that the defendant initiated kissing, French kissing, etc. So he should have been punished for more than just the violations in his version of events.
58: I figured you'd be the first to recommend Fresh Salt.
It seems like he's openly confessing to extreme skeeziness as a professor (at a minimum, to being willing to intensely flirt with/take to his bed a student whom he knew was sexually interested in him). He's just denying that it constituted actual actionable sexual assault because she was consenting/initiating the relationship. I'd think that the answer alone, even crediting absolutely everything in his favor, would make any responsible university extremely wary of having him around students. Whether or not that means she's entitled to civil damages under the Illinois sexual assault laws might be less clear.
Procedurally, I kind of like the substantive answer format, though it seems like it would be super difficult to prepare, especially in a complex case. Maybe his lawyers tried to be unusually revealing in the answer because they knew that this case will largely be tried in the press.
57: The doc also says that he wanted to submit security videos from the elevator (when the student says he was "furiously making out with her against her will") but Slavin denied his request (according to him, she also refused to interview witnesses at the events, but that doesn't mean much because it is possible they were mostly friends of his). If such videos can be produced I'd say he was guilty of the events as stated in his version, but not anything more than that. Though it's possible that on further investigation the videos somehow disappear, or it turns out there were no videos, and then I would be more inclined to believe that's just a ploy on his part.
As long as we're focusing on the trivialities of civil procedure, my favorite part was the signature block. The answer is signed: "PETER LUDLOW, By: One of His Attorneys."
Is that a common convention in court filings? (Could they really not be bothered to figure out in advance which of his attorneys would sign? Or even do a name/capacity thing?) It just seems weird, in a comical way. Maybe it's normal.
Slavin's investigation found sufficient evidence that the defendant initiated kissing, French kissing, etc.
I'm curious as to what they're talking about. Like, he tweeted that he totally macked on a student or took a picture or something? Otherwise it's likely someone doesn't know what the word "evidence" means. (I run into this on the job all the time and it drives me insane)
59: Same here. My tolerance actually keeps on dropping as I get older, and I'm certainly not small. It's not implausible at all that she was drunk/at least tipsy, and the professor shouldn't have been drinking with students (a) at all, and particularly (b) that he didn't know to be legal. The version of the story that sounds plausible to me, he's definitely behaving badly with respect to the drinking.
What sounded implausible was a version of the story where she got drunk because he insisted that she drink a glass of wine with dinner, and a beer an hour or so later, despite her not consenting to either. It's not impossible -- he might have had a good enough sense of how low her alcohol tolerance was that that seemed like a plausible way of getting her drunk without her consent. It just doesn't really ring naturally to me.
But I'm being psychic here, of course I don't know what happened.
I found the thing in 65 super weird as well. I've never done anything in Illinois state trial court before and it sure seems strange, and that's before you get to the corruption.
66: Testimony is evidence. If she testified to it, and the tribunal believed her, that's sufficient evidence.
I'm just assuming corruption, but come on, it's Illinois.
Somehow the part that interested me the most was where he says he thought she was 22 because she said she was 22 in her Facebook profile. Does that make any sense as a legal defense?
69 -- it doesn't really sound like there was a "tribunal" or "testimony" involved here, just some HR person who did some kind of investigation. Not that I really know one way or another.
67: While (a) is true (especially on a date!), he claims to have good reason to believe (posted age on a social networking state, backed up by apparently being a non-traditional student) that (b) wasn't true. Not that that really matters as it's subsumed by (a).
IANAILL. That is, I'm not sure precisely what legal relevance his knowledge of her age has, given that the gravamen of the complaint isn't exactly about the underage drinking. If it's important, though, that he knowingly drank with her/pressed drinks on her despite her being underage, then an honest belief that she wasn't underage would be a reasonable defense to that element of the claim. And having gotten her age off FaceBook seems like a not implausible way to have formed an honest belief about it.
I knew Unfogged would love this. It has gotten surprisingly little internet discussion as compared to earlier much less lurid philosophy scandals.
I am probably being overly paranoid in staying presidential through this, but some thoughts:
--what is at issue in the public controversy now is whether the events here mean that he should get fired. Students have been demonstrating in his classes and basically making it impossible for him to teach. Rutgers may rescind his offer.
--the versions of the evening are different enough that it seems like someone is lying, it's not just different interpretations. E.g. paragraphs 27-28 about events in the elevator.
--the fact that the student contacted people alleging sexual harassment the day after he dropped her off (Feb. 12th, see paragraqph 31) adds a lot of credibility to her story. I am close to someone who used to be an employment attorney handling a lot of sexual harassment cases, and she said the speed of reporting is one of the first things they look at.
--As LB said in 32, the whole thing about ending up sleeping in the same bed with the student while trying to fend off advances is a little crazy. Something doesn't add up.
--It's incredible to me that anyone would think that Prof. Ludlow's version of the evening is really exonerating -- sure, from criminal charges, but it's still pretty outrageous all around. There's a lot of arrogance in thinking that 'well she said she was down to fuck' is going to fly with normal people when they hear about this situation. That could speak to a real problem in the academic culture. But it maybe did sort of fly with the university administration, because what I've heard of his punishment (docked a pay raise, losing an academic title, taking a sexual harassment class) really does seem pretty mild.
--speaking of arrogance, paragraph 40 is incredible. A few months later, after the university issued its initial finding, the student approaches him for civil damages and now only does he refuse (a big mistake to start with), he threatens to countersue her for defamation! That is crazy -- how invulnerable did he think he was? Did he seriously think people would hear his side of the story and think 'oh, that poor professor, set upon by his horny freshmen'? He could have paid her off in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement and been out of this whole mess, but no...just totally nuts.
Testimony is evidence. If she testified to it, and the tribunal believed her, that's sufficient evidence.
Except that if we're considering evidence to be things in support of a claim or assertion or whatever then generally we consider the victim's statement to be the claim and the evidence are the other independent things that would support that account.
72: Well, I said 'tribunal' as the most generic term possible for 'some entity that made a decision about this.' In the same vein, gswift was talking about evidence -- there may not have been a hearing with sworn testimony or anything like that, but they got a story from the complainant somehow, which is generically testimony even if unsworn and informal.
77: No we don't, or at least lawyers don't. Testimony is evidence, even if it comes from a complainant.
What sounded implausible was a version of the story where she got drunk because he insisted that she drink a glass of wine with dinner, and a beer an hour or so later, despite her not consenting to either.
It is super easy for me to imagine this. Say he orders a bottle of wine at dinner, with no input from her, then presses her to try some/share the bottle (this is always how I end up drinking wine). She wants to impress the cool professor, feels all grown-up etc., doesn't strenuously object.
Later, at Bar #1, where they're just killing time for a bit, Dr. Creep says ``what can I get you?" "Oh no thanks, I'm not much of a beer drinker, don't really like the taste." Then she gets a brief lecture on the craft brewing scene, this place has some really novel stuff, try this one, you'll like it, boom, she has to sample all the beers. Out of politeness she mentions one or two that are OK. She goes to the bathroom, and comes back to find that he has ordered her a pint.
If your objection is that there's no way he would expect her alcohol tolerance to be that low, well, I would guess that if you're the sort of person who makes a habit of preying on your 18 year old students that's something you try to pick up on.
he thought she was 22 because she said she was 22 in her Facebook profile
This seemed incriminating to me... dude, why are you perving on her FB profile?... but I suspect a lot of professors these days actually "friend" their students on FB and review their profiles, even when they aren't necessarily considering a sexual advance.
79: See, lawyers always mucking up the common understanding of things.
The doc also says that he wanted to submit security videos from the elevator...If such videos can be produced I'd say he was guilty of the events as stated in his version, but not anything more than that.
yeah, that was one of the biggest divergences between their stories, so if you can get them it could be very telling. However, it seems like they were in the elevator multiple times that night, so you'd have to be pretty careful about which time it was.
Another big difference between their stories is in what he said that night...she has him constantly coming out with sleazy lame-pickup talk about his sex life, and he denies it all. I have to say, her description of what he said seems well observed and very true to form for a certain type of character, so if she's making it up she certainly has a talent for it.
the versions of the evening are different enough that it seems like someone is lying, it's not just different interpretations.
This is crystal clear. Someone is very knowingly lying.
I suspect a lot of professors these days actually "friend" their students on FB and review their profiles
My department specifically instructs us *not* to be FB friends with our students.
(Parenthetically, do people really say "DTF", meaning "down to fuck" in conversation, as opposed to in the more frank-and-open sort of personal ad? That seems like a really weird phrase for a freshman girl to use, but not that weird of a thing for a middle-aged dude whose ideas of hip and contemporary culture were formed in the late nineties and were sort of skuzzy even then. Not that this proves anything, it just sounded like a strange turn of phrase.)
Also, FB's terms of service say you have to be a certain age (16? not sure). So lots of kids just lie. My 15 year old sister's page says she's 18.
79 -- You're right, but I understand what GSwift is talking about. Sworn testimony with (at least at trial) an opportunity to cross-examine or rebut is certainly evidence, and allows you to do things like (when after you've introduced all of the evidence) say "a preponderance of the evidence shows that . . . ." Taking an unverified, uncorroborated witness statement that the other side has no opportunity to cross-examine, crediting it, and then using legal language like "sufficient evidence" (but what standard counts as sufficient?) is confusing. Which, to be clear, might be totally fine for purposes of an internal HR investigation that has a different purpose, procedure, and goals, but means that you'd want to know a lot more about exactly what the investigation looked at and found and why before concluding anything about it.
and the professor shouldn't have been drinking with students (a) at all, and particularly (b) that he didn't know to be legal.
Ummh? Going out with an individual undergraduate student is a bit inappropriate but if we're talking groups I drank alcohol with the majority of my undergrad profs. All departmental social events came with beer and wine and it was pretty common for profs to invite upper level classes over to their place for a party at the end of a semester. In one case weed was on offer as well. Nobody gave a fuck whether anyone was legal and often most everyone wasn't. In high school on the other hand the teachers never drank with underage students, then again the drinking age was fourteen.
What's inappropriate here even if his version is true is that he went out on a datey type evening with a student, then had her come back to his place, then let her crash instead of getting her back home and not only that crashed on the same fricking bed. (Steadily rising from somewhat inappropriate to WTF level inappropriateness.) But drinking with an underage student as such, who cares.
Probably not impaired enough to cozy up to ol' My-Online-Alter-Ego-Looks-Like-Poorly-Photoshopped-Voldemort, but I could easily see a small girl who didn't drink often being in that state.
According to her own testimony, she wasn't that impaired! Just impaired enough to pass out.
80: I don't see it as significantly important to the level of wrongdoing here, I just found myself rolling my eyes a bit at Plaintiff's version of the initial drinks as only because he insisted. Having a drink to be polite is not really being coerced into it. (It could still have been, and probably was, intentionally sleazy on his part, in that he wanted her to be drunk or at least tipsy. But the plaintiff's version that it was coercive sounds implausible.)
86, "DTF" is one of the phrases that was popularized by "Jersey Shore" recently.
I have seen mentioned elsewhere that perhaps his first mistake was going solo with an undergraduate to an art show far (enough) from campus where alcohol was being served.
According to her own testimony, she wasn't that impaired! Just impaired enough to pass out.
Yes, that was very sloppy phrasing on my part - I really meant "not impaired enough to be unresisting to Dr. Cybergoth / be cozied up to by Dr. Cybergoth against my wishes" rather than actively cozying.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this girl was already a little more fragile or seemingly available or both. Maybe she thought she was adventurous; maybe she flirted a bit with him. (Using the acronym "DTF" means either that there are text messages/email, or that text-speak has really gotten out of hand.)
He should have been older and wiser than this. He certainly should have had the fear of prosecution for this kind of shit hammered into him before this. At this point, I really think the question is only the degree of his predation.
what is at issue in the public controversy now is whether the events here mean that he should get fired
Tenured professors really do live in a different universe. I'd think that, even crediting absolutely everything in his answer in his favor, he has done more than enough to be *fired* from a job that *involves teaching young female students.* Whether or not he committed sexual assault is a different issue. I dunno, maybe all employment relationships should be like what tenured professors have, but ordinarily you don't have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime for your employer to dismiss you.
92: Really? Huh. Well, I know people who describe things as "lulzy" in spoken conversation, so I suppose nothing is impossible now.
Still sounds to me far more like what an adult who wanted to sound like a kid would say than something an actual member of the youth would say to an admired older professor.
He should have been older and wiser than this.
I think you mean that he shouldn't have gotten so old and still been so stupid.
Warehouse parties with a single student ≠ the pub with a number of the students from the same course.
he has done more than enough to be *fired* from a job that *involves teaching young female students.*
Maybe they'll just secretly bar him from having female students!
How long ago did it start becoming a recognized problem for professors to sleep with students? I seem to recall a lot of professors (college and law) whose wives were former students.
Also, seriously, that dude is hideous looking. I guess that supports the sexual assault theory.
I seem to recall a lot of professors (college and law) whose wives were former students.
Lawyers, first they roofie the word evidence, then they move on to the students.
100 Agreed, but I was responding to a statement that profs shouldn't be drinking with students, plural, at all. Plus I don't give a damn about drinking age. At eighteen she should be legally allowed to drink and I don't think whether she is, or whether he thought she was 'legal' matters here. What does matter is that she's his undergraduate student and even the initial outing as proposed by her was somewhat inappropriate for him to agree to and things just got steadily worse.
Also, seriously, that dude is hideous looking.
But his avatar is a badass, so you know he's got game.
-People saying "DTF" out loud is pretty common.
-I think testimony as evidence is a pretty intuitive concept. Being willing to testify to something in court > just saying it.
-Re: both drinking with students and Facebook-stalking students, back in undergrad, one of my friends had a SOSC teacher who absolutely loathed her b/c she never came to class and handed in papers without proper bibliographic format. One night my friend was in a bar and who walks in but the teacher, and what does she do but walk over to the bouncer and point at my friend. The bouncer walks over, confiscates my friend's fake ID, kicks her out, and wishes the teacher good day. Shit was cooooold. A large part of my friend's social life was centered at the bar and I'm sure she would have preferred a little light sexual harassment to getting kicked out of it for 6 months. How did the teacher know my friend was only 20? Easy, she had looked up all our Facebooks the previous night to prepare for lecture that day, in which she freaked everyone out by asking us questions about our personal lives, supposedly as part of a point about Foucault.
In conclusion, that teacher was a real SOSCiopath.
102: If my grad program was in any way representative (I hope not), it's DADT. My advisor was married to a former student who graduated in (I think) 2004. One guy was cheating on his wife with both a postdoc and an undergrad. A couple more were known for taking up with undergrads.
Also, re: how many drinks/how fast, agree with Thorn in 60. Also, roofies.
OT: Safari used to always (always always, for some 10 years) direct Unfogged comments to a consistent window, but starting recently, if I close the main page and then come back, clicking Comments opens a fresh window, even if the old comment window is still sitting there. Is this Safari or some change to the ancient code?
It's mostly annoying because I like my comments window a certain size and in a certain location, and the new window always opens smaller and in the wrong place.
He certainly should have had the fear of prosecution for this kind of shit hammered into him before this.
This, a hundred times this.
Although: is 50-something old enough to have gotten entrenched before the Hands Off No Matter What thing became universal? I don't get the sense that young profs understood that rule to be a bright one when I was in school in the early '90s. Which means someone who got his PhD ca. 1990, and now ~55, could well have gotten to nearly 40 before anyone started hammering.
This isn't excusing the behavior, I'm just wondering if this guy is just barely old enough not to have clued in. An adjunct in my dept. dated undergrads serially (ended up marrying one), and he's probably 50-something. We thought it was skeevy, and were kind of surprised it was OK, but the line at the time was "not a current student", rather than Hands Off.
I think testimony as evidence is a pretty intuitive concept.
Not to the science people it's not. Exhibit A: "because I say so" does not fly.
Mostly I'm giving the lawyers shit because we have the occasional gross overthinker in the DA's office here and I'm having to debate the simplest most godamn straightforward things to get my charges filed. I've got one where a guy showed up to a metals recycling yard with a bunch of stolen metal in a stolen truck. Dude fled on foot after being spooked when a marked unit got there early before us and he wasn't located. We know who he is, he's on camera, left his ID behind, etc. The DA pushed back on the possession of a stolen vehicle charge, saying maybe he fled because of the stolen property and we can't show he knew the truck was stolen. Which might sound reasonable if the report didn't detail how the guy took a bunch of steps to change the appearance of the truck. It's a stolen truck belonging to a construction firm. He had repainted the grill and rims of the truck (and the tailgate, IIRC), scraped off the decals on the doors, and then put on magnet placards over the scraped areas that belong to a totally different company who the suspect isn't even affiliated with. Gah, there's no reasonable alternate explanation for these circumstances! We've crossed into probable cause like miles ago, file for the arrest warrant!
that dude is hideous looking. I guess that supports the sexual assault theory
Unless the student was similarly hideous! Seriously, though, it does.
Tangentially, when I was an undergrad, the woman I was dating at the time became angrily convinced that I had fooled around with a particular student while I was in Canada for a UNC-UToronto exchange program. The truth was that I would jumped at the opportunity, but this woman was so wildly out of my attractiveness league that I wouldn't have made a pass at her no matter how much alcohol I had in me.
I decided that was an argument best kept to myself.
I guess if "This is a random object, which supposedly was found at the murder scene" is evidence, then "This is what some person says, which supposedly is the truth" is also evidence.
But yeah, I thought evidence and testimony were separate things.
I thought the theory was that men of all attractivenesses are equally likely to be sexual assaulters because it's "not about sex".
One of my best friends in undergrad was heavily pressured by her adviser not to break up with him, including threats regarding recommendations. The initial fling had been quite consensual and desired on her part but what followed was very ugly. A couple other (female) friends were hit on by (male) profs and skeezed out, and one (female) acquaintance was basically harassing/stalking a (male) prof. I didn't hear of any student prof things in grad school - there was one prof who was rumored to have slept with most of his female grad students when he was younger, but who had stopped well before I arrived and that's it.
Now I'm depressed again. This case makes me feel sick and ashamed.
I FB friended three students before I realized it was a very bad policy to have. One, from Stuffwhitepeople Like University, has turned out to be a good FB friend to have in my feed. The other two aren't that active. So no real blowback there. Still, I feel like having your guard up is a very good policy.
I thought the theory was that men of all attractivenesses are equally likely to be sexual assaulters because it's "not about sex".
The question is not "how likely is this guy to be a sexual predator based on his attractiveness?", it is "how plausible is this guy's contention that a hot college freshman was desperate for his cock?"
FWIW, I'm with LB (and teraz) on the drinking angle: underage is more or less not an issue*, 2 drinks with food over the course of 2+ hours is nobody's idea of how to liquor somebody up**, and not finishing a glass is always an option. Before I learned to drink, I was occasionally given glasses of wine with food, and I'd sip half, and leave the rest. If she decided to drink so much that she got drunk because she wanted to impress her prof, that's on her.
That said, obviously a firing offense due to the number of lines crossed, and with the incredible nap time topper.
*if he knew her to be a 17-y.o. freshman or whatever, then maybe, but he had reason to think she was 22, and zero reason to think she was under 20, so wtf? Let's not turn American rules about drinking that we all A. ignored and B. disagree with suddenly turn into the distillation of wisdom because it agrees with our priors in this one case. Nothing about the prof's judgment is changed by whether her actual age at the time was 20 or 22.
**possible exception: her opener is "I get wasted on just a thimbleful!" The fact that some people, under some circumstances, might get drunk form that is irrelevant, because, if one's goal is to liquor someone up, one doesn't start from the least imaginable alcohol necessary
One of the profs at my grad institution had a rep for dating students in his classes. Eventually he married one. I gather that someone senior took him aside and let him know his behavior was not OK, which is why he settled down with the one he was then dating.
Right, but the argument of every attractive sexual predator is that they don't need to be a predator because of how desperate everyone is for their cock.
110: Might you have changed your habits on where you're clicking? The word "comments" in the sidebar takes the window you're in to a comment thread. But if you click on the word "comments" under the post, it gives you the little popup comment window.
I have no clue about the programming of the site, and I don't know that it hasn't changed, but the behavior I'm describing has been consistent for me since I can remember
Yes, but this guy doesn't have that argument.
118.2: I TAed a class that had undergrad TAs as well as grad students. One of my TAs asked about FB policy. He'd gotten a friend request from a student who had his hobbies listed as "risin rollin droppin" and seemed a little confused about whether to tip the kid off that perhaps it wasn't too bright to broadcast stuff like that to "professional connections" or to let it go. Kids these days and their hobbies.
I kind of think underage is an issue, not because the 21-year-old drinking age is a good idea -- I think it's way too old to be reasonable -- but because it's a rule, and if you're doing judgment-call vaguely sketchy things with your students like going to date-like-events as a couple, breaking even dumb rules is a bad idea.
123: No, regular old clicking on the link at the bottom of the post.
Actually, I'm 95% certain this coincides with an OS update, so it must be on this end. It's just a strange behavior to reprogram after all these years. Although maybe there were security implications to sites being able to "remember" a window from visit to visit.
126: I think that begs the question though. If his behavior is skeevy (and skeevy is all you need for administrative action; we're not arguing legal consequences here), then the liquor is a problem whether she's 20 or 22. But if his actions are fundamentally OK (or at least on this side of a line), then the liquor doesn't matter, because profs drink with students (yes, usually not 1-on-1, but my whole point is that the skeeviness is neither proven nor disproven by the alcohol IMO - or at least not by her age when she drank it).
I guess if the administration wanted to discipline him, then the drinking age is a convenient bright line on which to peg the action, but again, that's because the decision has been made, not because the admins looked at the whole story, thought he was in the clear, then found out she was only 20.
How can the appropriateness of *discipline* by the guy's employer even be an issue here?
It's all really simple. Analytic philosophy is rapey. No need to get down in the weeds about any given case.
Well, skeevy is a conclusion arrived at after examining the situation as a whole, and not every damning element has to be individually decisive. The difference between 20 and 22 isn't a huge one, but it does seem to weigh on the side of indicating that the professor wasn't being super-scrupulous about being on the right side of the applicable laws and rules.
129: I don't think anyone's disagreeing about that.
I wasn't making an argument that he shouldn't have known better. He should have known better.
In my mind, it is just a question about what should his punishment be.
Both sides sound like they embellished their facts a little. I am shocked by that. I have never, ever seen pleadings where each side's facts are a little off.
I'm willing to accept that they were both at least a little flirty. Given their age differences and the power imbalance, he is, at best, a complete idiot, and probably at worst really slimy/skeevy and shouldn't be around undergraduates.
the versions of the evening are different enough that it seems like someone is lying, it's not just different interpretations.
This gets back to my question in 1. Is someone (I would bet on Ludlow if I were a betting sort) taking a risk by swearing out these statements? I mean, it's not OK to lie in sworn testimony, right?
I agree that even if his version of events is 100% true, it's still damning.
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Hey, speaking of undergrads, but no really: would it be a terrible idea to do a summer sublet in a house with two undergrads? Both students, both working/taking classes over the summer. (Also, the house has a private pool, if that's a factor you put weight on.)
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I googled the words in 125, but I didn't learn anything. Droppin is either taking pills or dancing provocatively, I guess? Maybe I am wrong? Both meanings?
Rollin is like kickin it? But definitely standing up, while maybe a young would say kickin it even while on a couch?
Risin-- from context I guess getting high? exclusively with pot, thouigh, or is it like the older usage partying in intentional ambiguity?
Anyway, maybe all of these could be forwarded to our dialect speaker for clarification.
I'm old and unhip now, but way back in my day dropping=LSD and rolling=MDMA.
A pleading signed by the lawyer isn't a sworn statement. One presumes, of course, that this story will be told at his deposition. In which case, if someone wanted to try to tag him for perjury, well, they actually have real crime to worry about, so he's not taking much of a risk there.
|| Hey, I get to vote against sexual assault! (And the lax prosecution of perpetrators of such). Anyone with an idea for an amendment to this that might improve it should send me an email. |>
Or steps 2 and 3 if you find yourself on fire.
I assumed it was 'I like to get up from bed, roll a joint and then drop some acid', but I'm not a reliable translator for the language spoken by people who refuse to get off lawns.
had his hobbies listed as "risin rollin droppin"
FB pages of suspects are good times. "Professions" lately have included "The Mack of All Trades" and "Keeping My Pimp Hand Strong".
141: Yep. Extremely educational for foster parents too.
135: Depends on how gross you expect them to be and how much socializing you expect them to have. The pool makes up for a lot.
I have been spending time with improv comedians 15 years my junior and they're swell and they don't try to make me feel like a old. Some of them would make fine roommates, others a little more beer can pyramid.
He's just denying that it constituted actual actionable sexual assault because she was consenting/initiating the relationship.
Is she actually claiming sexual assault? I thought it was sexual harassment/violation of the university's sexual conduct code?
Anyway, he sounds guilty as sin, and very skeevy. And really, if he was in bed (or on top of the bed! a distinction which he seems to think matters quite a bit) with an undergrad, he is a complete idiot.
Apo is closest in 137. As I understand it (I am desperately unhip), risin = X, droppin = acid, rollin = MJ.
Parenthetically, do people really say "DTF", meaning "down to fuck"
I thought the D was for "disinclined." So many missed opportunities.
rising = mj (rising ie getting "high")
droppin = acid
rollin = X (not sure why)
I thought the D stood for Designated By Xenu
145: She's claiming a violation of the Illinois Gender Violence Act, and the fundamental claim seems to be the unconsented-to groping and kissing. I don't know if sexual assault is the right word for violations of the IGVA, and I don't know if she's stated the elements of criminal sexual assault in Illinois, but at least pretty close.
rollin = X (not sure why)
Ask the experts: http://bluelight.org/vb/archive/index.php/t-151509.html
This "wave of sexual harassment allegations in the field" reminds me that my grad institution had (and still has) a philosophy prof who notoriously* had a sideline in pseudonymous rapey porn novels, and against whom there were any number of credible sexual harassment allegations. This was the early 90s so the administration gave even less of a fuck than they presumably (hopefully) would now. I vaguely remember an effort among grad students to boycott his seminars but I don't think it took.
*IIRC Mar/tha Nuss/baum discusses it at some length somewhere.
145, 151: It's both, I think. In addition to suing L under the GVA she's suing Northwestern for Title IX violations for taking insufficient action to eliminate/redress her sexual harassment.
Is she actually claiming sexual assault?
Yes, as described in the linked answer, she calls it "sexual assault" in the complaint, and describes it as a "an act of physical intrusion of a sexual nature" done intentionally and without her consent.
153: Was that the hilarious SF slave fantasy novels? They all had titles like Something of Gor? I never actually read one, but saw bits quoted here and there, and I remember the author being a professor someplace.
They all had titles like Something of Gor?
I read the first couple, but as the series got less D&D and more S&M I quit. There are some domination scenarios that are too much even for an healthy adolescent male.
156: No, that must have been a different pseudonymous porn prof, as far as I know. And on further poking around it looks like it was just one novel. Did remember correctly about Nuss/baum though. Didn't sound at all hilarious.
The pool makes up for a lot.
It's certainly helping me lean that way. As does the fact that, after some Facebook sleuthing, they seem to be hipster-ish. They might still be gross, but gross hipsters are better than gross dudebros.
If you still have a beard, you're a hipster until you're 3L.
Huh, one of this crew of fuckfaces just got a really impressive award.
Indeed! Then again, curing cholera should be recognised.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That Nussbaum essay is interesting though very long. I really like the DH Lawrence quote.
I just saw that. Drinks are on Limpy tonight!
I'm a little unclear on what the right rules are for facebook and graduate students. Or just more generally to what extent it's ok for me to be friends with graduate students. What makes it confusing is that some graduate students aren't all that much younger than me, but some are really young.
Age of graduate students varies, says mathematician
I can think of lots of situations where professors drinking with underage undergraduates is obviously ok (e.g. official school dinners). I think the right line here is that drinking alone with a traditional undergrad is inappropriate.
drinking alone with a traditional undergrad
Okay, but what about the more freaky undergrads?
Things I apparently do not read: Respected books on American History. Scanning the list, I believe have read precisely one (1) of the books that have
won the prize in question. (Although I still have cholera so it will probably become two here sometime in the next few years.)
The kind you don't take home to mother
They're all right, they're all right
Those students are all right
With me, yeah
Hey, hey, hey-heeeey
Is it as bad in other fields? I can't tell even how to begin to answer that question. I know reliably of so many cases ranging from blatant harassment to actual assault that I find it hard to tolerate the idea that it's this bad everywhere in academe. [there are the five cases that made national news about which everyone now knows, but I could personally multiply that number by 10 just on the basis of what I reliably know, and I don't think I'm particularly in the know]
FB friending: not undergrads, and grad students go on restricted list where they cannot see meaningfully personal items or anything not totally generic.
Philosophers do seem unusually dickish and aggro, and also have that "I am a sage who can explain deep personal mysteries of life and then maybe sex you" thing going in that English profs also have, so maybe they are the worst. I mean I'd guess philosophy over, say, paleobotany.
174 obviously addressed to philosophers in the aggregate, not anyone here.
I wonder what the least sex harassing academic discipline is. Women's Studies is cheating.
Maybe geologists. They seem nice. I guess you'd have to exclude the petroleum ones.
law? because their potential targets are being trained on how to pursue charges if necessary, and how to keep records in the meantime?
geologists do seem nice, though.
A pleading signed by the lawyer isn't a sworn statement.
Ah. Got it. Thanks.
So (again assuming for argument's sake that Ludlow is the one who is lying) this could be a bluff on his part, since he still has a chance to back down before it comes down to committing perjury.
I wonder what the least sex harassing academic discipline is. Women's Studies is cheating.
Does Jane Gallop count as Women's Studies?
I mean, I'm completely positive there's no sexual harassment in my department (CS), but that's because there's actual zero straight females to harass. (My department isn't small either.)
(talking about my specific CS department - there's loads of girls in graduate CS departments and I'm sure they get harassed too)
The archeological sciences probably have a lot of sexing going on, what with weeks-long fieldwork in the middle of nowhere. That might extend to harassment.
Micro and molecular biology seem pretty non-icky. I think having lots of women profs helps.
My wife double majored in geology and chemistry and didn't seem to get any harassment. But maybe being married was a factor.
Science!
married-- don't know. Probably about half the cases of which I know the women who were harassed were/are also married. Are skeevy philosophers just less specific in their targets? I just have no idea.
In my three departments, I've heard of one professor who hits on female students and is creepy. He's really unpopular and kind of a joke. And old.
For geology, I have the impression that the profs are indeed nice people. The grad students are also often a bit older, which I suspect makes for a slightly more mature atmosphere where borderline sleaze doesn't go over well.
184: The first grad student I worked for asked me why I didn't have a normal girl major like psychology. A friend had an advisor who always spoke in the direction of her (truly impressive) boobs. For three years. Glad your wife avoided that.
Not that I have ever witnessed an act of harassment or would know about the prevalence of "street harassment" if it weren't for the internet, as has been discussed before. But this one particular professor, I've heard him discussed, and clearly in terms that suggest he's a weird and narcissistic fossil for thinking hitting on grad students makes sense.
At my institution, they encourage us to FB students--it allows us to maintain contacts with alums. We also track student employment after graduation using FB. These days, students hardly post anything inappropriate.
182: definitely a ton of prof-grad student sexing going on in the excavations I worked on. Not so much with the harassment that I was aware of (I can think of a couple cases involving archaeologists, though not in the fieldwork environment), and aside from the fact that in many cases it entailed shameless infidelity, not even terribly skeevy as these things go (generally between people from different home institutions, everyone unambiguously grown up, etc.; as far as I know--never picked up on any prof-undergrad philandering but I mostly worked on grad-student heavy projects). I really do think that for a lot of archaeologists, a big part of their devotion to the field is getting to spend every summer away from their significant others in close quarters with lots of like-minded people who are also far away from any significant others.
As a philosophy grad student, I was hit on by a professor in the department who was more than twice my age. I turned him down and there was no discernable awkwardness between us after that, and in fact he created an opportunity for me that would have increased my value on the job market, if I had stayed in the field. I think I was about 25 at the time. I didn't find it all that skeezy, just a proposition that I decided not to take. I think my not being very young, plus male privilege, combined to make it not much of a thing
My geology TA brought me a pie clad only in a skimpy bikini. I wasn't traumatized.
191-The prof who propositioned me when I was in college explicitly said he'd do what he could to keep me out of graduate school when I said no. Believed him at the time. No idea whether/what he did, but he didn't in fact keep me from getting into grad school. (I'm a Presidential woman) My story so pales in comparison to others I know about.
I too have heard many shocking stories about philosophy (at second hand, I am a man and also not as good looking as Bave). More than other disciplines. Part of my motivation for following this story.
I'm afraid that when I turn 50, I will suddenly become irresistible to 18 - year-old women to make up for how resistable I was at 18.
The rules for FB that I've heard is "you can friend up, but not friend down." So my students can send me requests, but I should not make requests of them.
Women's Studies is cheating.
On who?
Eh it wouldn't surprise me if Women's/Gender Studies can be plenty skeezy --- wasn't that what Hugo Schw/yzer was in?
I'd think geologists would be really into getting their rocks off.
I'm going to guess that Sociology can been pretty skeezy on the prof. hitting on front. At least the people I've known in Sociology were .. freer .. than your average department.
But I'm inclined to play devil's advocate here, at least insofar as I understand the trend of the thread's judgment. On a quickish scan (I haven't read the entire thread by far, so my impression could be wrong), I have the sense that people are mostly with the Plaintiff as likely telling more of the truth than the Defendant? I'm inclined more to believe the Prof., (a) because he's admitting to having done stupid things, allowing the student up to his apartment, sleeping in the same bed with her, and (b) I can believe just about anything about very young college students who are just learning to try out their sexuality.
Forgive me if all of this has been said. In the meantime, on the evidence front, there's the elevator video footage if it exists, as noted upthread, and there are also the alleged texts and emails. I didn't read far enough into the ...
Okay, wait, starting at paragraph 33, things get weird. The University refused to examine Defendant's proffered evidence? And what about the discrepancy between the Plaintiff's allegedly being involuntarily committed to the hospital until Feb. 16th, but the Defendant allegedly saw her at a conference on the 15th? Can't people investigate these things? What is going on with the University's investigative team, as it were?
So what happens now? Shouldn't the police be involved to actually, you know, investigate? This seems ridiculous.
a big part of their devotion to the field is getting to spend every summer away from their significant others in close quarters with lots of like-minded people who are also far away from any significant others.
Now that you say this I do remember one of my wife's fellow students giving an impression that he was kind of put out that she didn't show interest in getting it on during one of those two or three week field camps. A couple times he said things like how she was only into pretty boys, at which she laughed in his face. Not that I'm Smoov B or anything but buddy, you're fatter, balder, and less funny than I am so don't kid yourself, it was never going to happen.
On a quickish scan
I will never, ever be able to read that phrase (vel sim.) without thinking of the Two-Minute Mystery where the soi-disant lexicographer reveals himself an impostor by its use.
161 Congrats to Seaman Ff, that is impressive.
Indeed, congrats to the cookie. On a similar front, a loved friend has apparently won a prize in Romanticism literary criticism -- Barricelli prize? which I had never heard of -- but as far as I can tell, it's not announced yet.
One is so prideful when this sort of thing happens.
204: Same here. That one needs to be added to this page.
My god, 15K a quarter for classes like "philosophy of cyberspace" and then professor "Urizenus Sklar" can try and bone your kid. That's some top flight education right there.
thread winner, right here.
His whole story just seems kind of odd. He's fighting her off all night, but somehow takes her to bar after bar, then sleeps with her? She's hitting on him hard all night, but he sleeps with her chastely? When he drops her off, she begs him to date her, kisses him and says 'see you soon', but then reports him for sexual harassment the next day?
Her story has a weirdness too -- she's heavily dependent on the whole 'blackout drunk' claim to explain how she magically ends up back at his apartment, but it hangs together better. Plus she's like 18 or 19.
208.last - A number of the particulars of her story don't read as particularly plausible to me. It doesn't really matter, though, since the cops can properly investigate her sexual assault accusation and even accpeting his narrative as 100% factual, he's a creep who should be fired.
I think this is a civil case for damages, I don't think there will be a police investigation. It will just be he said-she said in front of an irritated judge plus whatever evidence the two sides can pay a private investigator to dig up. I suspect he has more money than her for that.
Hooray for award winning historians who comment here. I just figured out what everyone was talking about because I checked twitter. I didn't realize it was an award that I heard of.
201: Not compared to winning the porn at Pub Quiz, but now he can say he's done both.
Yes, wow, congrats re: 161! (And 164 was great.)
Tenured professors really do live in a different universe. I'd think that, even crediting absolutely everything in his answer in his favor, he has done more than enough to be *fired* from a job that *involves teaching young female students.* Whether or not he committed sexual assault is a different issue. I dunno, maybe all employment relationships should be like what tenured professors have, but ordinarily you don't have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime for your employer to dismiss you.
halford, I may never have loved you so much as I love you today. well, it's good that we share opinions about randy rhoads' guitar genius so closely as well, but just, PREACH.
I recently heard some incredibly disturbing anecdotes about the number of my colleagues who routinely use the undergraduate student body as a dating pool, either during or juuuuust after graduation, and I'm perhaps overly freaked out by it. No, it's not illegal, and no, it's not even a firing offense here, as it wasn't at my undergrad college, where I was propositioned twice (both politely rejected) by current profs and knew many students who were having sex with profs. It seems to be women and men who do it, in roughly equal numbers. Am I overreacting to think that, if we think it's fine behavior, we should at least do some kind of anonymous study on the frequency and nature of these relationships? Of the friends I had in college who slept with professors, most of them were really fucked up by it afterward, and came to think of their worth as related only to their ability to be sexually attractive rather than intelligent.
I tend not to wring my hands about people's sexual choices, but over this--perhaps because of my anxiety at being seen as having sexual interests in students due to the casual friendly nature of our relationships--I feel like a college or university might want to do an internal study of the effects of widespread student-fucking on campus culture. Is that nuts?
215: I'm no academic, but that doesn't sound unreasonable at all as a reaction, although I strongly doubt any school has actually done such a study or is likely to. Blanket prohibition seems like the most common approach among schools that care about this at all, and I think it's hard to argue against that as a general rule.
presidential prof: you are not nuts. as I have related here before, it was super-damaging for me when I was hit on and generally made the object of unpleasant advances by my famous roman history prof in undergrad. I always sat in the front row and he would comment on my appearance like every fucking day in front of the (nearly-filled) classroom as I came in just before the bell. this was in addition to him hitting on me at department-sponsored events with free booze. I got a thoroughly deserved A+ in the class, but my boyfriend at the time questioned whether it wasn't just a further come-on.
when I needed to go to him for a grad school recommendation I was in a situation like that of abe lincoln in the thread linked above [but less awful]--I didn't want to be alone in his office with him! he was really that handsy. columbia ended up solving the problem with what I accepted at the time, gratefully, as thoughtful string-pulling. but AWB correctly pointed out here that it was just ass-covering: they got an more prominent professor in the classics department to write a glowing recommendation of me even though I hadn't taken a class with him yet. I went on to do so that term, and he felt happy with what he had written (or so he claimed), and sent me off with an A+ in the seminar, but...
this would have been lame generally, but I was...erm...the object of an crazy obsession on the part of one of my middle and high school teachers, who "fell in love with me at first sight" when I was in 7th grade. we had sex like the day I was legal in DC, you can rtfa. in the end I reported him to my (all-girls) school and he was fired and all the students blamed me...I was so excited to get the fuck out of there and go to a real place where I would be competing in a meritocracy that--LOLWUT WUT
and how do the teachers ever go about recruiting giirlfriend/boyfriends from the masses? hitting on the like my roman history prof was hitting on me, which fucked my head sideways. so, in short, NO DO NOT TOUCH THE STUDENTS.
I totally agree that sleeping with students in your course (and department) is way inapprops. But I don't think there's anything wrong with sleeping with people who're enrolled in other departments etc --- is that unusual view?
||
NMM to Tony Benn.
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This issue is actually one of the (many) reasons I decided not to try to go into academia. I'm fairly certain I would be able to resist the temptation, but boy would I ever be tempted.
Thanks, all. It's been a very weird day, what with the having to blow lots of people, hoping to find the right one.
I look at the poor tender things and, while I envy their joints and digestions, they are too young for me to find them attractive. Convenient. I don't dwell on my memories of being twenty and attracted to twenty-year-olds, of course.
Presumably there are a few who would be irresistible and it's just as well I've never been on a field campaign with one.
221 was to 219, but hey VW, congratulations!
keir: well, what about after I had finished this prof's class, and there was no prospect of my taking another before leaving for grad school? I wasn't in his department; he taught in history and I majored in classics. can you think of a way for him to hit on me, after having given me an A+ in a class and written me an excellent recommendation letter for grad school, that wouldn't cause me to question myself and my work? or my boyfriend to suggest that my grades were the initiation of an attempt to get sexually involved with me? [granted, bf was being a dick, but he was being a dick in a particular way--namely, he was jealous.]
yay, congrats to our award-winning peeps! re: philosophy being so terrible, longtime readers of tfa will know that I visited harvard, u michigan, and berkeley over spring break to decide where to attend grad school. the classics department at harvard arranged for me to meet with a group of grad students for lunch on the school's dime (looking back I guess that was a little lavishly hospitable of them?). only grad students with positive attitudes were selected. all but one (or even all? idr), were dudes. they took it upon themselves to invite some of the women in the department. the female grad students explained that it was a horrible place and sexual harassment was unrestrained because of the prestige attached to the famous, tenured harvard prof. one woman turned to me and said, "just don't come here."
223: clearly that was totally skeezy. I would include "people who have taken a course with you in the last few years" in my group of forbiddens.
Also! When I was in undergrad everyone knew that one assoc. prof (sim/on o/g/d/e/n for those playing along at home) was a total sleaze. Like, never get in a car with him, never have a beer with him etc, and fuck all ever happened, despite everyone --- from student to lecturer to HoD --- knowing damn fine the game. Which was super gross and demoralising.
And congratulations VW!
Congrats, ari, on finally being able to come clean about the real origin of the limp.
Except redact, please. I'm not awake yet.
30 years ago but Mrs y encountered a fairly inappropriate Pol Sci professor and a shoulda-been-locked-up inappropriate Psychology professor, both of whom were prominent enough that they were well known outside the academy. The Pol Sci guy was leering and suggestive; the psychologist was serially fucking teenagers. One of them retired full of years and honour, the other moved on somewhere. So no, it's not just philosophy.
I read a thing quite recently that in geology and archaeology harassment is a serious problem in field work.
224: And not long after that (if I have the timeline vaguely correct) there was a very noisy mass exodus of female grad students from the Harvard classics dept to other programs.
Mazel tov to VW!
In the present case he should clearly never work in education again. However she comes with a serious health warning IMO. The pair of them should probably be packed off to colonise Mars and give the rest of us a break.
I already congratulated VW elsewhere, but twice does no harm. Good job, there! (Are you able to parlay this into more money?)
One thing about MOOCs, it's a lot more difficult for this sort of thing to happen. /slatepitch
If you outlaw philosopher-student relationships, only outlaws will have former lovers to testify on their behalf at the denazification hearing.
There is a very celebrated thrice married British former scientist notorious for this sort of thing. I keep waiting for someone to complain about his behaviour in the Seventies but I doubt it will happen because the story would be such catnip for the papers that any woman involved would regret it bitterly afterwards.
re: 234
After taking 2 seconds to work out who you mean, I can't say I'm at all surprised.
If he harassed enough women, the News of the World would have come across something just by chance while hacking phones.
Of course, he is also the world most celebrated fucking awful amateur philosopher, which would explain everything.
There is something about charismatic authority, though: a remarkably honest friend of mine, a vicar thrice divorced and now happily settled with a witch, once said that as a priest he got a fresh opportunity every week. He always turned them down, though, if they were parishioners.
236: this was before mobile phones.
235: I once met, quite by chance, a woman in a completely different field, who described how she had once got into a lift with him in Old College and without warning or preparation he shoved his hand between her legs up under her miniskirt and when she reacted badly behaved as if nothing at all had happened. She scarcely knew him then and took care not to later.
I can't say I was aware of many student/teacher relationships when I was an undergraduate. One, for certain, although in that case the student moved to a different university early in their relationship -- partly to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and partly because the other institution was a better fit for her ambitions -- and he was never her teacher/lecturer/tutor [they met at a party]. I expect I was fairly oblivious as an undergraduate and there was a fair bit of low-grade lechery going on that I didn't pick up on.
When I was teaching myself, I did get fairly blatantly hit on by at least one student, but it wasn't a struggle to act appropriately. That said, I can't say I lose much sleep over 20-somethings having relationships with each other.*
* as would have been the case, then.
"He used to be very naughty, but [current wife] has cured him" as one of his old friends (now master of a Most Agreeable college down the road) remarked. And of course "Very naughty" largely excuses the behaviour, or at least lifts it out of the sphere of morally reprehensible.
238.2: That's actually a straight-up crime.
I have no idea who Werdna is talking about. Would I have heard of him?
The brutal problem (says someone hanging out for several motherfucking expensive motherfuckers to receive the due process owing to their past actions) that underlies this shit is that there's no promotion in cleaning house. It's fucking bullshit.
(Rant over.)
Philosophy's a disaster. There are a couple of more scandals coming down the pike, too, including a much bigger one with a much more famous person at a much more prestigious university.
A lot of other fields aren't too far behind, though.
I think skeeviness comes in different forms, too--e.g. you have Professor Continental who has always been sort of cool and successful with the ladies and who is now pushing 50 and still trying it on with undergrads. And you have Professor Nerd who has never been cool or successful with the ladies but now has status and a small but steady supply of them in grad seminars, so he just tries it on with basically all of them. He's also pushing 50, of course.
A lot of these dudes are still 27 years old in their own minds, and they tend to forget how much older and borderline-skeezy even 27 seemed when they were 19 themselves.
re: 242
Yes.
re: 244.1
I can certainly think of a certain very famous philosopher that I heard stories about as a graduate student [at a US institution, not in Oxford], possibly the same one?
246: Possibly, but I'd guess probably not.
234, 235, 242, 245: I have no idea either. Mostly I don't mind missing allusions, but when people here are coy about stuff like this, some of us simply never understand what they mean. I have a mild preference for being explicit on an obscure blog or if you can't do that, emailing the other insiders you expect to get the reference. But it is only a mild preference, because I can live without understanding everything here.
Since it doesn't make jokes less funny, I'm not really worked up about it.
Oh good, I see that the Internet's favorite sock-puppeting lawprof/philosopher has taken a highly principled stand defending L's academic freedom against those who seek to get him fired (not gonna link his blog, he might track back and come threaten to sue us). And has been bullying philosophy grad students (successfully) who disagree in blog comments. What an odious little turd.
I guessed, and then looked up the number of marriages to confirm. Not that I'm definitely right, but it did check.
On an entirely different and unrelated subject, I hear that New Atheism/Skepticism events, to name a randomly selected area of amateur philosophy, are hotbeds of harassment.
New Atheism/Skepticism events, to name a randomly selected area of amateur philosophy, are hotbeds of harassment.
Also, not a surprise. Since adherence to 'New Atheism/Skepticism' is the sine qua non of a certain kind of assholery.
It's the gateway drug to Strong EP bullshit, with all the charming gender/race stupidity that entails.
238 makes the blowback from 251 even more naff than I realised at the time.
254: I was always more of an LP man, myself.
250 It's much easier to get away with shit when you are in fact charismatic and smart.
The undistinguished men who simply Know They Are Right Although Surrounded By Pygmies without any of the social status which the charismatic have as reinforcement are going to be very crude when disinhibited.
234. guessing-- D@wk/ns? Haven't heard this particular thing, but apparently he's long enough on ego to make productive collaborative work difficult.
250.2: That's a huge problem with those, although there's a contingent of people (e.g. Skepchick) who are actively trying to make them better. Alas the atheist community is a few years behind (to pick another nerd subgroup I'm familiar with) the scifi community in policing harassment at cons and in general being friendly to women.
The person I'm presuming we're talking about has made public statements disrespectful of women, like the De/ar Mu/sli/ma thing of a few years back.
254: At the risk of sounding uninformed, what's Strong EP? A few guesses only got me to the strong equivalence principle of general relativity, which probably doesn't entail much sexism or ethnocentrism.
On the veldt, people who didn't know what EP stood for were more likely to be eaten by a lion.
New Atheism/Skepticism events, to name a randomly selected area of amateur philosophy, are hotbeds of harassment.
Unlike the competition, though, at least they limit themselves to adults, rather than going after the kids.
261: Thank you. Elegantly explained without violating the sanctity of Standpipe's blog.
EP is Ev Pysch, I'm guessing, in a vague attempt to catch up to the field.
261/263: Oh, ha, thanks. Still on my first coffee. That's not a problem I particularly associate with vocal atheists, but that's probably because the one I follow the most is Myers who absolute hates it.
Going back a couple topics, I was sad but not on reflection surprised to learn that one of the foremost 20th century theologians of nonviolence was also an asshole serial sexual abuser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Yoder
Thanks! What a weird situation this is!
In another field, Isaac Asimov was apparently a total asshole in this way, and people laughed it off. For decades.
269 - from memory Asimov had issue with being Viral Positive, in a really brutal way. I don't want to be a dick, but he was utterly notorious.
262/267
I was talking last night to a Catholic intellectual about Eric Gill, who was a real monster sexually: fucked his own daughters among many other people's. He was also a Catholic who presumably confessed. And, my friend wondered, what the hell had the priest *said*? And did he confess what he knew when he made his own confession?
Although, in the spirit of apostropher, I would add that Protestant confession has its difficulties too.
270 is way out of line, and he apologises to anyone personally affected, [he says, in shamelessness....]
268: It's nice that you're still willing to hang out with the little people.
I too shall make it explicit: Congrats VW. I guess I'll actually read the thing now. Even though I don't have cholera.
Among the many privileges of being a provincial white male of a certain age are (a) unfamiliarity with any prestigious professors of philosophy and (b) unfamiliarity the the concept that a professor of philosophy might have earned any sort of real world regard for which the word "prestige" is even remotely applicable.
274.last: Take it up with Naomi Campbell.
268: We're more surprised about it than you are.
271 -- but isn't Gi/ll Sa/ns very embedded in, of all things, type design? I have the utmost respect for remaining calm, while still having a degree of distance for remaining quiet in the way that Dante pays a lot of respect to the curia.
Congratulations, vw! Well-deserved, the book is really great.
After a bit of googling I now know who VW is.
Congratulations on the award!
277: I'm quite certain you're wrong. I would recount the story of receiving the call from the head of the prize committee, but it's long and incriminating enough that I think I'd prefer not to have it on the internet forever. In short, I was sure enough that I was the butt of a practical joke that the nice man from Bancroft, Inc. began to get a bit frustrated.
268, 281: And I presume the negotiations with new place took place with all sides completely unaware of the coming bump in prestige and status. Not that you should trouble yourself about something like that.
Money isn't everything after all.
If there's an awards banquet in NY, let me be the first to suggest Fresh Salt for the afterparty. Have you decided which designer you'll be wearing?
281: The first call was me playing a practical joke. The second one was real.
Congrats VW! I'm happy that I already purchased the book, althought I haven't read it yet.
Why not celebrate by moving to a shithole in the middle of nowhere known primarily for child molestation.
Let me add to the chorus of congratulations, VW.
Make sure you don't get screwed out of the movie rights to the book.
Among the many privileges of being a provincial white male of a certain age are (a) unfamiliarity with any prestigious professors of philosophy and (b) unfamiliarity the the concept that a professor of philosophy might have earned any sort of real world regard for which the word "prestige" is even remotely applicable
I don't have this excuse: I've lived among intellectuals all my life, and the extent to which the comments here make this seem common, environmental, de rigueur, what have you shocks me. I must be even more oblivious than I thought.
I'm not at the other place, and can't figure out from the comments who vw is and what he's been recognized for, in the snatches I'm able to take in this no-internet job. Feels like I'm building a crystal set in Colditz sometimes.
290: The Bancroft Prize, for this book. Which you should read -- as you can tell from the review, it's really not in my area of interest, and I was fascinated anyway. And it cures cholera.
An enterprising young person could probably set up a new metric for the Princeton Review in which colleges are rated by how lax their sexual harassment policies are, percentage of professors who "date" students, etc. If I were to mention this among my colleagues, there would be horror and outrage. They don't want to know it's happening, they don't want to talk about it, or they are doing it themselves (and think that it's justified because seriously, man, you had to see this girl).
LB is the anti-Standpipe some times. NYer through and through; no Midwestern discretion whatsoever.
270: I know it was tasteles, but what do you mean "brutal with it"? I had assumed as a matter of course that the story he got it from a blood transfusion was false but knew/know nothing else.
290: apo's link to the onion suggests a fertile google search. I can't say how happy I am to have to conduct research through looking up things on the Onion.
Was Asimov's HIV status a secret at the time of his death? I think I only heard about it in retrospect.
It is interesting to compare future job prospects for those exhibiting OP-type behavior contrasted with mildly supporting Palestinian positions in public.
When I was an undergrad it was rampant and a visible part of the landscape. A friend lived with a Geology prof for a while (she was an English major I believe--or undeclared happened Freshman year).
If Isaac Asimov had become lost mountaineering should we have risked lives to rescue him?
Says you.
282: the chair of the department contacted me yesterday and said, in effect, "We're really delighted, of course, that you've made us look so smart. But given that your circumstances have changed, if you choose not to come, there will be no hard feelings on our end." Which I'm sure isn't true, but still, it was a nice thing to say. Regardless, we're moving forward with our plan for a bison preserve in central PA, and Halford isn't invited.
Still, if anything should make possible one of those sweet "visiting professor at Warm and Sunny University every winter" arrangements, it's winning a prize like that, no?
I honestly have no idea what winning a prize like this means. All I know is that I don't seem to be trending on twitter. So how good can it be?
Is it wrong that I keep thinking of it as the Anne Bancroft Prize? "So here's to you, Mrs. Robinson..."
All I know is that I don't seem to be trending on twitter.
Sifu can make that happen. For a consideration.
VW I keep looking for mention of you on a high-profile liberal blog-turned political journalism hub, but no. Some people are so resentful of their colleagues' success.
302: so wait you should ditch that job get one of the institutions around here (a specific one, if you follow) to hire you. I hear they're very accomodating with photocopier time.
297: very successful professors who mildly (and sometimes not-wholly-midlly) support Palestinian positions in public are pretty thick on the ground in my subfield, for whatever reason.
306: it turns out my twitter influence is entirely mediated by whether Da/vid Po/gue is watching the oscars.
I honestly have no idea what winning a prize like this means.
DTF history groupies, right?
I knew I could count on Apostropher to pluck that particular low-hanging fruit.
I had to look up DTF. Sad face about how pathetic I am.
VW I keep looking for mention of you on a high-profile liberal blog-turned political journalism hub, but no. Some people are so resentful of their colleagues' success.
It's not really...news, right? I mean, maybe it will be news when it runs in the Times tomorrow or Monday. But for now, it's just a weird story on the Columbia website. As for the other thing, I've heard from a couple of places already, but not that place. And given that I wrote a pretty hard-hitting review of a new book by one of that place's big star (in my field), I think it's pretty unlikely.
Late to say this, but, wow, that's totally awesome, VW.
292: Thank you, LB. And now that I know, I have another entry in my table of shifted id's. VW--weird how initials of a pseud, like mine, tend to connote something else--and I exchanged back in the day about the Fetterman Massacre, described conventionally in Indian Fights and Fighters which I know well. I don't think I've ever read an account of Sand Creek, and am interested in this.
302.1 is really shockingly cool. Although I suppose that institution is probably coming to terms with a lot of rejection these days.
307.last: Killer robot infitada is at least as realistic a solution as the two-state one at the moment...
PS - autocorrect doesn't recognize "infitada"; Zionists.
Oh, and congratulations. I remember reading things by Bancroft.
My first wife was the object of unwanted advances while a grad student by her American Studies Prof; I was conveniently deployed overseas defending our shores from all sorts of bad people who wished to do harm to you and yours, so obviously she needed his warmth and comfort.
That's because non-terrorists spell it intifada
The idea of Anne Bancroft as a prize brings neatly together the two preoccupations of this thread.
"He was so politically inert that I believe he thought the Intifada was a sort of Italian sports car" - Iain Banks, "The Crow Road".
Congratulations Vakeaton Quamar Wafer.
I certainly hadn't and didn't hear about Asimov's HIV status at the time of his death.
"Very naughty"
On that note, here is the LRB article from just over a year ago about the coming to light of sexual abuse by prominent BBS personalities.
People who worked at the BBC then are reticent about the sexual habits of the time. They speak like survivors - many of the big names are dead, some for more than forty years - and have an understandable wish to resist the hysteria, the prurience, the general shrieking that surrounds discussions of sexual conduct, whether risky and deviant or not. When I spoke to David Attenborough he was amazed to hear that someone he knew might have been named by others as part of the scene surrounding Gamlin at All Souls Place. I don't hesitate to believe him: he clearly knew nothing about it. Others saw much more than he did and can put names to the people involved, but most of them wanted to tell their stories off the record. The BBC isn't the Catholic Church, but it has its own ideals and traditions, which cause people to pause before naming the unwise acts that have been performed on its premises.
I think it's probably best to make a bright line rule for profs of no sleeping with undergrads from their institution even though I can easily imagine situations where I'd find it innocuous and they shouldn't be allowed to sleep with grad students from their own department.
321: "Unwise acts" - yes: that is exactly the attitude.
It seems like the rules for college student/professor contact should be the same as they are in any other workplace, which is that you can't sleep, flirt, hit on, or generally annoy in a sexual manner someone whom you supervise, including, like Alameida's case, students who aren't in your class but whom you have some kind of other power over, like providing recommendations.
If, despite the foregoing, true and totally consensual love surreptitiously blooms between nubile young thing/gross old professorial nerd, the prof has to (a) declare the relationship publically and (b) renounce all ongoing supervisory authority over the student. Pretty simple.
This is another area, like grad student unions or not using NCAA athletes as slave labor, where stopping treating academia like some special magic kingdom and instead as a world where basic labor relations principles apply, would be a good idea.
Also OMG are Leiter's academic freedom arguments buffoonish. Saying a sexual harrasser shouldn't be teaching female students has exactly zero to do with punishing someone for the ideological content of their academic work.
Just to take some of the heat off of the philosophers, a Chemistry professor at the SLAC where I went to school was openly dating one of the students (a Chemistry student, at that).
It may have had something to do with why he didn't get tenure.
The chicken infitada at Taco Bell is delicious.
324: One reason in favor of the zero tolerance (no dating at all) policy is to stop the shenanigans now, where Ludlow's defense is as near as I can tell is to acknowledge that everything she said happened, happened, but to suggest that maybe she really wanted it. Otherwise, disclose-and-recuse seems to be about what's needed.
I've been lucky in that the only effect on my career of philosophical shenanigans is watching bad actors get continually rewarded, which is demoralizing as hell. It really does seem like there's an answer to "who do I have to fuck to get an interview?"
224, 229: Yes, I was thinking of that same exodus. One of the refugees (well, probably more than one, but) ended up where alameida ended up, which place kept her after the 6 or 7 minutes it took her to complete her degree. Later she ended up at Chicago, where certain posters mooned over her.
I certainly hadn't and didn't hear about Asimov's HIV status at the time of his death. until just now. Who knew!
(His family and his doctors, but apparently nobody else until ten years after his death, but that was twelve years ago, so what's my excuse?)
327: I know that doesn't exist, but I want one.
324 is pretty great. 325 makes the mistake of referring to that odious little creature by name.
Later she ended up at Chicago, where certain posters mooned over her.
I did not moon over her.
Yeah, that's one that someone really should Google-proof.
Surely you didn't moon her, did you, nosflow?
Upward behind the onstreaming Neb mooned.
The last thing anyone needs to be worried about is being sued by or threatened with a lawsuit by Brian Leiter based on a comment posted here. Honestly I think we have something like a top-500 in the nation boutique law firm here just based on the commentariat, at least on those kinds of issues, if we could all ever stop procrastinating.
244/246: huh. I know of two cases that fit that description that are likely to make national news sometime within the next two-weeks to a month. So, at the very least we're talking about two more such cases; possibly four just between what the three of us know about.
geez.
328: seriously.
329: The prodigy of whom you speak was a few years ahead of me in undergrad, and was getting her senior thesis published by a major university press right around when my class was starting ours. So demoralizing for us mere mortals who were just trying to bang out enough hopefully-not-too-embarrassing pages.
337: Oh, I'm not genuinely worried about him bringing a lawsuit, much less winning one. (It might actually be entertaining.) He does, however, have a history of arbitrarily outing and otherwise causing trouble for people who insolently annoy him on the Internet, which is why back in 249 I figured why do anything to bring this place to his attention?
324 generates clapping from me. At our college, we wonder why our students have such fucked-up ideas about sex, and everyone blames Culture or Society or whatever, and not the fact that they see powerful people all around them taking advantage of youngsters with stars in their eyes. (About which, oh God, an intoxicated young man showed up in my office this afternoon after everyone else had gone home to, I don't know, bat his eyes at me or something, and I indulged ten minutes of conversation about his project, put on my coat, and said I had an appointment elsewhere. Do other people find this behavior sexually appealing? It just embarrasses me.)
Being drunk makes me sexier according to me. I don't think I can bat my eyes.
I've tried batting my eyelashes. People tend to ask if I'm all right, or if there's some kind of neurological distress going on.
That's generally been part of the protocol.
Yes -- 244 is just such a tease! Philosophers are rather good at hushing things up so we'll see if it actually comes out.
What a sadly gossiptastic thread. How does one come by 2 weeks advance notice of national news? Can you at least divulge that in the abstract?
My department comes out of this looking better than I would ever have guessed. (I am out of the loop and not the sort of student any prof would hit on, tho.)
Re Isaac Asimov and HIV, it was said by his (second) wife Janet Jeppson after his death that he was exposed to HIV through a blood transfusion during a heart operation. This was before the blood supply was recognized as a transmission vector.
That being said, his reputation at conventions and such is pretty well corroborated. (I saw it in action myself, back in the day.) In his autobiography he wrote about cheating on his first wife (they were, to say the least, not happy in their marriage).
Isaac Asimov: the Magic Johnson of SciFi in two different but potentially-related ways?
(Which pun I had never before made or thought of with respect to Earvin's more well-known moniker.)
Sadly gossiptastic my ass. People being unwilling to talk about stuff like this allows scumbags to continue harassing students for decades.
If it's predicted to hit the news soon, I don't think it's a closely guarded secret.
351-352: yes. exactly.
353--yes, and no. kind of. Sometimes there are very very very good reasons to let those whose names, in another era, would have been followed by "esq." be the ones in charge of the flow of information with substantial content.
Hey, our names are still followed by Esq. You write me a professional letter, I expect to be esq'd.
I'm at a swim meet and thus very bored (and, for the time being, cold). Someone entertain me, please.
356: Better looking cyclists perform better? Yet another win for the pretty people.
(Contains dumb assumptions - they assume athletic performance is governed exclusively by athletic talent.)
Yeah, I don't get any of the coy little references people are making & I also don't get why not just call them out by name.
355: If you get a professional letter from a German, do you get von'ed?
356: make a fuss until they provide you with entertainment of some sort. "Do you know who I am? I would like a goddamned Nintendo DS in ten goddamned minutes or I'll have the Prize Committee on your ass so fast you'll think it was on fire."
why not just call them out by name
As a disinterested third-party, you really don't want to be first to go public with a seriously defamatory accusation against a minor bigshot.
I've given up on "Esq." The prospects for advancing to knighthood seemed too slim.
355: that's awesome. way cooler, somehow, than PhD
358-- really? you really don't get if lawyers say, 'let us do the talking', you let the lawyers do the talking?
356: (and, for the time being, cold)
See in central Pa. you'd be warm.
Because you'd probably be in a packed, stiflingly hot steam bath with slime on the walls where every noise reverberates endlessly. But since the level of the sport will be lower you and your kid(s) will temporarily feel better about yourselves do the soft delusions of low competition.
You fucking dumb shit! You moron! I can't believe you did it! I've been waiting 25 years for someone I know to make a stupider life-altering geographic blunder than I did and now it's happened! But at least I didn't move to a place where the current top story is "Home show organizers 'see a good future'" and two of the other top 5 stories are about child abuse with a third about yet another Paterno and another one about college wrestling. If you're not in a spouse-swapping club within 18 months I'll be surprised. As if they'd accept someone with a limp.
Esq seems less common here. Which isn't surprising.
What happened 25 years ago to make you start your vigil?
365 is a special kind of magic. No kidding, the number of "you're really dumb for making this move" messages has increased considerably in the last couple of days. That said, the swim club in State College is actually very, very good, and the coach is a nice guy (draw your own conclusions), so our older boy is looking forward to swimming there.
365 is a special kind of magic. No kidding, the number of "you're really dumb for making this move" messages has increased considerably in the last couple of days. That said, the swim club in State College is actually very, very good, and the coach is a nice guy (draw your own conclusions), so our older boy is looking forward to swimming there.
Fortunately, I'm not at all prone to self-doubt and second-guessing.
364.last: "You keep your trap shut, and I'll keep your trap open"
Leading me in the spirit of 365 and entertaining VW to repost this Pittsburgh attorney ad.
"Did I mention I'm Jewish."
370: Good! Those qualities will come in handy.
I think Stormcrow should make you a "JP Stormcrow Award For Stupidest Geographic Blunder In A Quarter Century" certificate to hang up next to the other one.
268, 369: I'm nothing if not boringly predictable.
355 et al. I'm surprised it's not banned under Article 1.9. I know Esq. isn't technically a title of nobility, but nor is a knighthood, which is comparable in 18th century British usage, and you can't use one of those.
What happened 25 years ago to make you start your vigil?
Moved from California to Pennsylvania.
Actually, I'm mostly in line with the sentiments expressed by a boss of mine 40 years back, "In my experience people there are people who are happy where they are and those who are not; and it's pretty independent of where they are."
But the people sending you those messages are assholes.
||
WTF, US nuclear industry ca. 1971?
|>
378: I know I've told the story here before of how a couple of weeks after we moved back to P'burgh, I said to my wife before going to sleep one night, "We just made the biggest mistake of our lives." She expressed relief that I had come out and said it because she was thinking the same. It did do wonders at relieving a palpable unspoken tension that had been in the air.
381: "Yup. Robbing those banks in California was a dumb idea."
The story in 380 is awful, but the closing line seems to sum it up pretty well. I can't figure out what sort of person gets those safety jobs, the one who nearly flunks out in college?
In addition, the report states the former president "later learned that the company's health physicist, who was responsible for determining the amounts of materials in the drums prior to burial, was not very good and his measurements of the quantities were poor."
384: I know, right? I had to read that twice to make sure I wasn't misreading it. Nope.
371: Lawyer in the video lays his version of the changes in the profession:
I would say that post-Recession, after that great crash in 2008, the legal job market essentially disintegrated. That prompted the way I hustle to grab clients and do what I do--nobody was hiring. You have to do what you have to do to create business. I would tell people that you don't have to hustle the way that I hustled, but if you can't go out and bring in your own business and create value either for yourself or your employer, it could be a very, very difficult situation for you trying to progress and obtain any type of long-term employment. But you have to hustle now. Just getting good grades on your finals and writing the perfect briefs and perfect paper is not gonna get you on like it did, and they don't tell you that in school because it worked one way for like 200-plus years and just stopped working that way a couple years ago
380-- among many other wtf elements:
""We do expect to find a truck" buried there as well, he said."
[from link within linked article]
How exactly is anyone going to go from a comment on an obsure website by someone named PresidentialPhilosopher to suing an actual human?
Whoa, sorry -- the gossip I was referring to was neb's (denied) crush on a classicist I think I can identify because who else would it be?, and then this "I know about a scandal but I can't give details but you'll know them soon enough" thing -- not the discussion of actual cases of sexual assault and harassment in context, which WTF of course I'm not against that. But I communicated so poorly that I'll just apologize, and also say that I'm really-this-time done commenting here because I've offended and annoyed too many of you too many times, and the world is a better place when annoying people voluntarily leave spaces without throwing their shit fits about not feeling welcome (as I always unfortunately have felt quite welcome). Thank you all for being better company than creeps like me have ever deserved, and may your other occasional trolls and grifters also pass away into silence with more grace than this.
lurid keyaki: I've not followed the allusions and intimations and what-all in this thread, so maybe you did something awful that I wasn't aware of, but good lord, I see no reason for you to leave. I don't see why you should, unless you want to, of course.
Keyaki, I've never thought you were a troll, an annoying person, or a grifter. While I can't speak for anyone else, this is a space that for me derives a lot of its value from having a bunch of smart opinionated people that are generally not too dickish. Any such voice leaving is a detriment, and I for one would be sad to see you go. You're good people!
lur key, no! Take a break if you need to, but please come back. I like having you around here and you have a lot of interesting things to say!
Lurid, you drama queen (?) you haven't offended or annoyed anyone. What is annoying are the three-step anagrammatic guess who I'm talking about puzzlers that have become a common way to refer elliptically to various people. That's why we googleproof, is it not?
Has anyone ever actually confirmed that Go/oglepro/ofing actually works? At least in searching Google tends to strip out punctuation, so I've been wondering if, or to what degree, they also strip it out when they crawl.
Please stick around, lurid, I value your comments even when I can't figure out the allusions. And speaking of allusions:
380 et seq: several hundred drums of waste from the federal government's Pluto Project, which developed nuclear-powered ramjet engines for use in cruise missiles
Are you kidding me? Did DOD just give a few hundred million to some mad scientists and say "Get cracking on those nuclear ramjets and forget anything like Yucca Mountain - we'll just put the waste in a lot in Apollo, PA"?
396: You're questioning what it took to keep America safe from the communists? And waste disposal occurring right around when the EPA was founded? It's actually pretty lucky it wasn't worse.
390: What 393 says.
Has anyone ever actually confirmed that Go/oglepro/ofing actually works?
Yeah, it works. If you directly copy the slashed name into the search box, the thread shows up, but if you take out the slashes, it doesn't.
I don't care what the rest of you decide. I am not going to stop being annoying or offending people.
399: Huh, yeah. That pleasantly surprises me.
fwiw-- I don't have any desire to have anyone leave, and haven't really been annoyed; just puzzled as to why some would think this a good place/time to name the names. I made my first presidential comment sincerely wondering whether there is any way to figure out whether philosophy is worse than other disciplines, and my remark at 338 (referring to earlier 244/245etc) was in the same 'how the hell are we to figure out how bad this is?' spirit. I certainly never meant to engage anyone in a 'guess who these are?' game. [to me, and in this light, who exactly are the personages in question isn't/wasn't the issue-- at 338 it was just 'look, one blog with some presumptively small selection of people, and we've got what is in the national media already plus between 2-4 relevantly similar forthcoming of which even this presumptively small selection of people know about. I still don't know what to make of that on the 'how comparatively bad is this?' score, though it does seem very very bad to me.]
I think everyone should leave. Then, at long last, the blog will be all mine!
(I mean, the rest of it too, but, for reals.)
I want everyone to stay, but for everyone to be subservient to my whims. Let's try that.
Quick, everybody post their salaries.
$0. Wait, no. That's not true. I just got a text that my cut from last night's gig is $27.
390: You are totes overreacting, lurid keyaki. Don't quite the blog.
403: Then, at long last, the blog will be all mine!
To move to the Chronicle of Higher Education?
It's cool, Moby: just get Red or Blue, then you can get Charmander or Squirtle and not worry about the electric rat.
Ooh, let's all guess what everyone else makes.
412: ...and then quit yourself.
I hate Ash even more, but I assume everyone hates him.
I haven't seen the show in fifteen years, but I can imagine that he's annoying to anyone older than thirteen or fourteen. Anime protagonists that are meant to be relatable to kids--especially the "gambate!" type--tend to be insufferable.
Yes, you didn't offend anyone, Lur Key! Stay.
In other news, Iberian Fury ('Beauties' are always locked away in towers or something in fairy tales, she says) and I are enjoying the warm Santa Monica sunshine.
We had a possible semi-celebrity sighting, too: someone who looks identical to Malc/olm Gla/dwe/ll jogging up and down the steps next to the place we're staying.
Oh, and we spent awhile on the freeway in traffic, so we're definitely getting the authentic LA experience. Now, on to the beach!
Lurid, If you leave I'm going to cut my balls off and eat them. So don't, OK?
Here's a different angle to think about these things: http://missoulian.com/news/local/author-krakauer-seeks-jordan-johnson-rape-case-records/article_210ed22c-abaf-11e3-a31e-001a4bcf887a.html
My guess is that the student's records stay sealed, but it's not my area.
Nor is titling books, but this one have a river theme: both running through it and not just being one in Egypt.
419: You know they don't grow back.
Another call for lk to stay. Everybody gets annoyed sometimes, it's not enough of a reason to leave the Mineshaft.
Let's not set a precedent that annoying people have to leave the blog.
As the voice of authority, or whatever it is I do around here, anyone who wants to leave should leave because they're sick of commenting here, rather than because they think anyone else is sick of them commenting here. If there's genuine concern that someone is too annoying to tolerate, we will guaranteed have repeated thousand comment threads about what it all means and if we really do want them gone, and if there aren't threads like that about you, no one's all that annoyed.
(Personally, I'd hate to see you go, lurid, but don't take that as an obligation. If posting here is bringing you down, no need to stay, but do come back if it ever sounds like fun again.)
390: Lurid, sit down. You are not excused from the blog.
419: Togolosh, if you're going to cut your balls off, go to the bathroom to do it. And wash your hands first.
Because you should always wash your hands before you eat.
Anyone who can get out of the blog in the next 30 seconds, run!! It's about to blow!
429: I guess I picker the wrong week to give up adrenochrome.
421 and 422 are in the wrong order.
I hope that lurid is reading this, because my reaction was "huh? annoying when?" I hope you stick around.
Are you willing to threaten your balls over it?
I'm still super mad at whoever for something.
I'm still super mad at everyone for everything.
That's fair. Those jerks should never have done, said, or thought any things.
Catching up....woo-hoo vw! Totally awesome.
LK...I was going to make a joke about how you obviously couldn't think you actually qualified as a troll if you had ever RTFA, but I feel better being earnest instead: Dude (lady?), don't leave. It's more fun with you here.
Lady. Married to (I think? Partnered with, anyway, Lourdes Kayak. Who I failed to identify as a distinct person for ages.)
I'm still super mad at myself for forgetting to buy something when I was at Trader Joe's earlier. SUPER MAD.
You guys are all sweethearts, but this is really for the best. I'm apparently never going to grow a thicker skin, and as with so many people, anonymous commenting seems to bring out my worst qualities. I think this is the third round of feeling that I can't handle the stress of these incredibly low-stress, mostly friendly interactions, and if it's that pathological there's not much to gain from another ten iterations. I'll probably keep reading. Seriously, I have come to care a lot about a lot of you and wish you all well (except for togolosh, alas -- looks like only prayer can save your balls), but it's pretty much always going to be better for me not to talk.
Take care of yourselves. This is a really extraordinary place.
Lur, I've been bad about responding in the past, but feel free to email anytime. I pushed through all the early times I felt stupisd and worthless for commenting badly, but don't feel like I hould push anyone to comment like me.
Togolosh, is there some Peter Pan-esque way the lurkers or commenters can save or support your balls yet still respect themselves in the morning?
Re: Age of hands-off undergraduates
In the spring of 1994 when I was 18, a super shy awkward graduate student in the Government department was taking a 4th semester Greek course on Homer, mostly for fun. He made some advances.*
It turned out that he was a TF for a class some of my roommates were taking. I was creeped out. My godmother, who worked in administration at a high level, wasn't really surprised. I had talked to him before class in a friendly way and let him see a Tennyson poem o Virgil that had been passed out in another class. I suppose that I had been relatively unguarded, because I just thought that he would never think that t was appropriate to come on to me, but that women just weren't generally friendly to him, so he took that at a sign.
*They consisted of an elaborate poem written in Homeric Greek extolling my virtues and inviting me over to dinner at his place with his telephone number written in Roman numerals.
224: al, e-mail me. I want the name.
but that women just weren't generally friendly to him, so he took that at a sign
Never did anything like that, nor was ever in a position of academic responsibility, but that resonated with me. I remember the excitement and hope I would feel when a young woman would be "relatively unguarded" with me, enough not to treat me like an alien, or a potential attacker, or god knows what. I got more warmth from bank tellers, who to be fair were protected by cages and security guards than from classmates.
lurid keyaki! don't be a big goober-pea! people were confused because they we're all "who's this who ann so?" then they expressed confusion and said things like "express yourselves less cryptically, brethren, excluding cryptic ned, who has presumably reached some kind of encrypted homeostasis." I'm sorry if you thought people were pissed about it--I don't even think anyone particularly was. mildly irritated, like how I feel when I look at british crossword puzzles, more like. certainly nothing worth storming off over unless we all stab you with ice-needles of despair, night after weary night.
324: She wasn't one of his students at the time they went out, was she? So I don't think she counts as someone he was supervising.
As long as she was over 18, and not one of his students, then I don't see the particular problem here. If I'm single at 55, I'd certainly *hope* to be lucky enough to be able to pick up 18-year olds. If his university did have a 'no dating any student at the institution' policy, then ok, discipline him for that. I'm not comfortable with the tendency of some people here, though, to be critical of any relationship between an older man and younger women.
