A) I have no idea how state universities work. But B) maybe don't affirmatively bring it up until after her tenure vote, but then talk about it whenever it seems appropriate? All the 'two-body problem' talk, it seems clear that there's no problem with his getting a job at her school just because they're involved, so why shouldn't they tell anyone?
I feel I may be missing the problem here.
Oh, just because he's her former student, and there's an age gap, and so they could be the subject of judgment and negative gossip.
I think they've been in a secretive defensive crouch for so long that they're just not sure if it's safe to come out.
I certainly don't have anything useful to say, but I wonder if there could be any negotiating opportunities related to the tenure decision. Like, if she's on the job market and gets another offer somewhere else, maybe that could provide some leverage to get him a job too? I don't know. I'm clueless enough about how to deal with my own problem, much less anyone else's.
Is it the department level vote that is happening this semester? In many places there can be a long delay between department approval and final (legally binding) approval at the university level. It might be a good idea to stay in that defensive crouch until she has the signed and stamped letter in hand.
I'd have no problem learning that a colleague started a relationship with a grad student after the grad student left the program (no need for your friend to specify when the falling-in-love began). But I'd have a very serious problem with learning that the person I'd been persuaded to hire as a lecturer or a post-doc was in fact that partner of a colleague. So, your friend should certainly disclose before that happens.
I think the tenure process will in fact drag out for a while, although the department vote is probably the part most sensitive to gossip.
7 is a good point. So even if my friend wasn't advocating for him as a hire, the omission could be seen as a problem?
People's reactions to sex in academic institutions are incredibly irrational and inconsistent. But I'm against defensive crouching, and don't think it helps because it makes you look weasely.
But I'm against defensive crouching, and don't think it helps because it makes you look weasely.
I agree. They should schedule a colloquium and exhibit their fucksaws.
It's tricky since the situation is genuinely sketchy. Not so sketchy you'd have to fire her, and not really an outlier if you think of it as the answer to"what's sketchiest romantic situation you've ever been in", but still something that would rightfully cause concern because this was actually her student. (A random grad student would be very different.)
I have a former roommate who married his former high school teacher. He is now teaching at a university.
It seems that they could say they are together without mentioning that he used to be her student. Would that be obvious to the people involved. It's not relevant now anyways.
He just found me on Facebook. It says he's married but doesn't list the wife's name.
It seems that they could say they are together without mentioning that he used to be her student. Would that be obvious to the people involved.
It would definitely be obvious. Everyone knows him from a year and a half ago, and knows that the two of them are in the same area and are at least friends.
8: At some point, her colleagues are going to find out, and if they find out *after* the hiring meeting they're going to a) feel deceived and potentially manipulated and b) embarrassed about any negative things they might have said about the guy in front of your friend. So, she should recuse herself from the deliberations and explain why. Everyone will appreciate her frankness, and, if they like her, they'll vote for him.
16 makes sense, but it leaves this follow-up question: her tenure decision may still be in process while his hiring decision is going on. Her department vote will be done, but it could be moving up the pipeline, when they're hiring for the summer. Is it better to come clean for the reasons in 16? It shouldn't jeopardize tenure, in part because the people up the pipeline shouldn't give a shit, but it's a high stakes situation.
She should find a colleague who is willing to help ease into the topic naturally at a meeting or other conversation. Something like, "Everybody who hasn't seen X's penis, take one step backward."
15: Under the circumstances, I think she has to tell it as a story. "He was a student, and we noticed each other, but of course we couldn't do anything because rules. And then after he left (he/I) got back in touch, and then we started seeing each other." Not denying the obvious, but affirmatively claiming not to have broken the rules.
Oh wait, maybe I misunderstood. Did he used to be a student in her class, or was she his advisor? If the former, then way way less sketchy.
He was a student in her class. I don't think he had an advisor yet.
Oh! Totally misunderstood. In that case, there's no reason to be worried. People may chuckle, but that's not going to change anyone's mind on tenure.
Ok, good. I think she and I both have zero perspective, since the last time he was around the department, it was in the midst of failing marriage drama plus falling in love drama and all seemed to be the height of craziness. So it's helpful to hear that in general, people will attribute this to normal course of life gossip, but not particularly scandalous.
Depends on the department, but if it were like my graduate department, it would not be a big deal for her tenure decision and would probably help him get a lecturer position. However, the department was so generally crazy, I'm pretty sure I'm incapable of advice for someone in a semi-functional department. For example, my second advisor married someone he'd advised through her PhD. She was/is age appropriate and he'd been divorced for quite a while. They're a lovely couple. Several others had spouses/girlfriends in lecturer positions basically created to fix a two-body problem. One prof had an affair with a student's (post-doc's?) fiancé and ended up marrying her. Nobody's career seems to have been affected.
Now I ain't saying she's a gold digger.
But she's going with the CV that's bigger.
Did he leave the department because he was in a relationship with her? I can see that being tough to argue through, in that she fucked someone right on out of their program. Retention is important.
But as for student-fucking in general, I suppose it depends on the school. I've worked in schools where it would never ever happen, and if it did it would be a tremendous breach of professional decorum, and I've also been in places where everyone knows it's happening but it isn't really taken into consideration for hiring/tenure decisions, in part because to acknowledge one case would mean we have to acknowledge all of them. That's a can of worms her colleagues might not want to open, because an accusation would empower her to take the cover off of other people's indiscretions.
Did he leave the department because he was in a relationship with her? I can see that being tough to argue through, in that she fucked someone right on out of their program. Retention is important.
Not to speak for heebie, but my interpretation of the OP is that the relationship didn't actually begin until after he had left the department.
||Smearcase? essear? Vf Xnyvaqn tbvat gb trg bssrq? Ol Ovfubc? Ol Qrynarl?|>
You've got to wait until after 40 comments to go off-topic, dude.
But it's late! Okay, fine, your interpretation was also mine, and if the relationship is technically kosher, then there's no need to disclose it and good reason not to, concerns noted above notwithstanding.
I'll defer to the academics on how to best handle the actual situation, but it certainly seems to be among the least unseemly situations of its type that I've heard about.
28: I just got in from a late flight so I'm going to assume you're saying something about The Good Wife that I don't want to know until I get a chance to watch it tomorrow.
27 is right. He left for a different program for purely academic reasons, and then they started dating.
So I plowed though probably half of the first season, mostly this past weekend. I'm enjoying it, but it doesn't seem to rise to the level of OMG ROT13!! that conversation here implies. In what season does it really take off?
If 1. he left for a different program because either it's not offered in the same way at Heebie's friend's university, or the one he went to has a better reputation, or you can make a plausible story like that and 2. they never laid a finger on each other until he was out of town, there really can't be any legitimate problem. If anybody on the tenure or hiring committee is a friend of her ex-husband, they may try to make mischief but that's a slightly different problem.
As the OP was worded, it actually sounds even more kosher. The wording of the OP makes it sound as if his transfer out of the program was already in progress before they started sniffing around each other -- that the timing means that the possibility of a future relationship really wasn't part of the consideration for his leaving at all. This is obviously not possible prove, but if they can truthfully claim it, I'd make it part of the story: "I already had my application into [other program] finished, and just had to get through one more semester of classes at [state U], and then there she was, teaching my class. So frustrating, if I'd just met her six months later, I would have already been at [other program] and wouldn't have had to wait before asking her out."
If you see what I mean.
He probably would have met her before. Academic departments aren't that big. He just never had the chance to stare at her while she wrote on the board.
36 is right. He was in the process of applying to transfer when they met.
It's very unlikely that my friend would be in on the hiring process for a summer lectureship, so there's no actual conflict with hiring, strictly speaking. But I'm getting the impression that it could rankle people that she kept it a secret, anyway.
Did the others know her husband very well? That might make it harder, if they think he's a home wrecker.
It sounds like the rankling here is all gossip, not HR-level stuff. (This is how ridiculous academic life has become, that we instinctively cringe and cower about things that any regular-business HR department wouldn't even remotely consider to be actual problems. This is for the very good reason that decisions are made about our careers on the basis of fucked-up things like "fit" rather than productivity.) And don't male home-wreckers get the benefit of people being sort of impressed by them?
41: At a state hospital it might be even worse than among academics. No joke. I'm not super impressed by professional HR departments.
Let's all send in photos of all of our colleagues who are adulterous or skeevy relationships.
That guy who got fired by American Apparel.
So until I masturbate to orgasm while at work in front of non-consenting inferiors, I'm all good?
Maybe the non-consenting and the inferiors are the crucial parts.
If you're asking about non-consenting peers, then the answer is yes, you're good.
So, you can't stay in the clear just by stopping before orgasm.
OK, but what if the inferiors don't *know* that I was masturbating?
I think if they could reasonably be expected to find out, it's still your bad.
Office hours are right out, is what I'm saying.
What if you're at a student play, though, and it's REALLY boring?
If you are in the theater department, no. Otherwise, it's fine.
I hope all of our human resources lurkers are taking notes. Because I'm not repeating all of this.
34: In my experience it was more of a slow frog boil. I didn't go back for six months after the first ep, because it just felt so slow and CBS-y, but then I popped a few like agreeable but not addictive candy that goes down easy, and then I was all, "Cary really should win this fucked up contest," and then I was like, "Oh, these are not especially righteous people" and then I just wanted to see more of what they did.
I actually got to watch a little bit of The Good Wife, including the part prompting the rot13 above, when we got a drink after the movie! I've been reading recaps for years but have never actually seen it. (That is arguably the story of my life.)
My ex was a student in a class I taught. She suddenly stopped showing up halfway through the semester, and once the semester was over she sought me out and jumped my bones. She'd stopped coming to class because she didn't want to embed a student/teacher dynamic in the relationship she hoped to have with me. AFAICT there were no negative consequences for my career.
She wasn't your ex when you were teaching her in the class, was she?
60,61: What if a future ex travels back in time and attends your class? I'm not sure my school has a policy covering that.
And your ex is your great, great, great, great granddaughter.
I just watched the first season of The Good Wife, mainly because essear kept mentioning it. A couple of months ago I watched the first season of Veronica Mars, because essear (and heebie) kept mentioning it. Essear needs to mention less TV shows, so that I have more free time.
My dad started watching the Rockford Files without me having mentioned it to him.
Check his phone records. You'll see he's been talking to essear.
61: Only potentially my ex. An ex-in-waiting if you will, which you won't but you should.
I knew my marriage was in trouble when my wife started referring to me as "my first husband".
Were you crouched on top of a bookshelf at the time?
Careful, peep. LB's a well-known Thurber fetishist and even though people think well of marriage-wrecking men, Buck has a lot of fans here. Or at least his car does.
$0.02: The only thing your friend need do is disclose that they're together when he applies for the summer position, especially if she has any say in the hiring process. Other than that, there wasn't a supervisory relationship when they started dating. That's not the kind of thing HR is meant to be worried about.
70 may be the only time the New Yorker has made me laugh.
72 and 73 are making feel even stupider. And Standpipe's blog is down! Again!
In my copy of Thurber, it has a commentary by Thurber on the cartoons; he says that after this one was published he got a lot of questions about whether this was supposed to be his live ex-wife crouching on the bookcase, whether she was dead, stuffed, or what. And he said he didn't know, he just drew the cartoons, but he talked to a taxidermist who said that it was impossible to pose a stuffed woman in a crouching position, so she must be alive.
That's a bit creepy that the taxidermist knew that.
LB's a well-known Thurber fetishist
I may ask neB to add this to my bio on the site.
Possibly it shows that the taxidermist just hadn't been trying hard enough.
57, and also I love Cary's voice and developed quite a crush on him during series 4, which surprised me. Haven't yet seen any of series 5.
At the moment I'm watching The Walking Dead, which I am loving, despite the lack of pervworthy characters.
Cary's brother is my colleague. I warmed more easily to him than I otherwise would have, because I like his brother.
Also, I'm sure I'll find out she's despicably evil, but so far I totally love Diane the most.
83: heebie, you totally need to get colleague to have his brother surprise asilon.
Don't you think 84 will give it away?
83: Dude! What is with all the people here and their famous people connections.
(I guess technically my sort-of-step-brother is really good friends with the not-so-exciting Zac Efron, but I haven't even met the sort-of-step-brother. (It's complicated.))
I dated the son of one federal judge and babysat the nephew of another, but that's the closest I come to fame.
I went to the Veronica Mars premiere.
I once heard really dubious parenting advice from the wife of the great-grandson of a president of the United States.
84, 85 I really would be surprised!
90 - wow! Did you meet any of the cast???
Did I ever! Have I mentioned that Jason Dohring liked my caftan?
I've had a Nobelist heap scorn on my last-minute lo-budget expansion attempt in a project that I worked on. Someone else suggested the expansion direction. Room full of people I had worked with and against for a long time.
Oh I see there is Good Wife stuff in this thread but I haven't watched last night so sadly I cannot. But I have read comment 83 and accordingly googlestalked the subject but not definitively found pictures. There's one that seems to be him.
I have a topical anecdote! I was walking home from work an hour ago and, when crossing an intersection with a walk sign, was almost run over by someone making a left turn. He then started yelling at me, and I approached his car and invited him out of it. After a further exchange of unpleasanteries he drove off. A block closer to home he pulled up next to me saying he was going to kill me. I repeated my invitation, approaching his car, and he clarified that he was going to shoot me dead as soon as I got off the main street. At a bit of a standoff, I recalled how Vinnie Van Lowe defused a violent situation at the Fitzpatrick's bar with his cell phone, so I took mine out and started taking pictures, and he drove off.
I had just watched the episode last night.
Seriously, you should call 911 and report it. A specific threat like that is a crime and you have a picture of him.
I'm not a lawyer, but it sure sounds crime-y.
I had a slight disagreement with a driver the other day, which culminated in his yelling "You're wrong, ma'am" at me. I walked off thinking what a pleasantly civilized way he had of getting angry, even if he was unclear that the combination of a stop sign and a crosswalk meant that I really was allowed to cross in front of him.
The best picture of his plates is pretty blurry (damn daylight savings time). I'm going to see if I can deblur it, but calling 911 sounds like a lot of work.
I think you're fine without calling 911, although I guy who'd drive back to confront you over something like that is pretty edgy. You've handled it pretty well and stood your ground, which is always satisfying after some time passes.
A few years ago I had a suit taken in so far that I had to reach behind a ways to put my hand in my front pants pockets. But it looked ok.
It's pretty saturated and blurry. The make and model is probably identifiable, but that's it. And it's totally satisfying. He ran twice from a pedestrian.
I think you guys are getting off track, though. The point is that Vinnie Van Lowe is my new guide to life. I'll have to go back over his episodes to see what other tips I can pick up.
The point is that Vinnie Van Lowe is my new guide to life.
When you started snapping photos, you should have started singing "Private eyes: they're watching you...."
28: Now that I've caught up on the episode, V'z greevsvrq bs gung gbb abj!
Awesome, Eggplant! Please don't get killed.
In what season does it really take off?
Five is almost objectively the best but I liked all of them. There was stuff in some middle season with Kalinda that irritated me but whatever. There's a revelation about Alicia at some point that makes me happy but I think it's not 'til season 4.
Ok I'm all caught up so time to make with the rot13.
28: Bu ubarfgyl V qba'g guvax gurl'q qb gung gjvpr. Snaf jbhyq or shhhhhevbhf.
Ok and
Gurl unira'g sbhaq nalguvat vagrerfgvat gb qb jvgu ure va ntrf, gubhtu. V guvax fbzrbar urer cbvagrq bhg gung fur unfa'g orra va gur fnzr ebbz jvgu Nyvpvn fvapr frnfba guerr be fbzrguvat, naq gung jnf bar bs gur vagrerfgvat eryngvbafuvcf ba gur fubj. Abj fur'f zbfgyl gurer sbe yrfovna gvgvyyngvba. V srry yvxr V'ir fnvq guvf orsber.
There are times when I really don't regret not having a TV, and this is one of them.
I was going to say that 110 vf rknpgyl evtug but really V'z zber va yvar jvgu 113.
When I see rot-13'ed text I always try to read it phonetically in my best Klingon voice.
My workplace seems to have done a fairly effective job of blocking rot-13 sites of all things. I think pig latin ones are still available.
114: I don't see what's so wrong with yrfovna gvgvyyngvba.
I'll just assume anything written in rot-13 during my working hours is extolling my virtues.,
Lbh hfr chapghngvba yvxr n punzcvba.
Since this is the academia thread--one of the best academic editing/publishing oversights ever.
Mid-text: (should we cite the crappy Gabor paper here?).
I think my punzcvba is indeed one of my better attributes.
123: That is pretty great. They do not cite Gabor there or anywhere else.
I'm going to assume the paper in question was written by Zaza Gabor, which explains it's crappiness. She wasn't much of a scientist, Zaza.
It appears that she is at Texas State.
That is exceptionally ironic in the context of the OP.
It could just be garden variety sexism exposed by poor editing. It looks like four men wrote the paper.
Odd, I understood that it took more than four men to marry Zsa Zsa.
126. Maybe not much of a scientist*, but she would probably have understood her own shoaling behavior.
* Or maybe she was, after all Hedy Lamarr.
