Heh. The only thing that could make this post more classic would be if the woman in question were an undergrad.
I assume that "lady friend" mean more than just "friend who is a lady." That is, this isn't a "can I sleep with my friend's sister" question, is it?
That is, this isn't a "can I sleep with my friend's sister" question, is it?
If my student is friends with my sister, may I sleep with my student's friend?
The only thing that could make this post more classic would be if the woman in question were an undergrad.
As far as we know, she may well be.
If my student is friends with my sister, may I sleep with my student's friend?
Depends. Is the faculty member your sister hot?
This decision-making should be reduced to a flowchart and distributed at all universities. It would help eliminate the need for most crappy college sex-advice columns.
I would say it depends on your relationship with that student. I have close relationships with some of my professors, and I wouldn't feel weird if I had a friend who dated one of them and I found out personal details. I'd be happy for them. But would I want my friend dishing to me about some of my other profs? Hell, no.
This decision-making should be reduced to a flowchart
is something missing in the original post, like a link?
otherwise, i'm not getting the antecedent of 'this' in 'this is frikkin awesome.
can't be the situation described, i.e., a faculty member attempting to seduce the girlfriend of a grad student.
that would just be common or garden variety tawdry.
tedious != awesome, last i checked.
More seriously, I'd say there's no reason not to go for it if the relationship with the graduate student is friendly (advisor/advisee is probably a problem.) They're junior colleagues, and the lady friend I'm assuming isn't another grad student in the same department. So it's like you're hanging out with a friend from work and the friend brings along a friend. If you're the boss of the friend from work, it's sort of creepy. But if you're not, you met someone through a friend.
Doesnt this question really depend on your abilities?
If you are lame in bed, walk away.
Huh. I'd read "lady friend" as unambiguously equivalent to "girlfriend" -- if the realtionship between the grad student and the woman was platonic, I'd just say "friend". So, a rotten lousy thing to do, right up there with having your boss move in on your girl/boyfriend or spouse, but probably not forbidden by any actual rules anywhere.
Feel the wisdom of my lack of knowledge, LB! This feels like one of those stories that comes out in drips and drabs, with FL getting a small renewed approval for his actions with each new little twist. I'm betting that the underlying story is that he slept with his mom. Which is OK, because FL's an adult and I'm a Dhimicrat.
I read "lady friend" with a cf. The Big Lebowski - i.e. one's distant friend, perhaps with whom one tries to conceive a baby, but certainly for whom one has no long term intentions or possessive feelings.
It's not Labs' lady-friend, he's just helping her conceive.
How do academics find time to get any work done, with all the time they seem to devote to fomenting jejeune interpersonal conflict?
consensus:
the hypothetical is under-described.
if you want us to share the frisson, dish on the details.
It seems to me that in the phrase "pressupposes a misleading deontic logic" FL must think he's answered the question in the post-- isn't he suggesting it's misleading to think of this in terms of obligations, and whoever it is should just go for it?
Not necessarily what I think, but it must be what he's saying.
They don't get any work done. SEK has written three pages of his dissertation so far, one page per year.
I read "lady friend" with a cf. The Big Lebowski - i.e. one's distant friend, perhaps with whom one tries to conceive a baby, but certainly for whom one has no long term intentions or possessive feelings.
She's not my special lady! She's my lady friend!
That aside, I interpret "lady friend" as synonymous with "girlfriend", but for adults. As such, I don't get where the awesomeness comes from. And if it doesn't mean "girlfriend", then how is it noteworthy at all? 14 still stands.
22, 24: I'd read it as "the evilness of it all makes it AWESOME!!" Of course you shouldn't do things like this, but they create the sort of tragedy, bitterness, hatred and humilation that are the very fuel that drives academia.
Only if you are on the grad student's dissertation committee.
Of course you shouldn't do things like this, but they create the sort of tragedy, bitterness, hatred and humilation that are the very fuel that drives academia.
And people wonder why I don't want to go to graduate school.
If academics adopted the colorful habits of the underworlds corresponding to their areas of specialization -- Marxists with Russian-mob-style tattoos, Victorianists wearing motley outfits of stolen gentlemen's clothes, philosophers living in solitude muttering to themselves about how stupid everyone else is -- they might find entire new vocabularies at their disposal for such purposes: e.g., "goomah," "dollymop," etc.
Damn, a female commentator just made a Big Lebowski reference. What's next, X-men?
You've all got it wrong. Labs just spotted one Sen. Craig coming out of the basement men's room with Labs' own gentleman friend in hot, misunderstood pursuit. He's reversed the genders and roles to obfuscate the truth but a real detective, like me, sees through that every time. He wants us to agree that it's terrible - thus the reverse psychology in 0 - to justify his own acts of cruel revenge.
29: Dogs and cats living together, I believe.
27: Of course, I don't know anything about grad school. Law school isn't grad school, it's trade school, like learning to be an HVAC repairman.
14 and 30 are correct. Labs is drunk, and he's changing details to throw us of track. As a result, we have know way of knowing whether what he is doing is awesome, abhorrent, both, or neither.
If you're the boss of the friend from work, it's sort of creepy. But if you're not, you met someone through a friend.
So definitely creepy to hook up with your boss' friend?
I use "lady friend" (with a wry intonation) when describing a woman someone has gone out more than once but has not yet attained "girlfriend" status.
So definitely creepy to hook up with your boss' friend?
Absolutely not. It is only creepy for your boss to hook up with his employee's friend.
Dammit, if not for that meddling McManlypants, I'd've gotten away with it, too! (Now you have to rip off my latex pants to reveal my true identity, RMcMP.)
SEK has written three pages of his dissertation so far, one page per year.
Whatever happened to violating the sanctity of off-blog communications?
Now you have to rip off my latex pants to reveal my true identity, RMcMP
Okay, I'll rip off your latex pants to reveal that your true identity is RMcMP.
38: Does that mean he is wearing unmanly latex over his actually very manly pants?
31.2: Except that HVAC repairmen emerge from trade school with actual, useful skills.
So every time I see "Fontana Labs" I think of D.C. Fontana and think Fontana Labs is female until I'm reminded otherwise by a pronoun. Does anyone else have this problem?
DaveL, I like to pronounce your name Davelle.
Marxists with Russian-mob-style tattoos,
More interesting are their gravestones
34: That's the way I read it, too, especially given the definite article (the lady friend). Methinks Labs is talking about cuckolding.
This happened to me in undergrad. A girl I was seeing dumped me for the cool professor who taught our class. They got married. About a year later, I saw him making out with another woman in plain view at a bar, but I don't know what their status was.
44:
Did he at least give you a higher grade than you deserved?
Was the professor a freakishly tall dude?
Wearing multiple pairs of pants with the most outer being the least manly?
47: Competitive Yoga Studies. You should have seen her downward dog...
A similar incident to Smasher's happened at Berkeley recently. A math undergrad's serious girlfriend left him for their history prof. who was her advisor.
Methinks Labs is talking about cuckolding
That's how I read it.
45: Nah, it really wasn't that big a deal, just a blow to the ego.
46: Yes.
47: Philosophy.
48: Nope.
49: The guy always wore great jeans, but how many jeans is a detail lost to time.
Were one to rip off my pants in turn they would see I'm wearing boyshorts with mirrored Chers on each cheek.
This silly fantasy that one would find me in Labs' pants is contradicted by the fact we've both been seen in the same thread at the same time.
B determined a while back what happens when one rips off a man's pants around here—besides MANDOM. (For example.)
To be fair, we haven't seen Labs in this thread since we revealed his true identity to be you, RMcMP.
55: That site kills me. I would have called these The Plumsmugglers.
I am so, so glad I look at a URL before I open it. I'll just, uh, check that one from home. Ahem.
Methinks Labs is talking about cuckolding.
Methinks Labs is tupping ewe, too.
It's evil, Labs, and when your graduate student kills himself, you'll be responsible.
Oh fuck, you want funny? I ruined a little kid's life today.
62: By mailing the kid a dead kitten? Unoriginal.
Tried to save money on PK's circumcision, huh?
Becks gets it right. I volunteer in PK's classroom on Wednesdays.
wait until he is older. It is so much easier to ruin their lives. Just show up to have lunch with your 5th grader.
Richard Russo's _Straight_Man_ considers the morality of sleeping with nearly all categories of women occuring in academe. Among other moral questions. And I found parts of it funny.
bitchphd: It's evil, Labs, and when your graduate student kills himself, you'll be responsible.
Certainly he'll kill FL and the unfaithful girl first, in defense of his honor.
I dunno; aren't most graduate students too beaten down to be that aggressive? Sure, you get the occasional one who fights back, but I think the simple suicide scenario's more likely. After all, this is someone who's such a wuss that his girlfriend is sleeping with his *advisor*.
Great story: I once knew of an advisor that was having an affair with his grad students' wife (who was also a grad student in the same research group). It was fairly poorly concealed (occasionally Grad Student would come home to find his advisor in his apartment with his wife, though not in flagrante delecto). He clearly knew about it, but did nothing. A few years after he graduated, he took a tenure-track job in his advisor's department. The guy must have had an inhuman ability to deal with embarrassment.
Murderous grad students are a problem in philosophy.
What's the point of living in a feudal society if you don't claim the privileges of rank? He should count the girlfriend as a special project and give the grad student extra credit.
I don't think that we should glorify grad students who kill their advisers for the wrong reasons.
71: noooooooo
wow.
do you have ways of knowing for certain that is all true, and not rumor mill?
Theodore Streleski, Valery Fabrikant, and Gang Lu are more positive role models than Johann Nelböck.
Nelböck was an anti-Semite, and public opinion gave him an "A" for effort even after it became well-known that Moritz Schlick was not Jewish. But we need to have higher standards than that.
71 is an urban legend crudely adapted from the Biblical story of Abram in Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20).
Streleski had been pursuing his doctorate in the mathematics department for nineteen years and he felt that the Stanford faculty was unfairly withholding his promotion.
I cannot imagine a situation in which the faculty would be trying to DELAY the graduation of someone who had been in the department for nineteen years.
He felt, probably correctly, that they were willing for him to TA for peanuts but had already decided that he wouldn't get his PhD.
In the Fabrikant case an inquiry decided that some of Fabrikant's points were valid.
After all, this is someone who's such a wuss that his girlfriend is sleeping with his *advisor*.
Ah, the sexist contempt for the male who shows weakness...
74: I know another person who worked there at the same time, so I'm fairly certain of the story. He actually happened to bust them while they were out on the town one night.
can't be the situation described, i.e., a faculty member attempting to seduce the girlfriend of a grad student.
that would just be common or garden variety tawdry
but, as tawdry seductions go, it doesn't sound all that bad.
A few years after he graduated, he took a tenure-track job in his advisor's department.
This is the most amazing part of the whole story to me. I thought *no one* ever got t-t jobs at their alma mater.
81: Marcus, you're seeming remarkably . . . humorless.
84: It's actually remarkably common in the top schools because they don't think anyone else is qualified enough. One high profile place made a specific effort to avoid hiring their own alumni for several years, but failed every time and finally gave up.
A tenured PhD at OHSU tried to seduce the GF of a Plaid Pantry clerk I knew. (That's a convenience store like 7-11 or Circle K).
Hello! Hello! Who's your lady friend?Tawdry it is.
Who's the little girlie by your side?
I've seen you with a girl or two
Oh! Oh! Oh! I am surprised at you;
shocking bad hat, OFE! Does your mother know you're out?
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I'm half crazy, me bollocks are turning blue!
Being in philosophy grad school myself, and assuming that 'lady friend' means something as exciting as hypothesized above, I'm saying... don't, man, don't. Worst case is 60, best case is long-term passive-aggressive smoldering vengeance from one of your students. You don't want to deal with that, or be responsible for it.
What Neil really means is that being in phil grad school himself, he's concerned that it's his lady friend who's at issue.
Well, no lady friend at present, but if you're saying that I have vivid imaginative awareness of the situation from a certain angle... you're right.
