Posted on 07/23/2013 7:15:08 PM PDT by oxcart
DETROIT (AP) -- A college student suspended for writing an essay called "Hot for Teacher" has no First Amendment right to express his sexual attraction to his instructor, a judge said Tuesday.
Joseph Corlett's lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan, who ruled in favor of Oakland University in suburban Detroit.
When Corlett referred to his teacher as "'stacked' and graphically compared her to a sitcom character he fetishized in a writing assignment, he brought a pig into the parlor," Duggan said.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Now the teacher is suing the judge.
Mommy and Daddy’s little boy can do no wrong, why he’s “special” - his behavior is always excused, no matter how odd or socially awkward. He’s just “expressing himself”.
The teacher should be able to expel him from her class, with a “F” for his grade, and his permanent transcript. Perhaps the school should hold a board to see if this is the caliber of student they want want to represent their Alma Mater.
What happens when this little spoiled child is expected to behave like a professional? Is he magically going to start reigning in his thoughts and behavior? Is he magically going to censor what he says in a crowd?
Or, will he remain true to form; and as a company representative - expose his employer to a large sexual harassment lawsuit?
Someone got caught posting without reading!!
This "little spoiled child" is 57 years old.
Mommy and Daddy’s little boy can do no wrong, why he’s “special” - his behavior is always excused, no matter how odd or socially awkward. He’s just “expressing himself”.
The teacher should be able to expel him from her class, with a “F” for his grade, and his permanent transcript. Perhaps the school should hold a board to see if this is the caliber of student they want want to represent their Alma Mater.
What happens when this little spoiled child is expected to behave like a professional? Is he magically going to start reigning in his thoughts and behavior? Is he magically going to censor what he says in a crowd?
Or, will he remain true to form; and as a company representative - expose his employer to a large sexual harassment lawsuit?
Someone got caught posting without reading!!
This "little spoiled child" is 57 years old.
In the email she said “he might have had a gun in his backpack when he was sitting 20 feet away from.” Lady, that wasn’t a gun in his pocket. He was just glad to see you.
She clearly said NO topic was off-limits, and a working person his age views a college campus as exactly that —collegial and open.
A deal is a deal, right? Wrong.
His crime was that he took her at HER WORD and expected her to be adult about it.
Ah, I see —what the woman *said* and what was *in her mind* were two different things.
Gosh, imagine my surprise.
And then, it’s a fact that the LEAST truly open places are college campii. Indeed for more than a couple things they are in fact the most REGIMENTED.
I didn’t actually read the story .
He was married? if so i agree.
If he’s a kid then I was thinking about a talk regarding decorum, venue and a do over .
I would apologize profusely to the instructor before this ever got to court; perhaps ask her to dinner to talk things over.
Went and read the story.
Guy is an idiot and a lech.
He should be kicked out of class.
On the other hand, if he were hot for a male teacher ....
That makes it worse. What a fool.
"Oakland said the work was clearly inappropriate off limits."
"When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
> students in the English 380 class were told to write
> honestly and that no topic was off limits
If some topics are off limits, don’t say no topic is off limits.
Given the world’s lust for porn, the guy will probably end up much more wealthy than the teacher.
I cannot agree. I know you've since re-read the article and changed your view, but I want to add something beyond what you said.
There is a difference between a woman being attractive and a woman being seductive or otherwise suggesting she is "available." There are many attractive women who do not appreciate and would not accept a student in their class writing a paper treating them as a sex object. That goes double if the woman is the teacher, i.e., a person in authority, rather than a fellow student. Boundaries need to be respected and the teacher-student relationship is one of those boundaries. Very bad things happen from compromising or even appearing to compromise that relationship.
I realize both parties involved are adults. If the student and teacher were both single, asking for a date after the class is over might be acceptable, but as long as one person is responsible for giving a grade to the other person, this kind of relationship is out of line even if both parties fully agree with it. Would you want to be the student in the class wondering if the guy dating the teacher is getting a better grade based on his extracurricular activities?
19 posted on 7/23/2013 9:32:21 PM by A_perfect_lady: “Okay, she did tell him to write honestly about his feelings and that no topic was off-limits. Sounds to me like she has no sense of humor at all. I'd have graded it, handed it back with a smirk, and that would have been the end of it. People just get off on over-reacting.”
I'll give you an important point here — as a woman, I think you understand these matters better than many men.
I realize the woman gave an open-ended assignment, but in a civilized society, some things just don't typically come to mind as things to rule out in advance. Obviously, an attractive female teacher is aware that some of her male students are going to be attracted to her, but most students have enough decency not to submit a paper detailing that in explicit detail.
As a woman, if you choose to handle it via a smirk and handing the paper back, that's your choice. But I think that would open you to questions about whether the smirk meant you might be open to a personal relationship outside of class.
I can think of a number of attractive female teachers who, if the student were a young adult, would have a male teacher or her husband explain matters to the student. I realize some 18- or 19-year-old kids in college are away from home for the first time, are testing their boundaries, and need to be told there are reasons why rules exist not only in the home and high school but also in the adult world.
For an adult married man in his late 50s to act this way is far worse. He knows better and I think the female teacher was quite correct in dealing with his behavior directly and bluntly on her own rather than using an intermediary. It's not too many years ago that the female teacher might have slapped him or had her husband do so.
Even as adults a teacher dating their student is not acceptable because of a conflict of interest - did the student deserve those grades or is it payment for services?
This doesn’t explain why ‘nothing is off limits’ should not be interpreted as exactly what it clearly states.
The woman is at fault. If she is sexually prudish, she can’t take the responsibility for her own mistake. If it’s about gun ownership it is clearly political harassment in addition (in universities it is often the case that white males become demonized after being invited in class to be ‘honest’).
The problem was easily avoidable in advance by the teacher stating in the assignment that nothing is off limits but guns and sex.
Most collegiate flimflam is excused by putting form over function. This is an extreme of form over function. Somehow the student is expected to know some writing is off limits even when it is explicitly stated nothing is off limits. If nothing means something as in this case, then something can mean just about anything, and the entire exercise becomes arbitrary.
It is slippery slope. The judge is pandering to the university and the emotions of some of the university staff. What if the guy had written about lacrosse and the teacher had a severe emotional aversion to lacrosse? Or about Republicans winning elections? (well, no, that would be clearly off limits)
We agree, GeronL. That's what I meant by saying asking for a date may be acceptable after the class is over.
However, now that I see your comment, I realize I wasn't clear about that being after the student-teacher relationship was over.
Maybe I should have said “after the course” — i.e., once the grades have been given and there is no more student-teacher relationship — rather than “after the class,” which is ambiguous. “Class” could mean either one class period on a single day, which is not what I meant, or the entire semester or term, which is what I intended to say.
I realize that even under the best of circumstances, former students dating former teachers will create questions. That is true even if both are adults, even if both are close in age, and even if both have agreed not to be in another class together. People are going to ask if the student and teacher had started dating during the class even the relationship didn't begin until long afterwards.
However, a couple of generations ago when morals were better, it wasn't that unusual for young graduate students to marry — not hook up or sleep with, but marry — former students. I don't think we want to forbid a 24-year-old graduate student from asking a 21-year-old junior out on a date after the course in which he worked as her TA is over. It may not be a good idea, and I'm not going to encourage it, but I think we have to draw the line at forbidding relationships between current students and current teachers, not between former students and former teachers.
However, some things couldn't reasonably be anticipated.
Yes, I know that teachers need to anticipate consequences in advance. Yes, I know that teachers need to anticipate that students will look for loopholes. And yes, I know that an attractive female teacher needs to recognize that young male students may be “thinking with the wrong head,” so to speak.
But I still think that a student writing paper on this topic is so far out of the range of predictable responses that the teacher can be excused for not anticipating this as a possibility. For this to come from an older male student who is married and in his late 50s is even worse.
I do think that cases like this should serve as a warning to teachers about the dangers of open-ended “write about anything” assignments.
As per the article the student in question is 57 years old.
Second: "Corlett said students in the English 380 class were told to write honestly and that no topic was off limits."
While I agree that the subject he wrote about is creepy and lewd, If the above guidelines were truly in place for this particular assignment then the college and the professor is guilty of being full of shit for giving this guy trouble over what he wrote. If you don't want someone writing about certain subjects then damn it don't tell everyone involved the exact opposite!
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