Black Raven Dragoons

[Grimblast]

I saw this one on digg. It was worth sharing for a good laugh. Not sure if any of you teachers out there have had this issue before!

http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1792362

[Zancarius]

Oh my...

I like how he handled it, but my favorite response was the last one.

[MaxRile]

nice way to handle it and pretty epic fail on her part

[Tirian]

I've never seen anything this blatant. Girls wearing tight V-necks the day they will ask for a higher grade -- yes. We do see a lot of students hitting on TAs (actually more male students hit on the female TAs... though this could also just be wishful thinking by the female TAs...). Usually this is not for a grade boost, just genuine interest.

With how incredibly easy it is to be charged for sexual harassment, I don't meet with students privately (always in our shared office or a public space, like the library), and I would have to report any comments as blatant as this to my supervising professor by e-mail, or risk losing my job if it came out that I didn't report. That doesn't mean that anything more would happen administratively -- just that a real faculty member needs to see a paper trail. If I wasn't comfortable with the faculty member (I taught for another grad student once, and she had a bad habit of not backing up her TAs), I could also report it to my advisor or our department chair.

Of course, the moment the semester ends, everything is fair game. A few of my coworkers have dated or are dating their former students. For the record, usually there's a 3-4 year age difference here, not Animal House style.

[alacor]

In this case, she probably was just not hot. lol The male mind.

[Zancarius]

Given Tirian's take on this, I now have to wonder if this was entirely fabricated. Yeah, I know--it's via Gmail and most university networks would probably use their own awful web mailer. HOWEVER, Google does provide Gmail services to enterprises and some universities, so it's difficult to use that alone as a benchmark for whether or not the exchange was fake.

Thus, given Tirian's take and the implication that the TA may not have reported it to his supervisor, one does have to wonder. I don't think I could manage it in academia. Having to be so stupidly careful for fear that some idiot might sue you over the slightest thing (and not just over sexual harassment) is somewhat disturbing. Although, I guess the same goes in most nearly any industry--the difference being that corporations at least have some protection.