Love is in the air

Students are trickling back onto college campuses this week. I noticed a definite increase in people walking around, arguing on cell phones, looking lost, looking angry, not looking as they walk into the street. Typical undergrad behavior! (Or adults in DC. But that's a different entry.)

Many are also coming back to romance, either with a fellow student, a staff member, or a teaching assistant/professor. Although many colleges have made rules against student/teacher relationships, it happens anyway. Especially when grad students who might be 24 or 25 teach a class with 300 undergrads, some of whom are also 24 or 25. At my undergrad, we had more of the actual "professor-dates-student" scandals. One English professor married not one but two of his (pretty and blonde) students. Not at the same time, of course. This isn't "Big Love." The word of warning for his advisees was, "That's not his daughter in the photo. Don't ask." I can't imagine asking about anyone's photos in their office, but maybe some people are nosy. A Geology professor married a student. Both of these men had wives and left them for students. Ouch!

My boyfriend thinks I must have gone to school in a terrible and sick place. It's difficult to explain that my undergrad was on 10,000 acres of nothing except for 1,300 students, a few professors, and a handful of administrative staff. A single professor didn't have many options (and I know a few who surreptitiously dated students). As for the professors who left their wives, well, I don't know. Boys will be boys?

I think universities should manage the situation rather than prevent it. Anyone see that episode of "The Office" where Jan had Michael sign a romance release form? "That's what she said." Ok, so maybe you're not a fan of the show. I think this type of legitimization would a) make professor/student relationships more boring, since they're sanctioned and you have to sign a form. Anything forbidden is much more exciting, and b) legally protect the university for the most part, rather than create a "rule made to be broken."

On another note, if you watch the HBO show "Flight of the Conchords," the band's rabid fan has a picture of herself with her husband in the dining room in last night's episode. When asked about it, she says, "Oh,that's my husband. He's quite a bit older than me. He was a professor, at my college, and there were all sorts of legal barriers keeping me away from him, from his family. But in the end love won out!" Ok, so maybe it's funnier in the show. But the fact that these sorts of relationships come up so much in popular culture means that they are real.

"A Right to Romance." (Wilson, R. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 8/17/07)