Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/22/pennsylvania-judge-professor.html
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I know I’ll get blasted, but I’m with the judge on this one; they were over 18, it was consensual, and the college didn’t have a specific “I won’t put my dick in the student body” policy in place. Ergo, wrongful termination. The majority of the bad light seems to be getting cast from PA’s previous sex scandals (which were not at all acceptable).
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Hold up, are we really comparing a dude who carried on two consensual relationships with adult women that were not actively his students to a serial child-sex predator and his enablers?
If you read the article, the woman who reported him for the relationship actively pursued him after she no longer had his class, and they carried on a relationship for eight months.
Do adult women have no agency in this situation? He broke literally no policies, and neither did she.
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I wonder if any of Judge Brobson’s former young female law clerks would like to submit an amicus curiae?
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This. As far as I know the only policy in place is that you must be able to hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis. Girl’s gotta have her standards.
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I hope every single parent with a female child crosses off Bloomsburg University as a list of acceptable institutions of higher learning.
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In fact, my youngest will be applying to colleges later this year and has already crossed off most of her original list due to the staggering number of sexual assault/abuse cases where the school and local authorities have made it clear that concern over possibly ‘ruining’ a man’s life takes precedence over adhering to the law.
I didn’t have to tell her to do that. Teens aren’t stupid, and they spend a LOT of time reading on the internet.
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You raised your girl right. Congrats at winning the parenting competition. I’ll be running myself in a few years 
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I’m conflicted here, too, because of what NashR said, and the fact that neither student was in any of his classes. I also think it might be reaching to compare this decision (which is technically correct, it seems, regardless of the fact that the prof is creepy) with an instructor with a history of child molestation. Whoa, whoa, WHOA. That seems in a whole new class of sick asshole…
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So has Bloomsburg University revised its policy to clarify this? When I was in university it was common for graduate teaching assistants to have relationships with undergrads. I never heard of a policy.
If you are looking for a teaching job, I guess you should check the policy to see if your partner can enroll in courses.
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I admit that I, too, have had sex with one of the students at the community college where I teach but she just enrolled to take a swim class and she’s four years older than me and is also my wife.
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“is also my wife.”
Made it much less creepy
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To me the key point is that neither student was in his classes. There’s no position of power.
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It’s difficult to find an abuse of power in this case. If they were his students at the time, that would constitute a power imbalance and make it creepy at the least, even predatory. They weren’t. Saying that either the student or the professor couldn’t pursue a relationship after the class was complete just seems prudish rather than progressive.
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Also, he was an assistant professor, not a dean-level professor in her department.
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It’s not unusual for colleges to have policies against relationships with students that are currently in the program that they teach in. It’s still likely that one or both of the students could have him in a future class or ask him to act as a faculty advisor or cite him as a reference. But as the judge noted, it appears that this college is not one of the institutions that has such a policy.
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I hope every single parent with a female child teaches their daughter to be adults when it comes to sexual relationships, rather than hiding them away from a rich, wonderful world of sexual intimacy that is stigmatized for women and not men.
These women were adults, not children. You’re really perpetrating the myth that women somehow don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to the bedroom, and that they can’t possibly enjoy sex.
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I have to admit, I was not sure where this was going! 
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