Let me correct some errors on your ASSumptions about me. I am not a member of the Tea-Party. (The Tea-Party is the accurate name of the grassroots political group that you thiink sounds quite cute referring to as people particiapting in homosexual acts. Of course your making such comments is both childish and bigotted not only toward the Tea Party organization but also toward homosexuals. It reveals one of your poorer personality traits.) Also, I am not a teenager, Some of my grandchildren are teenagers. I am a veteran of the Marine Corps. I have been in the civilian workforce for 40 years. I have been listening to politicians and voting 42 years. No, I am not a college graduate. My life experiences and majority of education came form the real world, not the lips of some anti-American socialist with a University job who has spent their drug using lives opposing the United States and brainwashing the naive minds of the less strong willed, clingie momma’s boys and angry little girls into opposing Our great Nation and Constitution. Please, take the time to actually read and understand Our Constitution. If you ever do, you will realise how wrong your tainted political opinions have been. Also, I will be voting for the presidential candidate who understands and supports the US Constitution, not the current elected official in office who doesn’t have a clue…

Vote Green Party

You deserve neither.

Dear David,

I watch your show regularly and enjoy it very much. I couldn’t help but comment on this story. I am a professor at a small university in Canada and it just so happens that all the faculty in my university had to take a sexual harassment course because of new legislature in our province (Ontario). Having just taken this on-line course at my institution I thought it might be useful to contrast your story with what we have been told at my institution.

First, sexual harassment generally requires a history of activity and/or communication between two individuals. A single incidence of an overt comment, as indicated in your story, would generally not be considered harassment unless the individual in question has a history of making such comments to multiple people. The situation becomes harassment when these overt comments continue to occur after the victim has had a chance to voice their displeasure or make it known that such comments are unwanted and unwelcome. As per the story, if the student discontinued any further communication to the prof regarding his sexual feelings for him after the prof voiced his displeasure about it, then the issue should go away. This would at least be the policy we would follow at our school.

Second, the age difference between student and prof should not matter to the story assuming both individuals were adults by law. What needs to be more carefully considered is the power differential between the two people in question. Whether the prof was older or younger than the student doesn’t matter, the professor is still in a position of authority over the student. This makes it more difficult to implicate the student in this case because it is difficult to show that the professor was under any threat (e,g, violence) or in a position where declining the students advances would have consequences to his career, performance review ect. In other words, the prof. is free to simply say no to the student. In a reverse situation (e.g. prof making advances on a student) the power differential between the two individuals requires that the matter be taken more seriously.

This is at how I understand the situation would be interpreted at my institution under the auspice of the Office of Human Rights. Based on the facts given, I feel that the student was wronged in this situation. The professor’s reaction was unrealistic and the department head and/or dean should have mediated a more appropriate solution. The student should not even have been removed from the class in question.

Keep up the good work on the show.

Ken Drouillard, PhD
Associate Professor,
University of Windsor