When Academia Becomes a Bad Sitcom

At the emergency meeting called by our new department chair, our new department chair, doing his best Principal Skinner impersonation, and the higher level administrator that accompanied him that day as she channeled some generic mid-aughts Simpsons female power-boss, made it clear they were there to have an open and honest discussion with the biology department grad students about any number of issues in the biology department, with the one minor exception of the specific reason for which we were having an emergency meeting.

By that point though, it didn’t really matter, because pretty much all of us knew why we were having an emergency meeting given that our new department chair had more or less told us in an email he had sent a couple days prior.

“Given some recent developments, I am sending this email to reiterate some Department policies,” it read.

One pertained to how “University policy prohibits the initiation of, or participation in, an intimate personal relationship between an employee with supervisory or evaluative authority over a student or employee” and how “[a]lthough the policy as stated allows for approved exceptions, as Department Chair [he] will not support any exceptions to this policy.” 

Another department policy he wanted to reiterate was that “whilst traveling (conferences/meetings/field trips etc) under no circumstances should employees in any supervisory position be sharing a room with any student.” 

“If either of these events occurs,” our new chair stated, “please notify me immediately and it will be reported to the appropriate offices.” 

Given that there was one particular professor in our department who had been rumored to have been participating in an intimate personal relationship with one of his now former students, it didn’t take a room full scientists or scientists-in-training to figure out about whom our new chair was speaking. The rumored relationship had been an open secret in our department since 2020, if not 2019. The now former student was in her 30s when it began. She was also still a student at the time. Supposedly they shared a room on at least one occasion whilst traveling for a conference. Supposedly they were still together – perhaps part of a thruple with the professor’s wife. By all accounts, all this was consensual.   

Personally, I never really found the rumored affair that interesting. They were adults. If it was consensual, who cares? 

Granted, there were certain ironies inherent to the situation that made it amusing. The professor in question had long been part of a particularly woke clique of faculty pushing a number of DEI reforms in our department and supportive of those kinds of measures more broadly. On a couple occasions, I remember him pontificating on why romantic relationships between grad students and undergrads are inappropriate. There was also a former grad student from our department he’d casually talk about as some kind of borderline sexual predator for reportedly having once sent a shirtless workout photo of himself to an undergrad while he was a grad student. One time while taking a group photo with me and several others at a picnic, this professor insisted that a shorter student be used to block the shirt I was wearing because it contained what he considered an inappropriate joke about DNA helicase. There were women and children present, he harrumphed. 

Yet, ultimately, pondering how much cognitive dissonance this man did or didn’t feel about his love life was never why I was in grad school. I had better things to do.

The new chair of our department though, apparently begged to differ. None of the grad students in our department had better things to do. Nothing was more important in the spring of 2023 than having an emergency meeting about recent developments that everyone only just found out about in 2020, if not 2019. Then again, being the new chair, maybe these developments were new to him. Maybe not.

In either case, because our new chair and the higher ranking administrator holding the meeting were legally prohibited from speaking about the specific reason for which we were having this emergency meeting, they instead vaguely spoke about graduate school power dynamics, specifically as they relate to that mischievous Cupid.

Several grad students from a lab that drives much of the DEI activism in our department appeared emotionally upset, seeming to claim the continued presence of this professor in our department somehow endangers the safety of the department’s delicate womenfolk. Many others were calling for more mandatory trainings at all levels. A couple were demanding better screening new hires by tapping into “whisper networks” at their previous institutions. Some wanted to know what we were supposed to do if the Title IX office failed to penalize our department’s amorous troublemaker to their satisfaction. 

When I tried asking whether the reason we were having the emergency meeting really was in fact because of a consensual affair or because of something more serious – partly out of curiosity, partly wanting to make sure I wasn’t being too dismissive of a situation that might in fact be more serious – I was reminded by our new chair and the higher ranking administrator that they could not discuss specifics. However, as our new chair told another grad student, when asked, we were allowed to speculate amongst ourselves. Additionally, as we move forward, he offered the recommendation, if we suspect something, say something.

By the end of the emergency meeting over this non-emergency, I suspect everyone left feeling frustrated and unsatisfied, although I didn’t bother to say anything at the time. Those of us who really didn’t care whether a professor and a grad student had become boyfriend and girlfriend wasted an hour of our lives we weren’t going to get back. Those seeking justice for the victims of what likely amounted to a victimless policy violation failed to get administration to commit to the justice they sought. The only ones who may have felt some sense of accomplishment were perhaps our new chair, the higher level administrator, or whatever university bureaucrat decided this meeting satisfied the minimum requirement to demonstrate everyone took the alleged affair seriously, as some self-appointed hall-monitor apparently pulled a Randall Weems.    

Whether that minimum requirement was satisfied or not, however, is difficult to say, although, as the semester wound down and the summer began, it became clear those seeking justice for victims of what likely amounted to a victimless policy violation were not going to let it go. Not long after the non-emergency emergency meeting called by our new chair, the Biology Graduate Student Association, or BGSA, the organization that acts as our intra-departmental student council and unofficial union, further discussed the non-emergency emergency at one of their meetings.

Around the same time, one of the lead activists from the lab that drives much of the DEI activism in our department, who was also a BGSA board member, began circulating a petition, which the BGSA assured was not part of any official BGSA action, in an attempt to block a promotion for the professor who had the rumored terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad affair and force him off a DEI committee and the school’s Presidential Committee for the Status of Women.

In the petition, the lead activist claimed that beyond the alleged affair, which she indicated was ongoing, “there are reports of repeated patterns of [the professor in question] soliciting and pressuring students into similarly vulnerable scenarios.”

The “revelation[s]” about this professor, she asserted, “had a significant impact on the community of our department,” before claiming, “Many students are struggling with any form of productivity...” because of the “revelation[s]”.

“Graduate students past and present feel betrayed, triggered, unsafe, and concerned for future graduate students and the culture of the Biology department if this behavior goes unaddressed,” she added.

The “reports of repeated patterns” though, at least based on the “whisper networks” within our department, seem to amount to this professor having once propositioned a student while traveling for a conference several years before his alleged current affair began. Supposedly, he tried some variation of the line, “It’s not cheating if you’re out of town.” Whether they were in the backseat of his parents’ 1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate, I don’t know.

Whatever one might think of this though, it seemed unclear how this would make any functional adult feel unsafe simply by working in the same building as this man or halt their productivity for weeks or months on end, especially if it happened years ago and didn’t involve you. Yet, once again – partly out of curiosity, partly wanting to make sure I wasn’t being too dismissive – I tried to get clarification.

In a private email to the young woman leading this extracurricular crusade, I asked what I felt were a short series of relevant questions. Collectively, they amounted to where was she getting her information, were there any accusations against this professor that would constitute something more serious than a long-rumored consensual affair, and could she clarify what constituted the pattern she had referenced in her petition.

In response, she sent an email to the entire biology grad student listserv assuring everyone that the claims in her petition are not based on rumors, but confidential reports to the BGSA and a perhaps imagined “whisper network” she claimed our new chair had with the BGSA “to disseminate information relating to Title IX cases as a way to protect students” and apparently circumvent prohibitions on administrators discussing the specifics of Title IX cases. 

She also made it clear there was no need for her to go into detail beyond that.  

“[T]he BGSA,” she wrote, “is setting a very clear boundary with this: we will not be discussing what type of sexual misconduct is ‘severe enough’ for action to be taken to address such sexual misconduct. All forms of sexual misconduct are unacceptable in our department and will not be tolerated; this is our credo.” 

Shortly after graduating with her master’s degree, the now alumna continuing the extracurricular crusade, along with several others, some of whom were associated with the BGSA, would have a meeting with the higher level administrator from the non-emergency emergency meeting and an even higher ranking administrator.

According to a document later sent out by a representative of the BGSA to the BGSA listserv, they discussed the “departmental atmosphere” regarding the rumored romantic relationship and the resulting “discomfort” and “emotional labor” it imposed on “students/faculty/staff who are survivors of harassment/assault.” They also made several demands, including “Paid administrative leave for people under investigation”, a greater discussion of power dynamics in sexual misconduct trainings, and the university being willing to address allegations of sexual misconduct through mechanisms that go beyond Title IX.

A couple weeks later this now former student would go on to give a highly emotional statement at a Board of Trustees Meeting at which the promotion of the professor she was campaigning against was symbolically finalized. There, she was informed that although the board takes sexual misconduct allegations seriously and was aware of the allegations she presented, the relevant investigation did not find anything warranting additional action.

Hence, as far as our university was concerned, the allegations against this professor really did amount to what I believe is referred to in the legal profession as a nothingburger. Case closed. Two individuals, well into adulthood, may have begun a consensual affair at a time at which it would have constituted a policy violation assuming the individual in the supervisory position failed to fill out the proper paperwork and have the affair approved by his supervisor. It didn’t matter that after rising from their fainting couches after somehow being the last to learn of the matter, a coterie of twentysomething Gladys Kravitzes and Mr. Furleys disapproved. 

Yes, they managed to publicly shame the professor involved. Maybe the other woke mean girls he used to sit with at lunch won’t let him perform “Jingle Bell Rock” with them at this year’s Biology Department Christmas Talent Showcase. And yes, our new chair was pressured to declare his refusal to grant permission to faculty who ask him for permission to date adult students in the future because apparently it’s the 1950s and he serves as our de facto father and isn’t going to tolerate no hanky-panky with his kids. And, yes, maybe a year from now, thanks to the efforts of the brave students that partook in this effort, we’ll all be required to attend an annual meeting, awkwardly presented by our new department chair, about how sometimes “Yes” means “No,” even if the functional adult saying “Yes” doesn’t understand it.  If this happens though, I will insist he use dolls so we all know where our professors can’t touch us.

Yet, as dumb and as frivolous as this may all have been, this episode encapsulates so much of today’s academic climate and how academic institutions operate. One or more students are personally offended by a perfectly legal behavior a professor engaged in that doesn’t concern them. They report it. But rather than dismiss the report as dumb and frivolous, university bureaucrats launch an unnecessary investigation because this legal behavior may technically have violated a policy that grants an absurd amount of power over the private lives of faculty and students to university bureaucrats. Moreover, doing nothing also might generate bad PR. So they indulge the most easily offended members of the campus community who become increasingly emotionally distraught over time, conflating their personal psychological distress with a physical threat to the entire department, speaking and writing in simultaneously vague, hyperbolic, and misleading language as they claim some moral high ground on a matter that has the moral weight of failing to fill out an expense report properly. And, then the next thing anyone knows, an entire department, several administrators, and a board of trustees gets dragged into a two month personal drama that really plays out more like a depressingly bad sitcom from the 2020s that seems to promote wokeness but highlights how absurd it really is.