Case 11
Amy, 28, returned to school to complete her graduate degree after many successful years as an independent businesswoman. Beautiful, talented and self–assured, she worked for many years as an exotic dancer, an occupation she loved. "It allowed me to perform, travel and amass a small fortune! I suppose I would be still performing if my curiosity hadn't led me to something else." She subsequently began and grew a highly–successful photography business that she continued to run in spite of the daunting challenge 18 credit hours each semester represented. Once married, and after a string of episodic relationships with men of education and success she moved in with her new fianc?.
By her own account, Amy was bored. In the final year of her studies, she used the last of her elective credits to take an introductory course in a different college of the University, where new ideas and unfamiliar faculty reenergized her. The challenge of the unfamiliar coursework found Amy behind and frequently in the office of her young professor hoping to catch up with her work and still graduate on time. Her instructor, Ben?an excellent teacher by all accounts?was always generous with his time, believing, in spite of the facts, that his teaching was responsible for the struggles of his underperforming students.
Ben, 40, was struggling both with pre–tenure pressures and a commuter marriage, common among academics, where his spouse lived and worked some distance from their home and his university. This left only occasional weekends for him to enjoy her many charms. The intervening days were filled with mornings teaching, nights working on manuscripts for colleagues he believed were unable to appreciate them, and afternoons with students, each, it seemed, demanding the special attention that Ben provided.
As time passed, Amy and Ben spent fewer minutes of their office conversations on course material. She could make him laugh and he provided her with the intellectual stimulation her mostly younger classmates rarely did. Intellectual conversation was something Amy claimed, almost from the beginning, she missed while "endlessly meeting with, and photographing the weddings of, young couples blindly in–love." Eventually, office hours together were something to look forward to for both of them. Breaking the illusion of a typical professor/student relationship, Amy eventually suggested meeting at a local restaurant to work through the material that was continually giving her trouble.
Ben hesitantly acted on Amy's suggestion, but only after consulting a close colleague, Richard, about its appropriateness. Richard indicated to Ben that he would not be in violation of any university policies, and that he (Richard) also met sometimes with students out of the office. "Sometimes," Richard explained, "a different environment is less threatening to students and can help you be more effective as an advisor and teacher." Ben initially saw Amy at the faculty club and then at restaurants near campus where he frequently took his meals. Predictably, the conversation rarely turned to coursework, academic progress or career. Eventually their relationship became physical and their days often included trysts. At the end of the semester, with great difficulty, Ben did not grant Amy a passing grade.
Amy and Ben's relationship continued well after the semester. It saw Amy married, and accepted into Ben's department for graduate study?a decision about which Ben had no input?and Ben's tenure award. As far as they both know, no one at the University ever knew the extent of their relationship and neither ever shared with the other, or anyone else for that matter, the arrangements and understandings they may, or may not, have had with their spouses.
In subsequent years, although he would have liked to do so,, Ben refused to offer Amy a graduate fellowship or work as his research assistant because more capable students applied. He did, however, supervise work on her thesis. After a kiss on the cheek at the end of the department commencement party shortly after she received her diploma, Ben went home. He never again saw Amy.