teachers’ pets When students become their professors' lovers, they learn some of life's toughest lessons The rumors have echoed through the hallways of higher education for centuries; but it was not until several years ago that sexual relationships between students and professors caused a public outcry. In the wake of several notorious sexual harassment charges, university administrators across the country scrambled to protect themselves — and, ostensibly, the students — by adopting policies forbidding any relationships between students and faculty where there might be "an appearance of impropriety." The policies sparked a fierce debate on college campuses, one that was fueled in part by a 1993 Harper's Magazine forum in which five university professors discussed the issue. While one professor, Bard College president Leon Botstein, argued that "there is a power differential in the relationship between a student and his or her teacher, and a sexual relationship between a teacher and student is, in fact, at odds with the task of teaching," most of the participants — four of whom were male — opposed an outright ban of such relationships. Few, however, took a position quite so controversial as that of University of Massachusetts professor William Kerrigan, who said that "these relationships exist between adults and can be quite beautiful and genuinely transforming. It's very powerful sexually and psychologically, and because of that power, one can touch a student in a positive way." In an attempt to understand these relationships from the students' perspective, Salon recently hosted a roundtable of three female graduate students who had affairs with their professors while they were undergraduates. Their frank comments reveal how confusing and pivotal such experiences often are. — CYNTHIA JOYCE Lisa: I had G. as a professor my first semester of freshman year of college. I was just awed by him. In my senior year I did a writing project with him for independent study. He was the first person that ever told me straight out, "You're a really good writer, and I think this should be published." I just wanted to learn as much as I possibly could from him. He is consistently voted by the students as one of the three best professors, so I felt very lucky that he was interested in my work and in having a friendship with me. But while I was a student, it never crossed my mind. . . Megan: Like Lisa, I was extremely impressed not only by his intellect, but by the sorts of issues that we were tackling in class — he really integrated issues of race and women's rights. But I was also a little intimidated, the typical shy student. In junior year, I took another class with him, and we really just became better friends. We developed this rapport where we joked a lot, and he also gave me good feedback on my writing. I guess for me a turning point was — well, a couple things happened. One is that I came out, and realized that I'm also attracted to women, so that was sort of huge. I wasn't really aware that I had a crush on him, and I had this incredibly vivid dream the end of my junior year. We were together, and it seemed so unbelievably natural. We were in bed but we were just joking around with one another, kind of playfully. I woke up the next morning and thought, "Whoa. Okay, I must have a crush on him."

Seduced and abandoned, wined and dined.