College student loses lawsuit over lusty writings

DETROIT (AP) -- A college student suspended for writing an essay called "Hot for Teacher" has no First Amendment right to express his sexual attraction to his instructor, a judge said Tuesday.

Joseph Corlett's lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan, who ruled in favor of Oakland University in suburban Detroit.

When Corlett referred to his teacher as "'stacked' and graphically compared her to a sitcom character he fetishized in a writing assignment, he brought a pig into the parlor," Duggan said.

I stand by my answer. Many situations can be defused simply by remaining calm. If he misinterpreted my lack of outrage, I'd tell him, "No, I thought it was funny, but we won't be having an affair."

You see, I am a teacher, and I have also taught undergrad classes at the university where I got my Master's. I have been in situations where men or boys decide they have an interest in me, and even if they are rather caddish about expressing it, I don't believe in hurting them professionally or academically over it unless it is necessary. In other words, if they got to where they were stalking or harassing, I'd take it higher, but being an adult means you handle things yourself if you can.

This guy was an idiot, but he deserved a chance to simply be told "No." All she did was make the situation worse, bigger, and more public because without even a warning, she took it to the next level. Women like that reinforce the notion that women just don't have the internal fortitude to handle the workplace, that their delicate feminine sensibilities require that their emotions be placed forefront at all times, and in all places. It makes me understand why men 100 years ago didn't want women working at all: it was enough to have someone having the vapors every time you opened your mouth at home; men didn't want to have to follow parlor-room rules all day too.

Now they can't even escape the specter of Feminine Sensibilities in the military. There is literally no where a man can go anymore without some woman there with her arms crossed, tapping her foot because she's offended. I'm surprised more men haven't simply headed off into the woods and never come back.

I don’t agree that things can’t be reasonably anticipated.

The teacher is supposedly a professional and trained on how to come up with assignments. It is their job to come up with well written assignment descriptions and be responsible for the assignments they come up with.

Once the students get the assignment it is their responsibility to perform the assignment. If the assignment involves creativity, it is the student’s task to be as creative as they possibly can.

The teacher is totally on the hook for setting up a situation that the teacher created in which she gives an assignment involving creativity in writing and a student responded with a creatively written response but something which just happens to offend the unwritten, unspoken sensibilities of the teacher. This is wrong. It is as wrong as, for example, condemning Mark Twain for including uncensored slave vernacular in Huckleberry Finn. Twain was castigated at the time for doing that and to he has continued to be castigated for doing that up through modern times.

Teacher responsibility includes blocking off the limits of an assignment in advance if she does not want the students going in a particular direction. As a professional, it is up to her to forecast and provide for the side effects of her own doing. She should not rely on the courts to help correct her mistakes.

Finally it is a writing assignment. Written words do not leap off a page and rape or pillage people. We have brains that distinguish between what someone writes or says, and what someone does.

This woman is simply in the wrong profession. If she is a prude, she should be in a convent praying for her continued eternal chastisty, not a university where freedom of thought and expression should be the first priority.

The courts prefer not to get involved in 1st amendment issues in the university out of laziness. I would not infer that the teacher is correct just because a lower court judge was too lazy and dishonest to honor case law. In the arts, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. A prudish teacher getting offended due to her own carelessness does not constitute sufficient reason to override existing case law.

Standard disclaimer, I am not a lawyer but on occasion I have watched Perry Mason on TV.

Perfect Lady and SteveH, I think we're going to just have to agree to disagree.

Perfect Lady, since you are a former college instructor who has had similar issues in the past, I'll give you credit for having actually dealt with obnoxious idiots like this guy. My attitude toward this sorry excuse for a human being is considerably less charitable than yours, but you've actually dealt with “hot for teacher” situations, and apparently you have more patience than I do.

I hope we can all concur on three things:

1) what this man did was wrong,
2) the teacher opened a door by not specifically telling her students that sexually provocative essays about herself could not be written, and
3) this adult married student should have not have walked through that door, even if the teacher left it open.

Where we seem to disagree is whether the teacher could reasonably have anticipated that an open-ended assignment would result in a sex-charged essay by a student toward the teacher.

I guess I need to continue to remind myself that common sense is no longer so common. There are some really creepy people out there, and I guess that means now we need to specifically rule things out as college essay topics which not long ago people would not have considered to be proper subjects for discussion outside their bedrooms with their wives.

i have also taught classes at the high school level and vocational school level. in my opinion:

1 there is nothing wrong with the assignment as the teacher wrote it;

2 there is nothing wrong with any student work that conforms to the specifications of the assignment;

3 the student’s work so far as has been presented, conforms to the specifications of the assignment;

4 the teacher failed to evaluate the student’s work based on conformance with the specifications of the assignment;

5 the university failed to honor its obligation to support the student in a matter in which the student conformed to the assignment but the teacher failed to evaluation according to the assignment;

6 the lower federal district court failed to honor the law in this matter;

7 the university and the teacher are hypocritical in proclaiming that they are both openminded in their curriculum, and justified in suspending a student who took the curriculum literally;

8 people are entitled to express their opinions on the matter.

teachers and educational institutions are given much leeway in classrooms and so should be held to a much higher standard in these matters. also teachers and educational institutions derive tangible benefits from formal curricula that is inclusive of open and creative inquiry and expression. your reaction of disgust at the student is understandable at the subjective level, but ultimately the instructor was imho arbitrarily and capriciously subjective in a situation which needs and requires a base level of objectivity. penalizing and persecuting a student for explicitly allowed freedom of inquiry and expression is the opposite of the traditional role of a learning institution.

Where we seem to disagree is whether the teacher could reasonably have anticipated that an open-ended assignment would result in a sex-charged essay by a student toward the teacher.

No, no... I don't think she should have anticipated it (although I bet she will after this.) As a teacher, there are some things you just cannot anticipate till some idiot does them, and there are a lot of stupid, silly people out there. I just think that you always handle things at the lowest possible level (you don't kill a fly with a shot gun), and you always give people at least one chance to correct a mistake. That's all.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.