Page 138 of Hushed

“Good morning, class,” Molly says, unpacking. It still takes me a second to cope with the fact that she’s taken over his lectures. “Let’s turn to section four, about power.”

Cecilia raises her hand. “Miss Baker, can we talk about the abuse of power? Like, for instance, when a professor seduces a student?” She looks at me pointedly.

“Professor Baker,” Molly says, without looking up from her notes. “And yes. I suppose we should. It’s probably going to be at the top of your minds for most of the day. Today they will decide whether or not to reinstate Professor Saint-Jacques. I understand there is even going to be a protest today.”

“I don’t understand why there is so much of a thing going on about this,” I say. “I could see it if I was below the age of consent, but I’m a full-grown man. We are both consenting adults. What we do shouldn’t be the University’s business. It’s completely legal.”

“But that means you have an advantage!” Cecilia says. “Nobody’s going to fail the person they’re sleeping with.”

“I beg to differ. In fact, it’s more likely that he would expect more from me.”

“Which is still unfair,” Molly puts in. “Structurally, you have access to someone who has foreknowledge of the exams, of the coursework, and deeper knowledge of the theories you’re using than you do. He also has access to student records that you are legally not entitled to see. Even if he doesn’t do your work for you, if he sits at the dinner table and says, ‘I think your paper could be doing more if you dipped into Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy.’ That’s a genuine structural advantage that you have to account for. Yes, Matt? I don’t think it’s good for us to raise hands here. Let’s have a more free-flowing discussion.”

Matt leans his elbows on his desk. “I was just going to say that you can’t make all playing fields level. If my dad was a cop, then I’m going to come in knowing things about the criminal justice system in detail because he would come home and talk about it.”

“Great point!” Molly says. Matt smiles.

“Nobody pressured me into anything, and Bastien keeps student and exam records locked down. I respect that,” I put in.

“But still,” Cecilia says, “it doesn’t mean that we just say that the rule is stupid just because it technically didn’t apply to you.” She has her hands folded on her book and she looks about nineteen and completely serious. “I’m not trying to be mean. I had a friend at another school and a professor did something to her and everybody knew and nothing happened because he was popular. Everyone said he was one of the good ones.” She turns around in her seat and looks straight at me. “So when people tell me that this one is different, I want to know how they know.”

I want to know, too. I have a wedding ring on my finger and a medallion under my shirt, and I still don’t know. When was the last time he called me Kitten?

“That’s a fair read for the law working as it was intended to do,” Molly says. “I’m sorry for what your friend went through. Is she okay now?”

Cecilia makes a soft, demurring I guess so, and it seems that the conversation has died before it got started.

Then Matt leans forward. “My partner is a grad student in English. He teaches two sections of composition. He grades eighty undergraduates a semester.” He swallows. “When we started dating, we went to the department and we told them, and they gave us a form. It took about twenty minutes. Nobody investigated anybody. It is called a management plan. The university does it all the time. So, what’s the difference here?”

“Your experience is exactly what was supposed to happen, Matt. Unfortunately, every department has their own protocols. English Comp has the most sections of any class at this university, so the likelihood of having a conflict of interest like that is so high that, you’re right, their procedure would have been almost automatic and clearly posted. Our department is smaller, so even though the form was filled out on time, there were still some raised eyebrows. But we hope they’ll be sorted out today.”

“Why didn’t you just move to a different section?” Cecilia asks me.

“That’s easy when there are, like, twenty sections of the same class available,” I say. “This is one of three Intro to Psych classes, and the only one that fits in the schedule. When I registered, his name wasn’t even displayed on the system.”

“That’s right!” Matt says. “I’d forgotten that. But the carve-out rule that existed for me also should have come in cleanly for him.”

“He should have declared it to us at the beginning,” Cecilia says.

“You’re not entitled to that,” I answer. “Are you suggesting my husband is such an unprofessional man that he would be unable to instruct you because I happen to be in the room?”

“Well, you did kind of act up in the first day,” Matt says.

“Because we’d had this conversation before and I wanted to push him,” I lie.

Molly clears her throat. “We keep our doors open at office hours. We insist that undergraduates use our titles. We try very hard not to be in a room where we could be accused of bad behavior.”

“Because you’re scared,” I surmise. I look at Cecilia. “But that’s the thing. I’m sorry about what your friend went through, but I’m a fully grown man. I have…what’s the word again when you can make decisions? Agency. It’s a little insulting to think that I’m a victim who doesn’t know my own mind and doesn’t have the right to make my own decisions.”

Cecilia turns to me. “Your professors guard the grades, the transcripts, and the opportunities. They have absolute power over your future.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I say.

“Structurally, we do have an outsized power,” Molly says. “Which is why it was easier to put the whole responsibility on the professor and stop asking hard questions about consent.”

“But what if I were a real predator?” I ask, because since looking over that article in the Buzz, it’s sitting badly on my mind. “It’s not like they don’t exist. In the Army, we had one woman who was proud of seducing people to do what she wanted. She didn’t think it was bad, or immoral. She thought that she was using the tools at her disposal, and if God gave her an advantage because she had a body men wanted, she had zero problem making it do the extra work for her.”

Matt leans forward in his chair so far it tips onto two legs. “That’s what I said to Paul! If a bad professor does something, obviously that’s not okay. But a student who walks into an office and threatens, blackmails, or manipulates? There are no real consequences and no real protections, because the student is, on paper, always the victim.”