<p>Yes I realize not a new thing.
I recently had an eeww moment when showing my mother the commemorative edition of daughters high school newspaper ( they rebuilt the building). Past administration was mentioned including the " football coach", who had recently passed on or got a trophy wife or maybe had his 80th birthday, I don’t remember. Anyway, mom mentioned that her matron of honor at her wedding was a friend in high school, who had been dating this coach and married him soon after graduation.- I admit he was in his early 20’s at the time but still eeww.</p>
<p>I think that society’s whole view of people in a relationship where one has authority over the other has changed dramatically over the years.</p>
<p>In old movies, it is not at all unusual for a boss and secretary to fall in love. Yet wasn’t much of the sexual tension on The West Wing for about six years due to the fact that two characters who were obviously in love with each other could not act on their feelings because one was the other’s assistant?</p>
<p>I agree with your ewww reaction, but I don’t think our parents would have.</p>
<p>Oh, I don’t know… ewwwww was the general reaction amongst my peers and the parents I knew at the time when, soon after graduation, one of my classmates married a coach (who’d been married when we started high school). That was 34 (eek!) years ago.</p>
<p>There was a teacher student relationship when I was in high school…it resulted in a teacher leaving his job ( though I never knew if it was forced or by choice ) they actually got married , but she was my age and he was around 40 at the time and very strange. ewww indeed</p>
<p>I think it’s one thing for a bos/secretary to get involved. I’m still against it, but not as much as a student/teacher. Or a doctor/patient. Especially if it’s a therapist. </p>
<p>I can’t believe a court can think it’s okay.</p>
<p>At my 10-year reunion, the art teacher showed up and a clueless ex-classmate said, “Mr X! How cool you came to our reunion!” Mr X told her that he’s there because he married one of our classmates. Even while we were in school it was obvious they had a special connection though I think they waited until after graduation before acting on it. Unlike the football coach and tennis star, who were often in the coach’s office with the door locked.</p>
<p>“However- like other relationships that are NOT between equals- I think it is an abuse of power to have a romantic relationship.
Even if they didn’t have sex.”</p>
<p>I agree, and am shocked that the court didn’t agree.</p>
<p>Because coaches get to travel with their teams, and also get to do things like touch their players, obviously notice their players’ bodies, etc. Coaches have more opportunity to get sexually involved with students than do most teachers.</p>
<p>Anyone read Zoe Heller’s Notes on A Scandal (it was short-listed for a Man Booker Prize and made into a movie with Judi Dench)? It deals with this topic–story is about a female teacher who has an affair with her 15-year-old student. I thought wouldn’t like book, but I did (it was a book group read). The author raised the issue of the differences in the way we view the older male teacher taking up with a young female student vs. the older female teacher taking up with a young male student. Lots of people think the young male student is a lucky guy (ugh).</p>
<p>One of the art teachers at my high school had an affair with one of the students. (I don’t know if she was over 18.) He divorced his current wife and married her. They are still married, but my feeling at the time was it was incredibly icky. He was dismissed from the school.</p>
<p>In the mid-1970’s one of my high school friends (a female, age 17 or 18 at the time) was invited to the apartment of the popular social studies teacher (a male, mid to late 20’s). She went a couple of times and was served a beer. Drinking age in CT at the time: 18.</p>
<p>I do not think she informed her parents. At the time, the perspective of her girlfriends was that it was a cool thing to do, sophisticated, sort of like a college professor and a college student casually meeting for coffee after a class. There was a sense that he considered her to be mature and like a peer. She was outgoing, attractive, and fairly together for a high school senior, and she was aware that she was one of his favorites. She felt that it would be uncool to turn down the invitation, that doing so might imply that she foolishly considered it to be more than just a pleasant conversation between a teacher and a student such as they often had in the school building. There was most definitely an element of risk and some sexual tension, and though I can’t remember exactly if kissing was involved, I don’t think it was, and if memory serves, I believe things were heading in that direction. She stopped going because she felt uncomfortable and either of them could have gotten into trouble, though “the rules” were much less articulated back then.</p>
<p>I can’t see that sort of thing happening now without both parties being very aware of the inappopriate nature of such a get-together, on several levels. It seems much more “wrong” now. As a parent, I would throw a complete fit if a son or daughter did that. </p>
<p>Both then and now, my reaction was along the lines of “why would a guy in his late 20’s want to hang out with a high school student… what’s wrong with him? doesn’t he have friends/girlfriends his own age?” And I think the same thing of 40-year-old professors pursuing undergraduates, no matter what genders are involved.</p>
<p>There are two separate questions here: is it right and is it legal? The first question, I think, is certainly no. The balance of power is too skewed for it to be ethical, even if the teacher is not much older than the student. </p>
<p>As the judge in this case said, however, the statue that the teacher was being charged under was called something along the lines of “sex with a minor.” An eighteen year old is not a minor. If the state passes a law saying that teachers cannot have sex even with adult high school students, that is its perogative, and I think it would be a reasonable law. But you can’t charage someone with a crime that doesn’t apply to the case just because what he has done is icky. The school can fire him, the state can’t punish him.</p>
<p>In HS my good friend was 17/18 and was the dance team leader, I was the driver and we girls used to go out driving and drop her off at a teacher’s apartment, he was early to mid 20s, but what were we thinking? I know it was a secret, she was one of the faculty favourites and went to a top 5 school back then and is successful today. I don’t know what happened to him, but no one ever found out.</p>
<p>If that was my daughter I would be aghast, but at the time, I did not think anything of it.</p>
<p>the chemistry between josh and donna on west wing was different IMO- because that was between peers essentially although he outranked her. But workplace romance is generally a no-no.</p>
<p>From what I understand even having a relationship as a college student with a prof is frowned upon ( as it should be).
I dont know what it is with coaches either although NSM has good explanation. I think that an English teacher at my high school was fired or censured years after I left for having a relationship with a student-he was good looking ( only as compared to rest of teachers at the school ), but I can’t imagine.
Of course my sister married her husband when she was 19 and he was 34.</p>
<p>A girl who graduated two years ahead of me married one of our middle school teachers, but a number of years passed between the time she was in his class and the time she married him - and no, no one thinks they were carrying on while she was in middle school or during those interim years. No problem at all.</p>
<p>Hmmm. If a high school student married a H.S. school a year shortly after graduation, that is definitely wierd/icky. </p>
), but I can’t imagine.