Disturbing news about former Stanford dean

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1000% wrong for this dean no question.

However, it also struck me as sad that this student's perception of the relationship was another manipulation by her parents to reframe what had included positive experiences into one that was labeled as only manipulation and abuse. I wish her parents had handled her own mental health better in this situation. There were ways to identify the Dean's action as fully inappropriate behavior (thus there is school policy against it) without leading Haas to being fully embarrassed and led to reframe the relationship so that she now feels that nothing was real and it was all manipulation and abuse. It sounds to me like they both genuinely had feelings. Sure, they both need to come to terms with it and the Dean is responsible for acting on those feelings and for all of the pain it caused the student. But, parents were rightfully upset and it was right for the Dean to be fired and held accountable....so I can understand their actions too.

???

I'm saying I feel bad for Haas also because her parents took no care in their response to consider how their view of this relationship would damage her psyche. Haas was not feeling harmed or used when she ended the relationship. She ended it because she had moved onto another relationship.

But she realizes now just how exploited she was. And she was exploited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:On her Instagram, JLH seems to indicate both she and her husband have come out as queer for Pride Month. That may explain why her husband was okay with the affair.

Is that how we’re excusing exploitative relationships these days?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On her Instagram, JLH seems to indicate both she and her husband have come out as queer for Pride Month. That may explain why her husband was okay with the affair.

Trying to soften the blow that this news about the affair is going to have. By hijacking Pride to come out, so she can distract people with that, and maybe at the same time, portray herself as a noble advocate and not a predatory older authority figure. Disgusting.

+1

This is disgusting, predatory behavior.

[Anonymous]

After reading the essay, it seems like two equally awful people found each other. This is what compelled the author of the essay to confess to her long-term boyfriend that she was cheating on him with the dean- " I started to imagine a life with him, and I fantasized about the lifestyle afforded by someone with his job in tech...Thinking my confession would lead to a swell of strings in a climactic scene of profound connection and self-actualization, I shared my secret...He sobbed and wouldn’t touch me."

[Anonymous]

"She longed for the self-love we believed existed on the other side of a thinner body."
Omg imagine blowing your life up to cheat on your husband with an undergrad, just for her to call you a FAT BIG BACKED BEAST in a viral essay...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


After reading the essay, it seems like two equally awful people found each other. This is what compelled the author of the essay to confess to her long-term boyfriend that she was cheating on him with the dean- " I started to imagine a life with him, and I fantasized about the lifestyle afforded by someone with his job in tech...Thinking my confession would lead to a swell of strings in a climactic scene of profound connection and self-actualization, I shared my secret...He sobbed and wouldn’t touch me."

Stop defending the indefensible.

[Anonymous]

A 22 year old can vote, die in a war, rent a car. They are old enough to make adult decisions. To say otherwise is to infantilize them. So this relationship does not seem problematic to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They handled that in a very mature manner.

Right, this type of thing had gone on since time immemorial in academia. It sounds like when the affair I occurred , the student was 22 and the school had no policy against it.

I was asked out by my professor at the U of Michigan, in grad school. And when I was at Johns Hopkins, a married department chair started an affair with a student he was supervising . It was wrong, but absolutely known by the whole department.

I am happy that such situations have been officially banned now, in some universities . But that is a recent development and people are naive if they did know how common (and condoned) this has been historically.

(For shocked posters, read up on Emmanuel Macron’s marriage!)

It’s discouraged but I don’t think it’s universally banned nor should it be. Some of these relationships end happily in long term relationships. As long as the dynamic is not coercive and there is no harassment, I don’t see the problem. It seems wrong to dictate to grown adults who they can and can’t fall in love with.

I figure you're the same PP who keeps coming back and making a huge effort to normalize this "relationship" and excuse it, while also being sure to throw the parents under the bus. Maybe there's more than one of you here, twisting yourselves into pretzels to try to make this a love match between adults.

You have no grasp of the idea that some relationships have a power differential. Even between "grown adults." At the time of this affair the student was just that, an undergraduate student, and her lover was a dean. Not even some garden-variety grad student or adjunct--a powerful dean. The fact you keep returning to insist this is how things were in the past, how some people end up "happily in long term relationships," etc. etc. ad nauseam, is jaw-dropping. Either you're very naive about power differentials or you have been in such a relationship yourself and feel it was true love. Feelings are not the issue. Authority figures having sexual relationships with people under their authority is the issue. The dean should have kept her mitts off the undergrad, feelings or not, even if the student was hot for her. End of story. Your excuse-making, which I'm sure you see as mature and subtle thinking, only comes off here as grotesque.

There are two people you are berating. I am the one who is upset the parents didn't handle it better with their daughter. At no point have I normalized the relationship or think it should have started. The Dean should have never crossed the line. That said, the daughter ended the relationship in a normal manner. It was the aftermath that affected her the most and I think her parents could have handled it better. I have no issue with them reporting it to Stanford...but they made the kid feel like crap and that was not necessary. They probably did more damage to her self esteem than the actual relationship did.

[Anonymous]

Power imbalance is so significant - at that still impressionable age - means many schools have adopted policies banning “relationships” like this.
Thank goodness.

[Anonymous]

Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is so bad? It’s not like she had control over her grades — and it doesn’t sound like she tried to have control over them either. Haas was 22, not 17 or even 18. Not sure where the “vile” comments are coming from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people find it titillating when the person in power is female.

Men have done this in every field where they operate

+1. My father-in-law was the COO where my mother-in-law was a low, entry-level employee. They’ve been married about 45 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A 22 year old can vote, die in a war, rent a car. They are old enough to make adult decisions. To say otherwise is to infantilize them. So this relationship does not seem problematic to me.

Agree. Let adults do what they want. There are imbalances of power EVERYWHERE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A 22 year old can vote, die in a war, rent a car. They are old enough to make adult decisions. To say otherwise is to infantilize them. So this relationship does not seem problematic to me.

Agree. Let adults do what they want. There are imbalances of power EVERYWHERE.

Unless you have knowledge of this you have zero idea

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A 22 year old can vote, die in a war, rent a car. They are old enough to make adult decisions. To say otherwise is to infantilize them. So this relationship does not seem problematic to me.

Agree. Let adults do what they want. There are imbalances of power EVERYWHERE.

I am positive that if this was a straight relationship between a white male dean twice her age and a young student, the people defending this would be calling for the head of the dean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is so bad? It’s not like she had control over her grades — and it doesn’t sound like she tried to have control over them either. Haas was 22, not 17 or even 18. Not sure where the “vile” comments are coming from.

No - can’t you see the person posting earlier about it not being an issue? (Or if you are that person - yes you are alone) I’m the pp who says it was wrong of the dean but parents handled it poorly.