Olajumoke,
Thanks for your clarity and poignancy on this topic. Indeed, as you say, those who desire a workplace free of sexual temptation will do well to vacate the academia, although they will need plenty of luck to find another profession where sexual and other temptations requiring maturity and self-restraint are absent. The academia is a professional arena fraught with sexual tensions. And it is not exclusive to Nigeria either. The difference is that in many other places, there are guidelines, legislations, manuals, and rules that clearly delineate the bounds of acceptable relationships between students and their teachers and breaches are severely punished within the profession and/or in the criminal justice system. The pending legislation before the Nigerian national assembly is a belated but important effort to bring Nigeria in line with these ethical standards.
I teach in an American university and the notion that one of your students seduced you or manipulated you into a sexual interaction would be so preposterous that it would earn you ignominy and ridicule to add to whatever punishment you deserve and get. Forget morality, ethical orientation, religion, or whatever personal code restrains one's erotic proclivities; the difference here is that everyone knows that sexual predation is an extremely costly infraction that almost always results in the loss of career, among other personal costs.
Personally, in my conduct with students, I leave nothing to chance. When I meet with my students, I leave my office door wide open. Since my office is located along a much-traveled hallway, our conversations and interactions are public. It helps me and it helps the student. Neither of us can act out any illicit fantasy in that spatial configuration. When you're in a profession that confers enormous power on you while requiring a high degree of personal responsibility in your interaction with lesser, subordinate interlocutors, you make deliberate ethical choices to avoid abuse and predation. As you eloquently stated, it is a requirement of the job, so excuses about your inability to withstand temptation are just that--excuses.
Thanks again for your forceful clarity. When it comes to this issue, there should be little or no equivocation.
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 3:48 AM, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso <jumoyin@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you, Prof Moses Ochonu, for your three posts on this matter: the Unilorin audio recording, the exposure of ASUU's immoral attempt to subvert this important legislation, and the clarification on the point that Prof Aluko made with respect to equivalence of offense between lecturers and students.
I am compelled to repeat the third point you made above: it is lame, indeed ignorant and even mischievous for lecturers to claim that they suffer an equivalent offense when students offer them sex for favours. The argument that this happens is often advanced by lecturers seeking sympathy for their inability to grow up and their inability to tame their urges. Were we all to concede to gratify every desire that was offered us - be it sex, food, money, etc - we would be back in Hobbes' state of nature. The more important point that people miss in the discussion of sexual harassment in universities is that, at its most basic, and even if you do not subscribe to moral arguments, at its most basic, sex between a lecturer and a student is an abuse of power. Simple and short. And - yes, controversially - even when that sex is "consensual". It is an abuse of power in a relationship that from the beginning gives the lecturer disproportionate power over the student, power which always conditions the student's response to him/her. If I may further point out, this power is not just negative power (ie power to sanction disobedience) but also positive power (ie power to turn around the student for good, empower the student to think of hard work rather than shortcuts, power to mentor rather than exploit).
I am sick of the lame argument that (usually) male lecturers make regarding (usually) female students offering them sexual favours, "harrassing" them. If some people are incapable of handling the challenges of this line of work, they should find alternative jobs and stop smearing all the rest of us. In my University, many lecturers have been fired once established they had sex with a student. There is no question of whether the student offered the sex or not. That is the way I think it should be.
Thank you.
Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso
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