Ignoring My Inner Lawyer

It was around 10:30 p.m., and I was in bed when I picked up the phone. The chairman of the department where I worked as an adjunct professor began speaking:

“Tell me what’s going on in your class.”

“I think it’s going well,” I said, “though I’ve had a few students complain about getting unusually low grades on their papers.”

“I’ve heard something else,” he said.

“Can you tell me what?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me whom you’ve spoken with?”

“No. Goodbye,” and he hung up.

I knew that I had just been fired, or, rather, I knew that my contract would not be “renewed” the following semester. I wondered whether there might be some kind of internal appeals process. Cross-examination in the dean’s office, perhaps?

I couldn’t imagine what I had done. And nobody would tell me. I wouldn’t sleep much that night.

How could this have happened? I had gone through several obligatory seminars on risk management and professional liability. I was always extremely careful.

I was never alone with a student. I documented every exchange, keeping a diary of conversations and making copies, at my own expense, of every paper I annotated. I adhered as strictly to my syllabus as if it were a legal contract. I never discussed issues that were outside of the advertised course content.

In class I studiously avoided using any of the potentially offensive words that have since been listed in Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police. I even removed my wedding ring when teaching, as I had been warned to do, in order to avoid creating a “hetero-coercive environment.”

Looking back, I thought I was being “professional.” No doubt, I was dour and humorless, and I don’t think my students learned very much from me (except, perhaps, that they should not major in English). I wanted to teach my students critical thinking and effective writing skills. I cared about my students, but I was so constrained by legal fears that I unconsciously regarded every student as a potential lawsuit. Perhaps inevitably, such fears became self-fulfilling prophecies.

I can’t know for sure, but I have my suspicions about what provoked that mysterious phone call. One of my students habitually walked with me to my office after every class. If I pretended to need to stop in the men’s room en route, she would wait outside. Usually, she would ask me questions about course material, but eventually she began revealing unsolicited details about her personal life. I never commented on this, and I cut off conversation at my office door: “Well, I have papers to grade now.”

I was surprised when, for all her seeming interest in the course, she never turned in her final paper, even after a significant extension.

Later, she came to my office and closed the door. I stood up and said, “I prefer to keep this door open.”

When I asked why she hadn’t finished her paper, she began a nonstop, whispering monologue about her boyfriend, a new apartment, and changing medications.

I kept a poker face and said, “These are nonacademic matters about which I cannot advise you. I suggest you talk with someone in student counseling. You will need to submit your paper before the end of the semester if you want to receive credit for it.” It was a by-the-book response.

“But I thought we were friends,” she said, looking like she was going to cry.

I did not smile or move. And she left, striding quickly down the hallway. I never heard from her again, and I gave her an incomplete.

Perhaps I deserved to be fired, but it was not for the legalistic reasons I suspected then. I was legally correct but humanly wrong. Instead of supporting a student, instead of helping her through a temporary setback, I had treated her like a traffic offender.

I wonder how she interpreted our relationship and what she told the chairman? Did she think I was leading her on? Did she accuse me of harassment? Unfortunately, I will never know, but I learned that legalistic behavior is no protection from a disgruntled student; more often, it merely makes the student angrier.

Invisible lawyers have become intermediaries in student-teacher relationships. The pressures of academic life seem to magnify the litigiousness of the larger culture. Students and their families are paying huge sums for their education; they cannot afford to receive the B that might keep them out of a prestigious professional school.

Meanwhile, the majority of faculty members -- part timers, grad students, adjuncts, and lecturers -- have to maintain standards even when they can be fired (or “not renewed”) for a single complaint from an unhappy student. Some stressed-out students are aware of this vulnerability and try to use it to leverage higher grades and other favors.

A year ago, in my present position as an assistant professor, after an exam in one of my undergraduate surveys, a student came up to me and said she was having a lot of trouble. I asked her what was wrong, and she began to sob in front of me and half of the class. She shook with folded arms and tears dripped down her face.

I thought, “Should I offer her a shoulder?” But a voice in my head said, “Never touch a student.” I stood there, saying nothing, for a minute that seemed like an hour. I wondered if she would lodge a complaint against me.

Another female student, probably a friend, embraced her, and gave me a look as if to say, “You have no business being a teacher.”

What should I have done? I like to think that I would act differently now. To give my shoulder to a crying student would be such an act of catharsis that I might cry myself.

Of course, I am now a tenure-track professor. I can afford to take some of the risks that I believe make one a better teacher. I decreasingly feel the need to protect myself by strict adherence to inhumane regulations. I speak more informally; I venture jokes. I often talk about my personal life in class. And I let students talk to me about theirs. I don’t recommend medications, but I do loan books. Sometimes I hold classes at my house. All of this over the protests of my inner lawyer.

I know these actions are a direct outcome of my increasingly privileged position. How much harder is it for the growing numbers of faculty members working off the tenure track?

I imagine something between Kafka and a day at the motor-vehicle bureau.