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Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

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Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#221

Post by quickthrower2 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #195
quickthrower2 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it closer to a company where the interns are girls, the team leaders are boys (who took the job to chat up the interns) and are now in a position of power and can legitimately ask for time with the girls (in 1-1s). They don’t do anything illegal or even hit on them overtly but it is creepy as hell.

Is that what's happening? It sounds like senior level students are auditing the classes, not working as TAs or something.

From OP:

> since we routinely have cases where a young man is leading open labs as if they're a teacher themselves (in order to "wow" their female classmates, offer "private free tutoring sessions", etc). Some of the young students in my class take up these offers, and this further demoralizes other female students seeing this happen (i.e. only attractive women being offered tutoring sessions).

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#222

Post by 8note »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #183
thepasswordis wrote: post #75

The only thing this person needs help with is how to laugh at the cleverness here. Doesn't this actually push really hard towards a perfect 50/50 split of men and women in the classes anyway? Isn't that exactly what the professor wants?

Think of it closer to a company where the interns are girls, the team leaders are boys (who took the job to chat up the interns) and are now in a position of power and can legitimately ask for time with the girls (in 1-1s). They don’t do anything illegal or even hit on them overtly but it is creepy as hell.

Are they actually in positions of power? They are not marking papers, and nobody is required by their course to attend said 1-1s

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#223

Post by troupe »

beaned wrote: post #125
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody cares if college students try to date other students from their classes. It is weird when people take a class specifically because of that reason though. It is even weirder when the class in question is something that they have a very high skill level in specifically so that they will be able leverage that into some kind of situation that leads to dating. This is pretty cut and dry to me, I am not sure why so…

> It is weird when people take a class specifically because of that reason though. The ends seem to justify the means, sometimes. I know a married couple who met on a college campus. While students, the man (boy at the time, really) was a manager and chose his and her hours at the campus store so they would overlap. They tell this story proudly. The distinction between weird and romance seems to be whether it succeed…

Richard Feynman choose to learn Portuguese instead of Spanish because there was a pretty girl in the Portuguese class line.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#225

Post by lvass »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #189

Well, on one hand you have created "damsel in distress" classes for women who should not necessarily be in that field, so that part of the problem. On the other hand, dating is also very necessary and is more important for men and women in the big picture than an average college class. It's "How I met my future wife" app, not "How I met my latest one night stand". Places with concentration of young people should give…

Is this what chatGPT answers to "what would Stalin think of this problem"?

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#226

Post by Eleison23 »

mshake2 wrote: post #158
nhchris wrote: post #43

> This might be hard, as no unwanted advances are taking place. We simply have students excelling at the course, and drawing-in a crowd. I should've been more clear with my "leching" comment. Still, it seems harassing in nature. It seems increasingly that society demands a world where dating only happens during designated and approved dating times and venues, and outside those strictly delimited places, men are to be…

There is a strong correlation with a puritanical culture having much higher birth rates than a sexually permissive one, so I don't think that is the reason.

[dead]

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#227

Post by nvrmnd »

saghm wrote: post #180
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #13

I still have clear recollection of the 50:1 men-to-women ratio in my CS2xx classes and higher. Your odds weren't good if you were hoping to meet Mrs. Right. I imagine things have gotten better since. Still, seems like a fairly high effort low outcome place to meet someone who is likely not even receptive to advances in that context. Do colleges not offer many other opportunities for people to meet outside of class in…

> It's interesting that one of the highest-voted responses suggests bringing in the ten ton hammer of legal governmental involvement against a bunch of kids trying to score a date. Yikes. I think the bigger "yikes" to me is the implication that being young, male, and lusty as a motivation is a sufficient to dismiss any possibility of illicit behavior.

I don't see that implication being made and I have trouble believing anyone could read that into the above in good faith. The linked questions mentions that this has created an uncomfortable environment for female undergraduates -- but no allegations of illegal behavior.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#228

Post by Larrikin »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #73
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #13

I still have clear recollection of the 50:1 men-to-women ratio in my CS2xx classes and higher. Your odds weren't good if you were hoping to meet Mrs. Right. I imagine things have gotten better since. Still, seems like a fairly high effort low outcome place to meet someone who is likely not even receptive to advances in that context. Do colleges not offer many other opportunities for people to meet outside of class in…

Things have not gotten better. I had several 3 and 4 hundred level CS classes with literally zero women in them. This was at a large, major public school with several hundred in our CS program.

My upper level CS classes in college had one woman back in early 2010s.

I entered grad school some years later. My graduate level CS courses that over lapped the data science classes were usually around fifty percent. The courses that didn't were more male but nothing close to undergraduate. It really wasn't something I noticed like in undergrad. So seems to be getting better

What I did notice was both the data science classes and CS classes often times had fifty percent or higher non American students. We seem to be educating a lot of foreign born students who are willing to come to America.

It felt gross when I had a friend, with an American master's degree in STEM, who ended up having to leave a job she liked to go back to her home country because she ran out of time on her visa and didn't win the lottery to stay.

Seems extremely stupid of us to be kicking out highly educated individuals basically randomly.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#229

Post by pavon »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #39

I find it a little disturbing that the top rated answer that people reached for is to bring in Title IX claiming this is discrimination.

Only because the first options of reaching out to department members and administration went completely ignored. I certainly wouldn't file a formal complaint as my first action in this case (as described), but at a minimum the people who work there have experience dealing with situations like this, and could offer advice to the professor, or perhaps have a discussion with the administration about how to prevent this situation from escalating into a Title IX issue.

Re: Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

#230

Post by pyth0 »

ipaddr wrote: post #164
dymk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birth rates are tanking because of increased access to contraceptives and people having the wealth and freedom to enjoy their 20s and 30s unburdened by children

Or more likely something within our food / water chain labeled safe and unharmful. Birth control pills part of the drinking water supply is a popular theory

> Or more likely something within our food / water chain

No. That is definitely not more likely.

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