This has become very common in today’s world, where professors and lecturers will not hesitate to ask their students to sleep with them in order to get good grades. As humiliating as the act is, most people in positions of authority don’t seem to care; they just want to have their way with as many students as possible.
Contrary to popular opinions that assume female students are the only ones who have been subjected to this obnoxious behavior. Male students are also confronted with the same issues.
True, university policies prohibit lecturers from engaging in sexual relationships with students when they have the ability to influence their education or career.
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However, this does not stop the lecturers from harassing students and putting them in danger. To shed more light on what is going on, I decided to ask a few people who had previously been harassed by their lecturers to share their experiences.
For reasons of privacy and confidentiality, the students’ names would be changed, and the schools would not be mentioned.
Dami was supposed to have graduated from university three years ago, but she never got to finish school, not because she was not bright, but because she refused to sleep with her lecturer.
He requested that another lecturer, who was his friend, grade her very low, so she would have no other choice but to come to beg. Even after months of begging and pleading, he said he wouldn’t release her results unless she slept with him.
Dami had to start over at a different school because of one bad act from a man who was supposed to help her advance academically.
Michael’s story is one of a kind. One of his female lecturers, whom he admired solely as a mentor, misinterpreted his admiration for attraction and desired a sexual relationship with him. He denied the attraction and spent time explaining to her that he didn’t like her in that way but admired her intelligence and hard work.
She felt humiliated and used by him because, according to her, she was always giving him high grades because she thought he was interested in her and wanted to be in a relationship with her. The next day, she filed a sexual harassment complaint against him, and he was expelled from school as a result.
Angle is yet another woman who was swayed by her lecture. She was one of those popular girls in school and didn’t have much time to study. So when one of her lecturers approached her to ask her out, she saw it as a chance to get what she wanted: good grades without having to study too hard.
Angel’s story had a flaw in that she got what she wanted: good grades, but she couldn’t graduate because some of her results were missing. It wasn’t a big deal at first because Angle was having a good time, but year after year, while other people were graduating, she wasn’t.
When she confronted him about her missing result, he told her that it was because he liked her and didn’t want to let her go, despite the fact that he knew he’d never see her again once she left school.
Angle is still attempting to resolve her issues with him and obtain her results in order for her to graduate.
John had a thing for his female lecturer. She is young, single, and brilliant, he says, but a relationship between a lecturer and a student is forbidden. Despite knowing this, he decided to ask her out.
She would always laugh whenever he approached her and whispered sweet nothings to her. She thought he was very funny and confident. I mean, not every student had the audacity to question their lecturer.
Anyway, they started dating but had to keep it quiet because she could lose her job if the school authorities found out, but John, knowing all of this, began using their relationship to get her to grade him well and request that other teachers who were her friends do the same.
She did what he wanted for a while, but when she became tired of his manipulation, she resigned and took a job at another university.
There were no serious consequences, but he did lose a woman who truly loved him and had to spend more time reading to graduate than he usually did.
There were so many stories to tell, but these four seemed to dominate the conversation of everyone I spoke with. It’s unfortunate what our society and educational system have become, but I believe we can all still do better.
