My Student

"I have a question," she said. She didn't want to get into the habit of calling him by his first name, because she still had a year to go at the college. But it seemed silly to always call him 'Professor'. When he was tucking her into bed, there was no question who she was talking to.

"Ask away," he replied.

"If I'm NOT a student in any of YOUR classes, just a student at the College, is it 'moral turpitude'?"

"I'm not sure," he said, "but it would certainly be better, in the eyes of the committee, if I were not associating with any of my CURRENT students."

She looked at him. "I'm serious now. Listen. It doesn't look like money from the estate, if any, is going to come through in time to help me with my undergraduate degree. And that means I barely have money to pay tuition, and I definitely DON'T have money to pay room and board too. I would rather live with you" a quick smile escaped "than in the dorm anyway, but if I'm in YOUR class, and people find out I'm living with you, it would be bad."

He nodded, and then shrugged. "I'm not sure what to do."

She said, "I think you are the best teacher in the world. But there is an opening in the section taught by the other mathematician, and that counts just as much for graduation. Should I switch into his section, so you won't be in as much trouble if people find out?"

"Is that what you want?"

"No. What I WANT, is to be in your class, and walk in each day and give you a big kiss. I want to get tutored in my nightgown, without going in to campus for office hours. I want to be able to tell everyone that you're the best professor ever. But I DON'T want you to get in trouble for 'moral turpitude'."

He sighed. "I'll tell you, I had trouble even last semester, grading you like everyone else. It really would be better, from the College point of view, if you switched to the other section. I could still tutor you, and everything, but that way, you would have your grade assigned by someone who isn't madly in love with you."

"What did you say?" she asked, astonished.

"I said, 'That way, you would have your grade assigned by someone who isn't madly in love with you.'"

"I love you too," she said softly. "I'll switch sections tomorrow." Then, with a sudden twist, she flipped him onto her bed, between her and the wall. And she climbed on top, to prevent him from escaping.

She must have been very restless that night. It took a great many bedtime kisses before she was ready to go to sleep.

"Dr. Prins" said a familiar voice on the phone, "the Dean would like you to stop by to see him at your earliest convenience."

All the faculty knew the Dean's office manager. "Betty, what's it about? Do I really need to come today? It's summer, I'm not even on campus."

"Um, the Dean really didn't say, except 'earliest convenience'." She paused, and lowered her voice. "But he doesn't seem happy. I think you'd better come in. Really."

'It's never good news', he thought, 'when the Dean doesn't even say what it's about. And it's even worse, when the Dean's manager admits he's unhappy.'

"So, Betty said you wanted to see me. What's up?"

"I have been hearing some reports that I do not like, and I wanted to see if there was any truth to them."

He waved at the Dean to continue.

"I am sure that you are aware of the Staff Handbook statement on declaring potential conflicts of interest, and the Faculty Handbook statement on appropriate character and morals."

"Of course I am. I was on the committee that revised the language, last time around. So what's the issue?"

"Well, to be frank, I have heard reports that you are living with a student of yours. Is that true?"

"Of course not," he answered. "Now, if the reports were that I am landlord for a former student, that would be much closer to the truth."

"So you admit it."

"Sir, I just said that it is NOT true I am living with one of my students. A landlord relationship with a former student is not the same as 'living with' a current student."

"Is Bernadette Hall living at your house?"

"Miss Hall has a room rented in the house I live in. She has her own separate entrance, and her own space."

"And she is your student."

"She WAS my student. In the event she can afford tuition this coming year, she will be taking no classes from me. She is, therefore, a FORMER student."

"She is currently enrolled at this college."

"It is summer time, technically I'm not even on contract, nor is she enrolled, during the summer."

"You can play with words all you want, but you have admitted that you are living in the same house with a currently enrolled student."

"Sir, you can exaggerate if you wish, but that doesn't make it true. A former student of mine is living in her own room that happens to be in the building I live in. It is NOT the same as what you imply."

The Dean sighed. "I'm going to give you a break. I don't want a public fuss, and I'm sure you don't either. Sign this, and it will all be done."

Vincent looked at the paper. "I hereby resign my position at the College for personal reasons, effective immediately." Even the date was filled in, for today.

"No sir, I will not sign. I have done nothing that warrants my resignation, and I do not wish to resign. I am a tenured professor, and I wish to remain so."

"You can be fired for 'moral turpitude' and you know it."

"Only if the committee agrees that I should be fired, after holding a hearing."

"I am changing the password on your email, canceling your phone service, and changing the lock on your office door. You are done here. You will never teach another class."

"If you wish to pay me full salary until retirement without asking me to teach you may choose to do so, but you cannot dismiss a tenured faculty member without a hearing. And, I'm sure you remember also, that the proceeds of such hearings are confidential. If necessary I will sue you for breach of contract, defamation of character, slander, libel, and I will ask for full salary with cost of living raises until retirement, with triple punitive damages. I have done nothing wrong, sir, nothing at all, and you are trying to force me out without even a hearing. I will not stand for it. If you think I have done something wrong, call a meeting of the committee."

"Leave this campus. Now."

"Sir, you may only require me to leave this campus if you have established a life threatening danger potentially exists if I am allowed to stay. All you have are unsubstantiated rumors that I have repudiated. Even if your allegations were true, there is no danger to anyone from my alleged behavior. Excuse me; I have other people to see."

He took the letter with him; it might be needed as evidence. Few of any of the faculty he needed to see would be on campus in the summer, so he left. He had a campus directory at home.

He went in his house. Bernie was not upstairs, but her car was in the carport. He went downstairs. Her bedroom door was open, but she wasn't there. He heard her voice.

"Oh! You startled me. I didn't think you were home."

He said, "Bernie, I need a HUG!" and turned to face her. There she was, her hair was wet, and she was barely wrapped in a big towel.

If he had been just a little bit less upset, he would have run back upstairs. She turned, and almost ran back to the bathroom, but he looked so upset... She reached out with the one arm that wasn't keeping the towel from falling.

"Huggie!" she called.

He hugged her so tight there was no chance of the towel falling; it was trapped between them. He found his hands caressing her bare back. He sobbed incoherently for a while. "It wasn't fair." "They had no right." "We hadn't DONE anything." She understood something was wrong, but not exactly what.

He lifted his head from her shoulder, and said "thanks. I needed that. But I'm sorry I caught you at a bad time. I'll go upstairs now, and when you're ready, come up and I'll tell you the whole story. I'll need your help." He let go of her and stepped back. The towel dropped to the floor. She did not move. His eyes widened, drinking in the sight. Then he realized, he wasn't supposed to be staring at her. A little reluctantly, he ran up the stairs.

She shook her head, sighed, and tossed the towel in the hamper before she started getting dressed.

"So, the Dean tried to fire you, and now there will have to be a committee meeting to decide if you did anything wrong, by letting me live in your basement." Neither of them mentioned how little time she actually spent in the basement. They were in the living room at the moment.

"Right. That about sums it up. I didn't want it to come out, and it will look bad, but my position is that renting a room to a former student is a landlord kind of relationship, no conflict of interest to be reported, and no moral violation at all."

"And I promise not to mention how much I like to kiss and hug my landlord." She smiled at him, and wiggled her lips. He obliged her. She pulled him back for seconds, and then finally let him go.

"But could it be a violation to rent to a student who isn't in your classes?"

"Dr. Robert Hemmingway actually owned the house the new Gamma Delta Iota fraternity was in during its first two years, and he even gave them a price break the first year. And no one gave him a problem about it."

"What if they say you were too easy on grading me?"

"I'll pass your tests over to our other mathematician, who you'll be having for Statistics in the Fall. He'll be able to double check my grading. And I did grade you on the same scale as everyone else."

"Maybe this is a bad time, but, I have to ask." She blushed. "What if after being cleared of this charge, later, um, what if we, um, ACTUALLY lived together? Would they come back to get you?"

He looked at her. "Once you graduate, you are no longer a student, and the College doesn't require faculty to get approval when they date or get married. Actually, Dr Newton, in Philosophy, taught a student, married her, and supported her through graduate school. She teaches at a college 30 miles away, and they live half way in between."

"It's actually a violation of Federal Law to do 'sexual harassment'; but that always involves people you are supervising at the time. If you don't accuse me, and your tests show you earned your grades, I don't see how I could be disciplined. But, some on the committee might just vote with the Dean to curry his favor, so nothing is certain."

"What if you lose?"

He shrugged. "I'd sue the College for the rest of my salary and punitive damages, and they'd settle to avoid the publicity. Then I'd try to get a job somewhere else. Maybe we could... never mind. That's a discussion for later, if it happens."

Her eyes got wide. She wondered what would have come after 'maybe we could...'. The 'we' part sounded like he wanted a future that included her, even if he lost his job here. But she didn't ask; he was under a lot of stress as it was. But she wondered...

"Miss Hall, when you were in classes with Professor Prins, how did he treat you differently than other students?" asked the Dean.

"Excuse me sir, but asking the question that way assumes that she was treated differently. Could you please rephrase the question?"

Professor Thornberg was a former public defender, now the pre-law advisor. Vincent was grateful that he had agreed to be his advocate.

"Very well, did Professor Prins treat you differently than any other students?"

"No, sir, he didn't."

"But according to another student, you went straight to his office after nearly every class meeting."

Vincent almost expected Professor Thornberg to object to hearsay evidence, but he kept quiet.

"Sir, you asked if I were treated differently. All students were invited to come to office hours. I am the student who took advantage of office hours the most, but all students had the opportunity." Vincent saw her glance at professor Thornberg, and then look away. 'Did he warn her to expect that question?' he wondered. 'Maybe I don't want to ask.'

"So, please tell the committee in your own words how you ended up living with Professor Prins."

"Excuse me, sir, but she can't answer in her own words, if you keep putting words in her mouth. 'Living with' carries connotations that have not been established."

The Dean raised his hands in frustration. "How did you come to live where you are living now?"

"Well, my mother died during the semester, and the executor ordered me to move out of mother's house right after finals. I didn't have time to find a place, or much money either. Professor Prins heard that I had no place to stay, and he said he had a vacant basement. I don't know if he had tried to rent it out before, or not. He said I could have it for a good price, since he wasn't really using it. And it had its own entrance, its own bathroom, it was my own space."

"I moved in because I had no where else to go, and it was a great deal. He never suggested anything inappropriate to me. I live downstairs, and he lives upstairs, and he only comes down to do laundry. I did nothing wrong."

The Dean started attacking her, verbally. Professor Thornberg, always courteously, brushed off most of his questions as irrelevant. Still, the Dean managed to convey the impression, just by the questions he was trying to ask, that she was a student of 'loose virtues' who was at least paying back (and not with money) the Professor for considerations received when she was in the class. Finally the Dean got tired of asking his questions, or figured his points had been made anyway.

"Miss Hall," Dr. Thornberg asked gently, "Do you have anything else to add?"

"Yes, I do," she said defiantly. "I think it's terrible that you're hounding Professor Prins like this. All he did was let me stay in his basement, when I would have been homeless otherwise. He didn't do anything wrong. He wouldn't. He's too nice."

"None of you have been saying 'moral turpitude', but that's what this is about, isn't it? Well, play your stupid committee games, but leave me out of it. I haven't done anything wrong, either. And I resent the implications you have been making. So here, put this in your evidence." She through an envelope down on the table. "You've already drug me through muck. And if I don't get a public apology by tomorrow for all these slanders on MY character, I will sue the College for defamation of character, and I will announce my suit in the Tribune by the end of the week. Think what THAT will do to recruitment of students." And she got up and left the room.

Vincent did not know what was in the envelope, but Dr. Thornberg did, because she had asked him if she should. "Gentlemen, that is a letter from the Student Health Service, confirming some information from her gynecological exam last week. Let me just say, it confirms she was not active in such a way as to promote 'moral turpitude' at all. Are you going to make me put it in evidence, or will the committee stipulate that Miss Hall was not providing any non-monetary 'benefits' to Professor Prins in return for rent?"

Bernie waited outside the door. It was almost embarrassing, in this day and age, to be a medically certified virgin at age 22. But she just couldn't let them make those kinds of implications about her. And Vincent had always been a perfect gentleman. She supposed that now, it was good that he had never tried to seduce her before, because she didn't have to lie to clear his reputation. But he was such a good man; so kind, so tender, so sensitive; maybe she would have to figure out a way to seduce him. She sat, waiting for the committee to finish, and dreamed of what it would be like to seduce that shy, gentle, attractive professor she was living with.

Vincent came out to find Bernie asleep on the couch. He didn't dare touch her, not with the committee deliberating inside the room. She was smiling in her sleep; it took all his willpower to not wake her with a kiss.

That would not have given the right impression, if anyone from the committee happened to see it.

They were sitting on the couch in the living room, happy to be done with all that. "Bernie, we need to talk."

"OK, what about?"

"well, I want to re-negotiate our agreement about the basement."

She looked sad and worried. "Is something wrong? I thought everything was OK now."

He looked her straight in the eye. "There is nothing wrong, everything is OK, but I want you to listen to my proposal, OK?"

"OK. But you're not mad, or anything?"

"No."

"You aren't going to throw me out?"

"Absolutely not."

"OK, tell me."

"Well actually," he blushed, "they might have done me a favor."

Why was he blushing? she wondered.

"And I realized, after all this, that you staying in the basement is really too temporary. If that's what you want, to stay in my basement until you graduate, that's OK. But it's not what I want. So I have something I want to ask you."

He got down on one knee, and reached under the edge of the couch. "I want to give you a present, as a symbol of our relationship." He pulled something out, and handed it to her. It was wrapped.

"If you don't want it, just give it back, no problem. But I really hope you do want it."

She pulled the ribbon off, and the wrapping paper practically fell off a little box. 'It looked like, ...no, it couldn't be...' she thought.

She opened the box. Inside was a ring that sparkled.

"Will you marry me?" he asked.

They did not announce their engagement until after she had graduated. Most people on campus did not hear about their engagement, until after they had been married for some time. She went to graduate school, and ended up as a marriage counselor. She insisted she wanted to help others be as happy as she was.