There are numerous customs a Penn student may exploit in order to finagle a good grade. If you're into the Zach Morris modus operandi, for instance, you'll get your closest Screech-like friend to hack into the elusive Penn InTouch interior and click your B to an A. Perhaps you're privy to the "I come bearing fruit method," because, for one reason or another, unwilted produce makes professors giddy enough to alter the class curve in your favor. You might even indulge in "class participation" struggles, or willingly hand-in an "optional homework"--all innocuous actions which are certainly in keeping with the purports of Penn's jolly scholastic character.
But would you ever contemplate coyly revealing the top of your left breast, licking your swollen wet lips and crossing and uncrossing your freshly shaven legs in order to get the high grade you're pining for?
Forget about the romantic image of the teacher guiding the brilliant student toward intellectual bliss. Because, as it turns out, people fuck for grades.
This does not mean, however, that every girl sitting next to you in class with pink pasties and a visible g-string is necessarily slipping in extra-credit of the coed-naked teacher-student mud-wrestling variety, but there are those students who've decided that "being" with a professor or teaching assistant is fine by them--with a good grade simply following suit.
If you've ever listened to Dr. Laura Schlesinger or watched Dawson's Creek, then you're edified to a well-versed social gospel which vilifies active participants in teacher-student affairs. But, if you're starving for a good grade, and you feel your sexuality is the best possible mode with which to satiate that need, then some of the stories from students in this article will turn you on to new tactics of erudition, approaches your mother and father never told you about. (Offspring of Ron Jeremy or Janet Reno not included.)
"Kerri," a 23-year-old College graduate, has always had a penchant for older men. (She noted in the interview that she dated a college student throughout her high school career.) But it wasn't until she commenced into some heavy petting with her Economics TA during the second semester of her sophomore year that she realized she also had a fetish for men with an established degree of power. "I wanted him, at first, because he was hot, and he wore a tie. There was something really erotic about the way he'd tell people to shut up in class."
Although Kerri and her TA hooked up, she "was dating someone else the whole time. So, it wasn't like we were in a relationship.... I guess I was just using him." Her TA was a Wharton graduate student who was 29 years old.
When asked if their affair had anything to do with grades, Kerri responded, "I completely went after him, to be honest, because I was convinced I was going to do badly in the class. I mean, I wouldn't have [gone after him] if he was ugly, but he was good looking, and he was relatively sweet." When asked about how the affair began, and then probed vigorously for bawdy details, Kerri turned a virgin shade of pink. As she started to talk, however, a strange disco-like cacophony reminiscent of Boogie Nights was heard in the background and her virgin pinkness turned vamp red.
"I went to talk to him after the second class. I had picked out a hot little number to wear." When invited to reveal what the little number was specifically, Kerri grinned and answered, "It was a naughty schoolgirl outfit--short skirt and high boots and a white Brooks Brothers shirt." She then paused, and noted, "Boobs. Lots of boobs." She then broke into high-pitched, self-congratulatory laughter.
"For the first few classes it was pretty innocent, I think, but I knew he'd noticed me and he knew I was making an effort to get noticed. He asked me out after about the third time I'd stayed late after class. We went to dinner downtown so that people wouldn't see us."
When asked if at these dinners Kerri and her TA discussed economics, Kerri responded, "No. There was a lot of licking though." Licking, attentive Penn students know, was dropped from the Macroeconomics syllabus when Penn changed its core requirements in light of Alan Greenspan's ascent into office.
"Eventually it got really sexual and we would smile at each other in class because we had our secret. We used to sneak into the Womens Studies room in Van Pelt and get dirty after class." When asked what went on exactly in the library, Kerri revealed all--for the sake of posterity, however, it will simply be noted that Kerri might well have graduated at the head of her class.
Penn men may breath an orgasmic sigh of relief to know that this fun afterschool activity is not limited solely to the women on campus, and that they, too, have every opportunity available to get into Harvard Business School by way of their sexy implorations.
"Jon," a senior in Wharton and a well-known campus lothario, boastfully revealed (after creasing his size-29 waist Diesel jeans, and gleefully regarding his reflection in his soup spoon) that "Fucking the professor is the best academic move a Penn student can consciously make."
Jon's story is exactly what you'd expect out of somebody who smokes cloves in front of Van Pelt all day and walks around with a hands-free cell phone so he can kiss people on both cheeks.
"I decided to take this art class to boost my GPA. I won't tell you which one, but it involved a lot of clay." Jon leaned back against the chair, beginning his quixotic encounter with a surreptitious drawl. "[My 30-something professor] was really into me. She'd come over during class and do the whole, from behind putting thing, showing me how to work on my piece." (His art piece.) "Seriously, it was about two weeks before we started hooking up. We never went out or anything, we just left after the class one day together. It'd be late in the afternoon, and then she'd drive me back to her apartment and I'd stay there until we got bored, or we'd... finish. It was hilarious. She was really into me. I am positive everyone in the class knew what was going on because she'd almost growl at me during class."
Not known for his clandestine ways, Jon made an effort to let his friends, and a few homeless people, know of his sexual episodes. "I was psyched. It was such a rush. I was boning my professor. I wanted everyone to know. I wanted to write a note to the Penthouse Forum but I think that would have been disrespectful to her. No, just kidding. I just never got around to it."
This seemingly benign ordeal took an awkward turn when Jon began to sleep with another member of his art class, a student, and the professor got wind. "She hated the other girl I was sleeping with. I have no idea how she found out. Maybe she stalked me... It happens, you know. Anyway, I ended up getting an A in the class and I only turned in half of my final project and the girl I was sleeping with got a B- and she was really talented and went to every class."
College is, generally, a muddy everglade of horny toads bent on dipping their lithe green bodies into as many dewy ponds as possible. One does not have to be overly libidinous, however, to engage in a teacher-student relationship. For "Sarah," a graduate of the College, the pond-hopping began unsullied and clean with a few late-night smooches with her married, middle-aged professor her junior year, but turned noxious when Sarah began to fall in love with her professor and realized the high grade she desired paled in comparison with the desire she retained for the professor. Previous to this relationship, Sarah had never had a boyfriend, had "had little sexual experience" and was not sure, from the start, what she was doing. "I was terrified of getting caught," she said. "But it seemed worth it to me at the time. He was very mature and kind and sort of fatherly."(Note to Psych 001 students--that is something called "Freudian Attraction." It will be on the final.)
Sarah claims that she and her professor "never slept together. I just spent a lot of time in his office and we kissed a lot and he told me things about my papers and then it was over. It was a strange combination of sensuality and friendship. I took it much more seriously than he did. He knew that I was really in love with him and that is why, I think, I got an A in the class--because by the end of the semester, he felt really, really, really guilty about it all."
For some students, affairs with TAs are no big deal. There seems to be a fine line between TA-student relationships and student-professor relationships. "Tom," an Engineering senior, remarked on the jollity of his multiple lascivious experiences with various TAs throughout his Penn career ("I've hooked up with three TAs and I've got As in all three classes"), but quickly stated that he would "never hook up with a professor. Unless she was Oprah Winfrey--apparently she taught a class at Northwestern last year. Maybe her. Doesn't the school have some sort of law against hooking up with professors, anyway? That's gross. That's wrong. The TAs are fine, because they're practically our age."
But such affairs can produce alarming consequences. For "Brooke," a Wharton graduate, an affair with an Econ TA her sophomore year (seems that's where the talent breeds, in the warm, carnal envelope of the Econ Department) earned her "a C- in the class and [it] really pissed off my mother, who found out about us hooking up when she snooped through my e-mail and found a dirty one from my TA. She e-mailed him and threatened to sue him.... Voila, my stellar grade."
"The experience, however," Brooke remarked, "does make stumping [the] I never question [in the drinking game] easier."
"Bitsy," a Wharton sophomore, has two friends who have hooked up with their TAs while enrolled in class. She feels that their respective situations are different. "[One] was just a random hook-up, and actually put her at a disadvantage, because it's not like you can go ask someone for extra help when you're still awkward from the night before. It didn't affect her grade, so that was fine," she said. "But the other girl was hooking up with her TA and he likes her, so she's using him to get a better grade, and I really don't think that that's fair."
It's easy in thinking about the sensationalism of the aforementioned situations to forget about the flipside of the issue.
"I think it's special treatment," Bitsy went on. "He was favoring her over everyone else. It's a sad way for students to get ahead and desperado for the TA who has all this control."
"There's always the aura that you shouldn't do something and it's kind of sexy because you shouldn't," a third-year male graduate student said. "It's probably unethical because there's something beyond normal desire and normal sexual dynamics, because the TA is always going to be a some level of higher power."
Competition in college is fierce enough. Not only do students have to worry about their looks in social scenarios, but it seems that physical appearance often factors into academic success as well.
A second-year female graduate student sums it up fittingly: "There are so many things that go on in the teacher-student relationship that can't be accounted for by whatever the University's guidelines are."
The Office of the Deputy Provost, the administrative body to which our calls were forwarded, did not respond to requests for a comment for this report.
Additional reporting by Anne Putnam and Asher Hawkins.
