akashiver: (Default)
akashiver ([personal profile] akashiver) wrote2010-09-16 08:25 am

From the CHE

In Professor-Dominatrix Scandal, U. of New Mexico Feels the Pain

Life has become extremely complex in the University of New Mexico's English department in the three years since Lisa D. Chávez, a tenured associate professor, was discovered moonlighting as the phone-sex dominatrix "Mistress Jade," and posing in promotional pictures sexually dominating one of her own graduate students.

[identity profile] akashiver.livejournal.com 2010-09-16 08:21 pm (UTC)(link)
>>I think some of the article's commenters were spot-on when they mentioned the systemic problems involved: how grad students and some faculty aren't paid a living wage, and so on.<<

Yes... though there's also a danger sometimes of projecting the systemic onto the particular.

As a respondent to that comment noted, the person in this situation claiming to be motivated by financial need is the (associate!) prof herself, and her $60,000+ salary is a matter of public record. Much as I'd like to turn this into a productive discussion about grad student working conditions, what this particular case highlights instead is "teh dramaz."