How close is too close?

I so should not be blogging, I should be writing comments on the last darn drafts that I owe to students, or I should be grading quizzes I need to get back on Thursday, or I should be researching (never mind writing!) the roundtable comments I'm making a week from Thursday. Nonetheless, I found the following Chronicle article so striking, I have to comment on it (and no, it's not a First Person missive from Chronicleland, for once! but it is free). (Sorry, this has ended up quite long.)

At the University of Virginia, where faculty members are known to hole up with their research, students praised James R. Sofka as a welcome anomaly.

The young assistant professor met with students whether he had office hours or not. On warm afternoons he could be found on the university's famed lawn playing chess with undergraduates. As a faculty adviser to a debate society and a campus sorority, he could be counted on to attend students' plays and concerts, or meet up later for a drink. His fall course on international law filled up quickly. Since he became a full-time professor at Virginia in 1998, his dynamic lectures on 18th-century international relations and early American foreign policy have dazzled students.

But after hours, some of his former students allege, Mr. Sofka put his hands where they did not belong. In a January 14 letter, a university dean informed the politics professor that because of repeated complaints of "inappropriate behavior" with female students, he was being removed immediately from his position as dean of an undergraduate honors program. His contract, which is set to expire in 2007, would not be renewed, he was told.

In the letter, the dean ordered the professor to refrain from having drinks with students off campus, and from "touching and hugging" them. But it did not give names or details about any of the complaints.

Mr. Sofka maintains that he has no reason to feel ashamed of his interactions with students. He calls the dean's allegations an attack on his character. The professor, who is not on the tenure track, complains that he has never had a formal opportunity to defend himself. He has appealed to the provost and president.

Regardless of the outcome, Mr. Sofka's case illustrates the risks of being a chummy professor. When does fraternizing become unseemly? Is it OK to have drinks with students, or give one a hug after a big accomplishment? What about taking out a student of the opposite sex off campus? What about inviting a student home when one's spouse is away?

Ultimately, it seems that what made Mr. Sofka so popular -- his desire to be close to students -- became his downfall.

Now, the article does raise some questions about process and whether the university has treated Sofka fairly - it later comments that:

Faculty members have been loath to openly discuss Mr. Sofka's plight. Marcia D. Childress, chairwoman of the Faculty Senate and a professor in the medical school, says she hasn't heard from professors who are upset about the issues surrounding Mr. Sofka. But one professor, who declined to be named, says a chill has gone through the faculty.

Mr. Sofka "was given no real warning about this," says the faculty member. "Most professors realize this could have been them." The professor also suggests that top officials are "enormously unhappy with the dean for having created this mess."

Having said that... the story creeps me out. Want some examples of what being close to his students means to Sofka?

Mr. Sofka relished his reputation. "I'm a popular and well-known professor," he explains in an interview. He says he has drinks and lunches with students, and if he has an extra ticket to a concert, he occasionally invites an undergraduate.

And:

One graduate says that Mr. Sofka, who was her adviser, constantly asked her out to dinner and drinks alone. She says he even asked her to have a Scotch with him when his wife was out of town.

Another graduate said that Sofka

invited her over to his apartment. She went, thinking it was to discuss her major. "It felt not right," she says. Even though she was under age and had driven to his home, she says, Mr. Sofka offered her Scotch. According to her account, they began the meeting sitting opposite each other, but the professor later moved next to her on the couch.

And according to a third gradute,

Mr. Sofka, who made his home number available to his students, seemed to invite relationships with undergraduates. In his office, she says, he had a bulletin board where he tacked up notes from some of his students. "That was really attractive -- to be one of his favorites," she says. One night, with her graduation date drawing near, she says, they were out at a bar drinking.

I've left out the descriptions of anything concretely ishy (for instance, the third graduate claims that at the bar, Sofka turned to her and gave her a full-on body-to-body hug, uninvited); I just wanted to describe the contexts in which this professor is dealing with students.  And I don't want to infantilize students or diminish the possibility for that kind of intellectual excitement that meeting one-on-one with professors, especially in informal settings, can inspire. But I find this guy's behavior really disturbing.*

On the one hand, I work at a small, teaching college. One of the ways in which the school sells itself to students is by emphasizing personal access to faculty; faculty are expected to provide students with a lot of one-on-one attention in terms of assistance and mentorship. I think that this is a good thing. I also think that student-faculty friendships can be a good thing - a way for students to see the kind of enthusiasm for learning that (most) faculty have, and to see how someone can be a life-long learner (good cliched-sounding things like that). I think that a huge proportion of student learning takes place outside of the classroom and that a professor can play an important role in that.

But I am deeply deeply suspicious of faculty who are so intensely invested in being their students' "friends." In being "liked" by their students (and here I am NOT talking about wanting students to like our classes or the kind of thing that zippy zappy talks about here). Frequently, such faculty (or at least, those I've known) trumpet their accessibility to students and explicitly value teaching over research to the extent that they disdain professors who do research as people who don't "really" care about their students. Some seem to view this popularity with students as the only measure of good teaching, and correspondingly, the only measure of success as faculty. I have also seen such people take advantage of their popularity to manipulate student opinion.

I'm particularly suspicious of this when you're talking about a traditionally-aged student population (which is what I'm presuming UVA largely consists of). When you're teaching students who are your own age, that's one thing. But if you're teaching students who are 18-21 (as I am), and you're in your 30s (Sofka is 37; most Ph.D.s I know have been at least 30 when they've started full-time jobs), that's a big difference (or it should be!). I like the vast majority of my students; I care about many of them; I care deeply about a number of them. I would even say that I have loved some of my students (except that "love" is such an ambiguous word in English and even saying that can raise eyebrows if you use the wrong sort of tone; we need all the nuances of the different ancient Greek terms for love, I guess).

But I'm pretty loath to say that I am friends with any of my students. I can be friendly with many of them, and enjoy spending time with them, but to me, friendship requires a certain degree of equality, or parity, that doesn't exist between students and professors. I have become close friends with my undergraduate advisor; but when I was in college I would not have considered us "friends." Now, I'm older (probably the age she was when she taught me), I'm no longer a student, I have a Ph.D., we have shared experiences. But when I was 21, we weren't really in a position to be friends. This is despite the fact that I deeply valued the time and attention that she gave me, that I liked her very much, and learned a great deal from her.  I don't at all mean to diminish that relationship with my reluctance to call it "friendship."

In the end, I have to agree with the following:

"You can still be a mentor without engaging in touching, hugging, or drinking," says Michael W. Hawkins, an adjunct professor at Xavier University in Ohio and a lawyer who has represented colleges in sexual-harassment cases.

Some would probably say that I want to over-sanitize education, and remove some of the positive engagement between individuals. I'm not claiming that it's never appropriate to touch, hug, or drink with a student. But I would contend that touching, hugging, and drinking are never necessary components of mentorship. And I would argue that for faculty, being a mentor is a more appropriate role than being a friend.

*I should probably acknowledge that I once worked with someone whose behavior was eerily close to the way the article describes Sofko's, and this person was, as an esteemed graduate school professor of mine once said of poor teachers, "entirely too caught up in the admiration of 19-year-olds." His proclaimed love for his students garnered him significant popularity, just like Sofko, but he also seemed to have a very poor sense of boundaries and to encourage a cult of personality that I found extremely troubling. So my experience working with this guy makes me reluctant to cut Sofko a break.

Comments

[yankee transplant]

OOOOH, this is sticky, isn't it? At first blush, I feel sorry for the prof. On further reading, and re-reading, I find myself thinking he's at best naive and careless, and at worst, a predator. Although I don't have nearly this type of relationship with my employees, because many of them are my age or near it, and normally employees don't admire bosses or want their friendship nearly as much as students do their professors, I know that I must maintain a distance from all of them to avoid problems and issues. Very thought-provoking post, NK, thanks.

[Pilgrim/Heretic]

I totally agree with your take on this. The line can be fuzzy, but all the more reason to stay on the safe side. My spouse and I had a student that we both came to consider as a friend, and when he graduated we wanted to invite him over for dinner to celebrate. Even though there were two of us (not a case of a spouse being out of town) and this student was particularly mature and well-traveled, we both felt that inviting him alone to our house could be a little awkward, so we also invited a good friend of his who was also graduating and had been in my husband's classes.

On the other hand, I do know of a case of a professor who invited a female student to his home on the false pretense of having a study group, offered her a (drugged) drink while they waited for the other (nonexistent) students to arrive, and sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious. Given the particular circumstances, the student did not have enough evidence for a solid assault case, and she was embarrassed and humiliated enough to not want to take the risk of being blamed herself. The professor cut a deal with his university in which he would quietly resign, *as long as* the matter was not brought up in any references for future positions. One wonders just how often he has gotten away with this. It's just too easy to cross the line and cover it up; when there's power involved, and between professors and students there always, best to always play it safe.

[prefer not to say]

It's one thing to care about your students. It's another to be emotionally dependent on them for approval.

The first duty of any responsible teacher is to have solid, satisfying relationships with peers, so as to remove the possibility of feeling dependent on your students for admiration or companionship.

However, I don't think that simple precaution would have worked in this man's case. The man is a narcissist.

"Mr. Sofka relished his reputation. 'I'm a popular and well-known professor,' he explains in an interview."

Who talks about themselves like that? To a reporter??? I'm guessing he's relishing his controversial limelight as much as he relishes dazzling large lecture halls.

And, yeah, I also had a really damaging relationship with a similar type of teacher in my past. It unnerves me how familiar the contours of this story are.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

P/H, what a horrible story about the drugged assaulted student! I wasn't even thinking about anything as cut-and-dried wrong as that - mostly about that kind of fuzziness, where you might not be able to pinpoint anything specifically *wrong*, but students are made uncomfortable in a non-productive way that they shouldn't have to deal with. That's a terrible story - I'm furious that the prof just got to go away.

Reminds me (strangely) of a recent Law & Order: SVU (yes, I'm a crime drama whore - I watch them all) in which there was an art student who accused her professor of rape (under circs very like what's described with Sofko...) and actually, it was kind of neat (as tv), b/c they kept going back and forth on the evidence so you couldn't tell if she or he was lying, and then they cut away just before the jury's verdict, so left it up to the viewer - emphasizing the "he said, she said" nature of these crimes (and why people like the student in your story are so reluctant to press charges).

prefer not to say, thanks for your comments! I had the same reaction - that this kind of behavior was so *familiar* (what's that quote about happy families being happy in the same way and unhappy families all being different? I guess creepy professors in this mold ARE all creepy in the same way...).

[Pilgrim/Heretic]

I should clarify - didn't mean to imply that there are too many parallels between assault guy and Sofka, just that slightly-inappropriate behavior can so easily mask very-very-inappropriate behavior. (But yes, that was incredibly creepy to find out about, particularly considering how easily he got away with it and how willing everyone else was to agree to be silent.)

I think we all know profs who have these emotional-dependence issues, and the academy should probably do something to address this more effectively, rather than either ignoring these profs completely or firing them without warning. It's hard, because great moments of learning can create powerful attractions on both sides (someone had a great post on this a while ago, was it jo(e)?) and there are perfectly appropriate ways for that to happen. But I think the line's still pretty clear - if nothing else, you just don't do anything anywhere with a lone student, and the office door always stays open.

[Anastasia]

I don't think I would have even wanted a friendship with a prof as an undergrad. I was always quite aware of the inequality of the relationship and didn't have much of an interest in changing that. I would have found a professor approaching students as friends strange and off-putting. It may make me respect them less. The reason is exactly what you've all raised: emotional dependence and desire for student approval. That would not have inspired me at the time and it doesn't impress me now. Seems ill-placed.

As a grad student, I think it's more complicated, but the profs I respect the most (and consider friends of some sort) are those who have relationships with me of a professional sort. As in, we chat in their offices (sometimes at length and sometimes about non-school related, personal things) or over daytime coffee on campus. Evening appointments, no. Drinks, no. When I graduate, I fully expect some of these relationships to blossom into more fully-orbed friendships, but right now, that wouldn't make sense.

I also felt a little sorry for this guy at first, but then I had wonder what he's thinking. My profs (esp. male profs) won't even have conversations with me with their office door closed (unless we're discussing something particularly sensitive...like changinge advisors :) ) and I'm not an undergrad. And I think they are right to do that, just to keep the relationship where it should be, with all the appropriate boundaries in place.

The story does remind me of one prof in my dept, although he is smart enough only to pursue former students. But he does so with a zeal that is really quite disturbing. He's also a bit of an inappropriate toucher when he's drunk. which is unfortunately often.

[ianqui]

I think it always inappropriate to shut the door with a student inside, regardless of either of your genders. This story does sound like he was kind of pathologically attached to his popularity, and that just can't be good.

It's funny--I think in retrospect about how I had a big crush on one of my profs as an undergrad, and I wished I could have gotten to know him better. (Maybe we should be careful what we wish for?) I was his research assistant, and I was even his cat sitter, but it ended there.

Of course, then I found out he was gay, so that pretty much ended that.

[Katie]

I don't usually respond to posts (I'm a compulsive blog-reader and a very inconsistent commenter), but I had to toss in my two cents on this topic.

I'm an undergraduate at a fairly well-known Southern school, and will be graduating this spring, continuing into a terminal degree program (in medieval history, actually, which is one of the reasons I read your blog, but I digress). I've spent a lot of time working closely with faculty, especially this year, and I have come to value The Line. I respect a lot of them immensely and I really enjoy the time we spend together but they are not my friends. Of course, the problem arises when I can make that distinction but they can't.

I know there are certainly times when I want to reach across a faculty member's desk and shake them silly, shouting, "I am your student, not your friend! Don't make this harder on me!" Certainly from a student's perspective, it's difficult to know sometimes if a Line-crossing professor values your work and your thinking or you (in some icky, creepy, sitting-with-arms-crossed defensive body posture way). The slide across The Line seems to happen very insidiously sometimes; it's also hard to throw up The Line as a student, lacking any real authority or power in the relationship. All in all, I find myself going out of my way to avoid Line-crossers because the whole dynamic makes me so uncomfortable. Fortunately, no one here is as dreadful as Sofka seems to be, but the principle's the same: you stay on your side and I'll stay on mine and thank goodness for The Line.

[Richard Parent]

Wow. This is seriously creepy. I think this guy has crossed some very clear lines, whether he wants to admit it or not.

However, when ianqui writes:

"I think it always inappropriate to shut the door with a student inside, regardless of either of your genders."

This is wrong. Unless, and this is a very big unless, the student initiates the door-closing.

I've had many discussions, but only during graduate studies, with professors about other professors. When you're a graduate student, part of what you study is subject matter, part is how to behave as a professor. It's important to be able to talk with professors about what happens in certain classes, how you feel about it, and how they feel you should, ideally, deal with the situation.

That said, I would never close the door on a student (and have never done so). If a student wants to talk to me with the door closed, I'm sensitive to that. But no touching goes on, and it's always as a result of the student wanting to discuss sensitive (to him or her) issues.

But the Sofko story doesn't seem to be that sort of fine-line issue. There's a problem there.

[PPB]

I read the story today, too, and it disturbed me.
At the small liberal arts schools that I worked at, professors were encouraged to have these types of relationships.....not over the line like this dude, but ever so close to it. It creeped me out. It creeped out a lot of the students, too.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

Ugh. The guy's just wrong. At best, clueless. These are undergrads! They aren't friends. I have had undergrads invite me to their 21st birthday parties -- I do not go. I have had undergrads to my house -- and allowed them (the 21 and overs) to drink -- in a group. A couple of my undergrads who have gone on to the Big School have also come over separately -- but still, there's a mentor thing going on. I cannot imagine the touching thing. I mean, DV and his family and I have always been close, but the first time he hugged me was when I finished. Not a yucky hug -- avuncular. Of course, I wasn't allowed to call him by his first name till somewhere around dissertation year 6 ...

And closing the office door? Never, in my book. For my own protection (and I mean that physically, too -- I've had scary run-ins with male students). I've been in offices where the prof closed the door, though, and never felt weird -- perhaps because they were really big offices?

All I can say is ... eeeeewwwww!

[Celandine]

Well, I do have lunch about once a month with a student - but this is a grad student of my own gender who is also older than I am! And it's at the Chinese buffet about a block from campus, so quite public; basically we go and talk about what direction the student's research is taking in a more informal and comfortable space than my office. The only potential issue I see is that this student is currently in one of my classes, so there could be perceived favoritism, I suppose, but since grads and undergrads are evaluated by different criteria, they're not in direct competition.

But in general just because there are issues of power and authority going on, it's really really important for those who have the power - the professors - to ensure that boundaries are clear and appropriate. When in doubt, err on the side of caution - and Sofka didn't do that and doesn't even seem to understand the need for that, which is especially troubling in someone teaching law!

[Caleb]

NK, I thought of that SVU episode halfway through your post! And I agree with your assessment of this guy.

[Caleb]

(And for the record, the guy on SVU seemed guilty to me too.)

[Mel]

I totally agree with you, NK, about the important distinction between "mentor" and "friend." And unfortunately this guy does fit a pretty recognizable pattern. There's someone (or several someones) like this on every campus -- the climate at small colleges sometimes encourages it, but even at larger schools faculty with boundary issues or predatory instincts tend to find situations that will suit them -- like advising student groups etc.

And for it to have reached the point where the dean removed him from his advisory position means his behavior was pretty egregious. Because a lot of this stuff is just shrugged off or hushed up.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Thanks for the comments, everyone (and hi Katie and Richard, who are new commenters here!). I think one of the reasons I felt compelled to comment on the story was because of my experience with someone very similar (as a colleague, thankfully, not as my professor) - I felt like I really got this story in a way I might not have without that experience. I didn't know if I was maybe overreacting slightly, but glad to see not. It's a frustrating experience to see a colleague doing this, though, because the flip side of the creepiness is often this incredible popularity, which is just so disturbing, because I want to say to students, "What do you see in this person???" and yet they're clearly getting something out of it, or think they are. But at the same time, I *do* want my classes to be popular. Just not for the same reasons. I hope.

And I agree with the various comments about shutting the door; there are those sensitive occasions where having the door shut is preferable (I burst into tears in my advisor's office once and appreciated that she shut the door, although as we were both women it wouldn't have looked particularly questionable to observers), but generally, open door all the way. Occasionally I'll be in my office with the door shut and a student will knock and I'll let them in, and they'll often shut the door behind them before I can tell them not to, and it makes me *really* uncomfortable to be in the shut-door office with them.

[ianqui]

Just to make things clear...Yes, of course, if there's a sensitive issue being discussed, then door should be shut. (This is also true among fac members--we had a situation here where a student overheard 2 fac members discussing him in a pejorative way, and it was a disaster.)

[What Now?]

Such an interesting conversation! I mostly agree with everyone that everyone has posted and have just a couple of comments to add:

I don't close my office door at all with students, even during sensitive discussions. I'm fortunate that my office is at the end of a dead-end hall, so I can have fairly private conversations with students without the whole world seeing/hearing, but for me The Line trumps other considerations. When my dad was a graduate instructor years ago, a female student came into his office, closed the door, and offered him sexual favors in return for an A (he says he declined the offer!), so his advice to me was never, never meet behind closed doors with a student. Even though my own behavior is always open and above-board with students, it's a lot easier to prove that if I only meet with them fairly publicly. Same thing with meeting students after hours or on weekends; I used to know caring, giving teachers who tried to help themselves by meeting with their students at unconventional times, and I always thought they were setting themselves up for potential disaster. And I did once have a male student who was physically threatening, which just reinforced this policy for me.

The other thing is that my policy of honoring The Line pays no attention to gender; male or female, my response is the same. I think that a lot of professors who are very sensitive to harrassment issues with students of the opposite sex are cluelessly heterosexist in not taking into account that not everyone is straight and that harrassment isn't always a male-female thing. I once TA'd for a straight male professor who would never touch a female student but who had this whole athletes-smacking-each-other-on-the-butt thing with male students; he was a really outgoing guy, but his male students were often very clearly uncomfortable with his touching them, which he would do during class as well as one-on-one outside of class.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Oh, WN, what a good point; I definitely agree (I was sort of thinking of the heterosexism in my own post as I wrote it, but didn't know how else to put it very well). As a non touchy-feely type myself, overly warm and huggy women can make me kind of uncomfortable at times, too. What's interesting is that the one case I know of female/female harassment (prof to a grad student) is the only case of harrassment in general that the dept ever made a stink about; the prof failed her tenure review b/c of this, and on the one hand, she should have b/c she was grossly inappropriate, but on the other hand, there were people in the dept who were very suspicious of the fact that one of the only times harassment had been an issue in a tenure case was involving a lesbian (i.e., men harassing women, well, we can just brush that under the rug, but a LESBIAN harassing women? Eeeeewww! get rid of her! not a very good attitude...).

Of course, this prof was toxic enough in general that people were warning their students away from that grad program because of her, so that was probably as much of a deciding factor.

[Pete]

There is a tradition in my program for us (the students) to meet in the Graduate Bar on Campus (being Canadian, we are all of legal drinking age and the after class pint isn't all that unusual, something to keep in mind). Often times if a number of us are having problems we'll ask the professor to come with us because there isn't really a good place for such conversations elsewhere. It is usually with the same professor(s) and has on a number of occassions relocated to a bar closer to his house downtown. The one comforting factor in all of this is that he won't drink with us one on one and he, less then 10 years older then some of my classmates, always repeatedly makes it clear that we are to kick him as soon as he fuzzes the line and that he will go home.

I don't think anyone sees him as a friend, but most of us see him as a mentor. He isn't so far removed from our situation that, like most of his colleagues, he can't see many of our questions from the point of ignorance we are coming from, which is why I think we all enjoy these trips. It is helpful for us and for him as he often incorporates our questions into future lectures so the entire class can benefit from what went on.

Visits to his office were always highly profession. He sits on his side of the desk, I am on mine, and he only gets up to pass me a book or some other source lining his walls that would help me with my problem.

I don't really have a point in writing this, but it felt like it needed to be said after reading (most of) the comments and the article above. Perhaps I am just trying to justify this kind of behaviour between professor and (undergraduate) students when the line is clearly drawn in the sand and the professor keeps saying "Now you shouldn't see me as a scary robot, but as someone who knows more and can guide you, yet not as a friend either" between thoughts.

Cheers

[profsynecdoche]

I don't have a long time to respond to this thread, esp. since I agree with just about everything everyone has said. For the record, I insist upon keeping office doors open unless there's a particular reason; I do
invite advisees to my home occasionally for conferences, but only students I have worked with closely -- and usually because I trying to take care of my baby (pretty much makes the line clear, a baby). And the occasions
when I have had drinks with students are celebratory ones, usually just as a thesis student is about to graduate, for instance. (I do wish that American college culture had a different attitude about drinking, so that having a single drink or two with a group of students could be treated as closer to having coffee with them.)

I, too, believe in the line. But I believe in the line because in part because I think professors ARE emotionally dependent on their students'
approval; or at least, the emotional involvement betweeen students and their professor in the classroom is complicated. I think that admitting that doesn't mean that I want to be friends with my students (I have a line in my novel courses that friends don't make friends read as much as I am going to make them do), and
frankly, I think that approval often requires recognition of a differential in power and experience. But this is why we need some sense of boundaries, because teaching (at least for me) is a very emotional
experience on the part of both teachers and students, and the boundaries help keep those emotions reined into the realm of intellectual inquiry without spilling over in other ways.

(I'm trying to think how my wife would react if I told her I was inviting a student over to drink scotch while she was gone. Hmm.)

[paris]

I totally agree with what prior posters have said about the line. Theoretically it is a no-brainer for me, but in practice it proves trickier.

Situation:
Final week of semester and one student asks to speak with me. Since I am not holding anymore office hours, I tell her to meet me in the main entrance of the library. We sit down across from each other at a table. She wants to ask for an extension on her final paper; I've guessed this is the issue and already decided that it is fine but we need to set a new date and such. Since she is terrified of asking for the extension, she bursts into tears. My instinctive reaction was to lean forward, assure her that it was not a problem and to touch one of her hands (they were on the table). The second I did that it occurred to me that in principal I shouldn't touch her so I promptly removed my hand. She composed herself and explained why she wanted an extension and we all lived happily ever after.

This incident has stuck in my head, however, because it was a situation where The Line felt very blurred. My reaction was inspired by an intuitive desire to offer support, but I was also painfully aware that this support could be misunderstood. I'm fairly sure no lasting damage was done to the student, but she was an international student so I was aware that she had a different set of experiences with teachers and possibly a different set of experiences regarding what a teacher does when a student bursts into tears.

The only moral of this story that I've derived so far is that I will only interact with my students in a public and/or group setting. But then I'm doing my doctorate at a place where in the teacher training session, the presenter waffled on the question of teaching in a room with a bed in it. "Use your judgement" he says. In the discuss that followed I got to trot out a phrase that has seen a lot of use since I arrived here:

"I am accustomed to a different teaching environment."

Best served in the blandest tone possible. Choking on outrage is acceptable provided one's facial expression doesn't change.

[dr sniffly]

I was wondering what this guy was doing "out for drinks" with students all the time. I think it could be perfectly fine to go out with groups, but he sounds like he's been chumming up to individual female students a lot. Which is just stupid, these days, even if it IS perfectly innocent, but the idea of a professor "going out for drinks" frequently with individual undergrads seems ... unlikely to be innocent and appropriate ... to me.

I agree with your suspicion of the professor's deep need to be liked.

[dr sniffly]

Wow, now that I've read all these comments, I realize I haven't been paranoid enough, maybe! I've closed the door a couple of times with students in my office because of loud noise outside. It was so loud - construction - that our conversation was impossible, so it seemed ridiculous not to close it, but now I wonder if I should not under any circumstances do this again? Hmm.

[Pilgrim/Heretic]

Same theme, different context: we have job candidates coming to campus this week, and both are female. The chair of the search committee is male, and as he was organizing the candidates' visits and arranging for transportation and such, he came to me to ask a question. In my previous experiences as a candidate on campus visits, he wondered, had I ever been driven around by a male faculty member, and did I find that situation uncomfortable? I have, two or three times, and under the circumstances it seemed perfectly appropriate. But he was sensitive enough to realize that it was similar to the office-door situation, where even though you're talking about two adults, there's the power imbalance, heightened by the fact that the male committee member is in control of the transportation. I think in a job search that's a normal enough situation to not cross any lines, but I was so proud of him for being considerate enough to have the question occur to him. :)