Just a bunch of disconnected thoughts for ya today, in addition to the Shatner link. Essentially, this is making up for that fact that I’ve actually had quite a few things to discuss this week, I’ve just been too busy/lazy to do it. So, here ya go.

Branded by a Dodge

Our Dodge Intrepid has been leaking oil like a friggin’ sieve for a while apparently. Dani, who drives the car to and from work every day, pointed it out to me this weekend. Initially, we thought it was a blow-by problem in relation to a hose that needs replacement, but there was nowhere near enough oil around the hose for that to be the issue (plus, very little oil actually goes through that hose). So, remembering a problem we’ve had with the Escort in the past, I reached down and twisted the oil filter. Sure enough, it was very loose and covered in oil. So I tightened it. Having just driven the car about 30 miles or so, the engine was good and hot. My arm rubbed up against the side of the engine block and got burned, but it wasn’t particularly painful or serious, so I forgot about it.

On Monday, during a meeting with the rest of the web team at the AAC, I glanced at my arm and noticed this wild infitigo-looking circle on my arm. Upon closer inspection, it was the perfect burned imprint of a bolt from the Dodge’s engine. That sunnuvabitch branded me! It’s still there, though the heat blister is gone off of it. You can just make out one of the slash marks on the bolt used to identify the standards it meets. There’s a part of me that kind of hopes it scars, since it’s kind of an interesting mark, even if it looks a bit like a cigarette burn. Weird.

Showering in Public

I’ve been trying to go to the gym on a regular basis for a couple of months now in the mornings before work. Initially, I was going only on Tuesdays and Thursdays but, since my supervisor is rarely in before 9am even on the days that he’s technically supposed to be in at 8am, I decided to switch to a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule as of yesterday.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, there weren’t too many people at the gym at 7am. I go to the Bally’s in Hayward (don’t even try to pitch your 24-Hour McFitness crap at me – I chose Bally’s precisely because it wasn’t 24-Hour Fitness). There’s hardly ever a wait for any machine even at the peak of usage, but in the mornings it’s an especially small crowd. It’s slightly larger on Mon-Wed-Fri. This is only a problem because it means that I no longer get to shower alone in the Auschwitz-style communal shower in the men’s locker room (for the record: according to Danielle, the women have individual shower stalls instead of a communal area. Gender equality my ass).

Now, I’m not particularly homophobic. It’s not like I’m constantly freaking out about dropping the soap or whatever, but I really don’t want to see some other guy’s junk hanging out there and all that. Being straight, it’s a serious hard-core weenie-shrinker for me. Which lends to the whole “Are the other guys making comparisons?” issue, which is probably just something I need to work out with my therapist.

But, most importantly, I have no idea what the etiquette is in these situations. When I played football in high school, the guys were pretty chatty and such in the showers, myself included. We were all friends and, once we got past our homophobic immaturity, it was just like being out on the field. Well, with less tackling. Any rate, showering with stranger is a whole different world. Is it like using the urinal, where you just look straight ahead and, if you must make conversation, you do it with the wall? What is a breach of etiquette in this situation?

When I got into the shower yesterday, there was a guy already in there. I turned on my faucet and got blasted with ice water. While fiddling with the nozzle, the guy offered to let me use his shower head since he was just about finished. I politely declined as my nozzle was just warming up. Somehow, though, this led into his explaining his mini-thesis on why the gym showers are always so friggin’ cold first thing in the morning. All the while he was facing me and making eye-contact, like a polite conversationalist otherwise would were his junk not hanging out for the world to see. I, instead, spoke to every other inanimate surface in the shower but him, making occasional eye-contact with him until the little voice in my head started saying, “Dude, what if he thinks you’re checking him out? LOOK AT SOMETHING ELSE, QUICK!”. He, of course, was totally cool with it.

Man, I need help.

Inappropriate Behavior

I work at a college now, which is weird. I’m 27 years old, which puts me pretty well within the age range of most of the students who go here. Now, for fear of an appearance of impropriety, I’m going to say this once and then keep it to myself hereafter: the students that go here are FRIGGIN’ HOT! I mean, criminy, when I was at Cal we had some extremely attractive women on campus. The same is definitely true here. Were I still single, I’d probably be in all kinds of existential turmoil over the access to such gorgeous young women. Were I faculty, this would be a far more disturbing issue. As staff, however, I have no influence over the futures of these students, so were I to start a relationship with one it would merely be inappropriate as opposed to outright dangerous.

Since it’s illegal, and just downright creepy, to publicly sexualize high school girls, I think that the folks who set the standard for what is sexy (i.e. the media, advertisers, Playboy, etc.) need to find the next best thing, which is college girls. Therefore, we’re bombarded with the message that women between the ages 18 and 24 are, like, the ideal sexual partners. Being surrounded by very attractive examples of this population leads to a great deal of temptation for all involved. This results in situations such as the one at the Boalt Law School at UC Berkeley.

In short, the dean of the school recently stepped down over allegations of inappropriate sexual advances toward a former student. The story goes that the dean and a group of students went out to celebrate something. Near the end of the evening, one female student was separated from the rest of the group. The dean offered to drive her home, which she accepted. When they got to her apartment, he went inside with her to use the bathroom. At this point, she was apparently fairly intoxicated, and she passed out on her bed. When she awoke, she allegedly found the dean doing, uh… inappropriate things with her passed-out body.

So now the question is put forth about whether this was consensual or not. Naturally, she says no and he says yes. In my opinion, the answer is clearly no – there was allegedly no relationship between the two beforehand and she was not in a state of mind at the time that would allow her to thoroughly consent to much of anything, and a man who is the head of one of the country’s most prestigious law schools should have recognized that – but that’s not my point here. This is the kind of allegation you generally hear about between a female student and, say, a member of a fraternity or something. In other words, this kind of thing is usually between student and student, not student and college employee.

However, sexual relations between students and college employees, consensual and otherwise, are far more common than many people realize. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about some faculty or staff member’s marriage breaking up over an affair with a student enrolled at said college (not necessarily at the AAC, just in general). Or how many stories I’ve heard about employees who see each new freshman class as their own personal dating pool. This goes way beyond “dipping the pen in company ink”. The students are not just customers, they’re the “impressionable youth” that we’ve been tasked with supporting and educating. While such relations are less of an issue for staff than for faculty, it’s still wildly inappropriate. And, yet, it’s kind of hard to avoid.

Whether college educated or not, being around so many young people tends to remind us of our own youth. Being around it daily almost makes us feel like we’re that age again, only this time we know more. That doesn’t necessarily mean we know better. As a result, I think some folks in the employ of the college kind of lose themselves, forgetting that they’re not students anymore and acting like they are. A lot of these students are away from home for the first time and are just beginning to experience the effects of their sexuality on other people. In the case of graduate students, who have often gotten past that phase, many of them still do not quite realize the potential consequences of their actions, like drinking to the point of losing consciousness and leaving themselves vulnerable to some kind of abuse. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m blaming the victim – assuming the rape charge is valid, she had absolutely every right to believe that she should be able to trust the dean of her college, who is not only supposed to know better but also be looking out for her best interests in his position of authority – but even the highest authority figures are human, complete with all the failings and flaws that go along with that.

College staff and faculty who deal with students face-to-face on a daily basis are presented with a great deal of potential temptation. While I don’t believe it takes a ton of strength to fight this temptation – a person who succumbs will succumb whether it be with a student or someone they met at a bar – the folks who are most susceptible to such temptation are placed in a rather precarious position. When such allegations of abuse of power are brought to the fore, it should come as no surprise to anyone when these factors are taken into consideration. It falls upon the leaders of the college to monitor the situation and educate their employees and students about the potential of such situations and their consequences. While I was given sexual harassment training as part of my employee orientation here at the AAC, it only covered situations that occur between colleagues. Students never entered the mix. It doesn’t require too much of a leap for an intelligent person to realize that students are just as verboten as coworkers, but considering the amount of fraternization between college employees and students in academic institutions throughout the nation, perhaps its time for such training to add a component that covers that explicitly.

Some folks just need it spelled out for them.