24 ms·

Need help with students who've turned my class into a dating service

• phendrenad2 4y ago
  This feels like a fictional account, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
• mr_toad 4y ago
  This is how Facebook started.
• l2silver 4y ago
  This just sounds awful for all the first years...
• labrador 4y ago
  Don't let senior level students audit junior level classes? Why are they even there besides the reasons outlined in the problem? This is a problem with the University because they don't want to acknowledge a problem. Do they really think that's going to last? If it was my daughter who left the class because she was harassed I'd be very angry.
  • beebmam 4y ago
    Why do people see this as even remotely unethical? It seems to me that it's great that plenty of younger people are getting essentially free tutoring sessions and fun friendships/relationships out of it. Unless there's sexual assault/battery being alleged here, this is both ethical and good for all the students involved!
    • lolbert3 4y ago
      [dead]
    • wilsonnb3 4y ago
      At the very least it seems demeaning to the women taking the class, if not predatory
    • labrador 4y ago
      Maybe it would help to imagine it's an all men's school and it's young men who feel uncomfortable being hit on while they need to learn. I'm not saying it's any different, I'm just saying shifting it this way be help you think about how it's a power imbalance.
    • murrkat 4y ago
      Anything not “equally accessible to all” is antithetic evil. It is more just for everyone to be worse off than advantage to accrue to the already advantaged.
    • britch 4y ago
      There is an assumption in a class that you are there to learn the curriculum in some way. The seniors in this case are interested only in the other students. The class/coursework is only a prop for them to force interactions with other students. I don't think it's violence, but it's certainly unethical, and makes the class a "joke" for senior students to interfere with others learning. Imagine taking your first CS course and you get paired with someone who does the entire project before you can grapple with the question, An important part of the class has been taken from you. They can offer to "teach you how" but they have little motivation (or even skil) to actually do a good job.
      • barry-cotter 4y ago
        > There is an assumption in a class that you are there to learn the curriculum in some way. No there isn’t. We’re talking about a university, not someplace whose sole or primary purpose is learning. The assumption in a university classroom is that students are there to earn a grade and a credential.
      • 8note 4y ago
        > Imagine taking your first CS course and you get paired with someone who does the entire project before you can grapple with the question, An important part of the class has been taken from you. I opened an IDE and it did my first assignment for me as part of the opening screen. In no way did it prevent me from learning hello world I did miss out on properly learning what a Jacobian is and how to work with it intuitively because a buddy and I did two different class projects together and did a project from each solo, but I don't think the project would have done the job on the learning. The most important learning from university is that you're in charge of your own learning. Just because said partner can do the whole thing doesn't mean you're off the hook
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • KVFinn 4y ago
      >Why do people see this as even remotely unethical? It seems to me that it's great that plenty of younger people are getting essentially free tutoring sessions and fun friendships/relationships out of it. >Unless there's sexual assault/battery being alleged here, this is both ethical and good for all the students involved! A high school senior in Calc 2 would a helpful in an Algebra 1 class as a tutor or teaching assistant. A high school senior in Calc 2 taking that same class on the pretense they forgot how to take the slope a linear equation is, uh, just weird vibes you know? It's that pretense that does it. Double so if there's an age dynamic of Seniors/Freshmen.
  • pavon 4y ago
    That requires support of the university which the instructor doesn't have, and there are legitimate reasons for senior students to audit junior level courses in a different field from their major. Universities want to encourage intellectual curiosity and cross-field pollination. However, by the time students are senior they likely have filled their non-major electives, so unless they are taking enough classes to get a minor, the class won't count towards their degree and taking it for a grade is all risk and no benefit GPA and graduation wise. That is one of the main reasons that auditing courses is allowed. If the professor did have support, and this phenomenon was really was causing a surge in enrollment, they could make a compromise like having sections that only allowed junior-level same-major students, to consolidate all the pranksters together.
• GlenTheMachine 4y ago
  I suspect that if you just announced this fact to the women in the class - either officially, if that doesn't get you in trouble, or under the table if it would - then the problem would basically solve itself. Certainly no males in the class would be getting dates.
  • ZephyrBlu 4y ago
    Women aren't dumb. They almost certainly already know what the deal is, and I doubt they'd be phased by it if they were attracted to a guy.
    • rektide 4y ago
      I lament to say it but I tend to agree. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" was my first reaction, and I felt awful & loss hearing your comment (because I simultaenously also agree!), but I'm also back to some transparency in the end, if less hopeful (that this would turn out/cleans us of what feel like thin actions). It's up to people to decide, hopefully from an informed place! Simply posting about this & hopefully awareness taking off & giving folks warnings what is afoot here is basically the one responsible step, that at least tries to inform potential datees about this pretty icky predation (but which alas to everyone, also makes sense). This definitely feels not good to me, in a big sense. But I have a hard time convincing myself it really matters in a case-by-case sense. If someone's cute and has prospects, is doing something actually interesting on their own & has potential I respect, and has the time and slack to come meet & be interested in me while (hopefully) also enjoying & sharing a subject some, I'm not really sure that I'd be all that bothered. Even knowing there's a bit of sham, a bit of a waste, a game at the heart. They're going out of their way to find a connection. Like, ok, this person gave up a sensible path to go do something stupid to come meet me... ok, weird, but ok. I still think there should be a disclaimer at the start, make it known. Not that adolescents really have the fully developed limbic system to handle/make use of the info fully, but at least to open the idea first, give em a better chance. Heck, let's deploy some ML: "HAL 10k reports 20% of the boys in this class have no business here whatsoever; it has no contribution/would be easier than their regular classes, & their intents are suspect!" Match data with data! If the diversity data gives insight one place, equity insists we give counter-data on the un-diverse, and in that seems like a solid chance to start to make pretty strong inferences about what is up. Or just more simply, pointing out the stats in general: that these classes have rather surprising new attendees en-mass, and showing what ranking of predation the class has on the predatory website being described here, for what search critereon. Rather than be specific, just leave it at the general non-judgemental but also generally most would conclude yuck. Let the information go two ways. But to return to my parents point. Yeah. I think we should prepare & equip, make known & make bidirectional some of the what-is-what here. But I also don't think, even knowing & seeing, it'd be that much of a hinderance or burden in many cases. I started with a so what, and that still kind of is my final conclusion. But I still feel the need for sunlight, the need to make it a reasonably fair so-what, versus a Dark Forest scenario.
• jeffbarr 4y ago
  Bill Gates and Paul Allen were doing something similar decades ago. According to https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35442969 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35442969 (but well known before that): > Paul Allen, who would later become a co-founder of Microsoft, was a couple of years above Gates at school. Together they fixed the school scheduling software to ensure Gates was the only boy in classes of girls.
  • ada1981 4y ago
    And Zuckerberg. All sorts of creepy disembodied men do this kind of thing!
    • lofatdairy 4y ago
      Zuckerberg's case is arguably even worse (though I completely agree otherwise). If I recall he created a way for harvard guys to rate their female peers appearances and had some pretty disparaging comments on the site itself.
      • 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
        that's how it happened in the movie
        • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
          We know movies are always 100% accurate
          • lofatdairy 4y ago
            I haven't seen the movie, I recalled a decent amount of reporting on it back during Cambridge Analytica.
  • reeckoh 4y ago
    Sergey Brin too, with company massage rooms at early Google. As others have pointed out, it's also how Facebook was started. Sometimes I look back at my youth, and think about how I used to view technology: as a democratizing force which could tear down artificial barriers. Then I look around today and wonder what happened. It makes sense, though, if you look closely at the founding fathers of big tech.
• tiahura 4y ago
  [flagged]
• Metacelsus 4y ago
  For many people, college itself is a dating service.
  • nvr219 4y ago
    Yeah but the girls in the 100 level course are required to be in that course to graduate almost for sure.
  • RedShift1 4y ago
    I never dated when I was in school, if I could advise my past self I'd say try to get as many dates as you can because after school it dries up pretty fast... I'm 36 now and still single -_-.
    • waynesonfire 4y ago
      The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is today.
    • type-r 4y ago
      I think often we way over-weight environmental factors in this area. As individuals we have crazy amounts of agency to change things for ourselves. FWIW I barely dated in school, partly because I didn't care much for social interaction but also (maybe mostly) because I was quite clueless about romantic attraction. Since graduating and especially getting into my 30s, things have become so much easier. Especially as a male, you can really change your situation by consistently choosing to invest in becoming a compelling partner.
  • ada1981 4y ago
    What else is it?
    • JuniorBalleg 4y ago
      Adult daycare? An expensive way to delay the onset of adulthood a few more years? An elaborate proxy for an otherwise-prohibited IQ test? Mostly it's a piece of paper. For many professions, no matter how pointless the journey, that's a very necessary piece of paper.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• plaguepilled 4y ago
  It is absolutely insane that the professor cannot eject an auditing student from their class. The relevant university is apparently a joke at the expense of fresher student safety.
  • 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
    Could you clarify how student safety is being threatened by what's described in the post?
    • garbagecoder 4y ago
      Safety, literally? Maybe. But if the women are feeling demoralized and it’s preventing their access to those courses, then I’m confident the Title IX office will be able to look into it. Google U, JDs are focusing too narrowly on harassment. It could be analyzed as the policy of allowing this is having a disparate impact on women’s access to certain courses. It’s not unreasonable to ask people why they’re doing in your class.
      • garbagecoder 4y ago
        HN is turning into Reddit. "I don't like your factual answer" is downvoted.
    • plaguepilled 4y ago
      Several components stand out to me as a safety risk: 1. There are senior students leading labs who may not have completed relevant OHS training that a listed employee would run. This is a no fly zone in any training scenario and is the most important point IMO. 2. The (fresher) students have commented on the remarkably high number of seniors in the class. This has a slightly less direct safety issue: a perceived power imbalance. If you have ever led a class you may notice that too many "big" personalities can cause less confident students to withdraw, and, crucially, ask less questions. This can lead to accidents (the seniors 'trying to lead' doesn't fix this in my experience). 3. The nature of the interactions itself is a distraction. If I am getting hit on, I am probably not thinking about the content of what is being said - I am thinking of the quickest way to excuse myself from that situation. Once again, this can increase risk. While I'm here, I also have issues with this from a non-safety perspective. 4. While lecherous behaviour does not constitute harassment, it 'sets the bar' for student interactions and makes particularly socially ill-equipped students feel more confident in pursuing people. This just ends up making the environment less pleasant for the people being approached, as well as the onlookers. 5. Further, this is actually worse than flirting at, say, work ,or a social gathering, because college is expensive. Distracting students from a highly expensive experience designed to provide skills and challenge thinking is arguably wasting someone ELSE'S money. Which is just not cool.
• 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  I still have clear recollection of the 50:1 men-to-women ratio in my CS2xx classes and higher. Your odds weren't good if you were hoping to meet Mrs. Right. I imagine things have gotten better since. Still, seems like a fairly high effort low outcome place to meet someone who is likely not even receptive to advances in that context. Do colleges not offer many other opportunities for people to meet outside of class in 2023? It's interesting that one of the highest-voted responses suggests bringing in the ten ton hammer of legal governmental involvement against a bunch of kids trying to score a date. Yikes.
  • Der_Einzige 4y ago
    Things have not gotten better. I had several 3 and 4 hundred level CS classes with literally zero women in them. This was at a large, major public school with several hundred in our CS program.
    • dymk 4y ago
      But if it's not a pipeline issue, what could it be!
    • Larrikin 4y ago
      My upper level CS classes in college had one woman back in early 2010s. I entered grad school some years later. My graduate level CS courses that over lapped the data science classes were usually around fifty percent. The courses that didn't were more male but nothing close to undergraduate. It really wasn't something I noticed like in undergrad. So seems to be getting better What I did notice was both the data science classes and CS classes often times had fifty percent or higher non American students. We seem to be educating a lot of foreign born students who are willing to come to America. It felt gross when I had a friend, with an American master's degree in STEM, who ended up having to leave a job she liked to go back to her home country because she ran out of time on her visa and didn't win the lottery to stay. Seems extremely stupid of us to be kicking out highly educated individuals basically randomly.
      • mjevans 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• gedy 4y ago
  People can tsk tsk this, but it's damn hard to find a mate if you are not in the top 20% of (straight) men, and basically requires you to be aggressive like this. You may be praised for being a "nice guy" by being passive, but it will not get you dates.
  • GalenErso 4y ago
    As a woman, I can speak on experience that women will run away from any space men try to invade to seek us, whether it's dating apps, classes, bars, etc. The last thing I want is for a horde of thirsty men to chase me.
    • CyberDildonics 4y ago
      Then why are there so many women on dating apps, in bars and in classes?
      • GalenErso 4y ago
        Men far outnumber women on dating apps.
        • CyberDildonics 4y ago
          There are still hundreds of millions of women on dating apps, so I'm not sure your generalization holds.
          • GalenErso 4y ago
            There are not hundreds of millons of unique, real women on dating apps, because there would be billions of men on dating apps given the statistical gender ratios of mainstream apps.
            • CyberDildonics 4y ago
              https://www.datingadvice.com/online-dating/dating-site-male-to-female-ratios https://www.datingadvice.com/online-dating/dating-site-male-... With over 512 million users, Badoo is easily among the most popular dating apps in the world. This is like someone who walks to work claiming that no one drives cars.
• nazavo 4y ago
  Guys being guys trying all the ways to meet girls that are not present in their "engineering majors". Nothing new here. TBF, somewhat applaud the creativity. At the same time totally understand the unpleasant atmosphere this behavior creates.
• aborsy 4y ago
  Maybe address the imbalance of men and women in some branches of studies. How are people supposed to meet relevant mates? I mean, they could use an app or social events, but you could raise the same complaints there too.
  • thrownawaydad 4y ago
    Hmm. So, try to get more men to enroll in mainly female courses? Might work, but I doubt it. And no university anywhere frets about disciplines where males are underrepresented. Males in general are underrepresented overall at university. Oh well. Note that OP stipulated that there were "no unwanted advances". Is this even a real problem?
  • commandlinefan 4y ago
    > How are people supposed to meet relevant mates? I suspect the complainants real problem is that she doesn’t want these men to meet mates ever.
    • pyth0 4y ago
      This is a wild conclusion to reach and it ignores the details of the situation completely.
• ITB 4y ago
  The author hints at this problem being more acute within a particular demographic: a “database of courses that are statistically likely to have a large proportion of young women from certain cultural backgrounds”. Some societies put a lot more pressure on young people (usually men) to find a trophy partner. For example groups that consider themselves aristocratic and other forms of more explicit arranged marriages.
• not2b 4y ago
  If a male engineering student chooses, say, a drama elective in hopes of meeting more women, that's fine as long as he takes the class seriously and treats fellow students with respect. He might even learn something. But someone with a strong math background shouldn't be allowed in a 100-level math for liberal arts students class, regardless of motive.
  • lvass 4y ago
    I took one such class, of latin, which unexpectedly was all women except me. The class itself was okay but the environment was terrible, I wouldn't recommend unless you really want to study the topic. Ended up quitting but read the textbooks anyway. Depending on how you look like, you get treated like a creep just for being in such place, no matter how respectful you are.
  • mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    Language classes typically prohibit students from taking the class if it's one of their native languages or they're above some skill level. On the other hand, STEM classes are wide-ranging enough that even someone with a graduate degree in math and computer science might benefit from taking physics 101.
  • 8note 4y ago
    I've taken a 100-level math for liberal arts students class as a 4th year engineer. It was useful and different, being counting class as a prereq for a 200 level comp sci algortihmns class It was still really easy, but i don't think I could have done the 200 level without it
    • ryandrake 4y ago
      I specifically took a bunch of easy classes in my Senior year because 1. I already fulfilled my major-required core and elective classes, 2. I already had a post-uni job lined up (so I just had to keep my GPA high) and 3. Honestly I'd been burning myself out with 18 credits per semester, and thought I could use a break. I wouldn't see the harm in adding "4. There are a lot of women in these classes" to my already lazy-burnout list of criteria. I kind of wish I had those demographic information available to me back when I went to school. Neat hack.
• imranq 4y ago
  This seems like an extremely low yield way to get female attention. A male engineering student would have to take an entire class, study new material, and come up with schemes for seeming like a "chad" for the unlikely chance that the opposite gender will be impressed with him. They could spend that time building cool things. Are people really this desperate?
  • jojobas 4y ago
    It mentions being able to "audit" a class, that is, sign up and take arbitrary amounts without credit.
  • nodemaker 4y ago
    People pursue what they are interested in.
    • 8note 4y ago
      Per the above, for these students it's the math for the most part
  • fragmede 4y ago
    A 100 level math class for an engineering or other math heavy major should be easy though. A liberal arts algebra class that barely does math and spends more time talking about X and Y's feelings should be a total cakewalk if you've passed Calculus II and are taking classes on imaginary numbers and group theory. So all they'd have to do is join a study group, schedule group study time, and not even have to be all that brilliant at the math part. If you're in college, and not interested in traditional partying (frats, loud music, beer, getting wasted; am terrible at beer pong), this is an alternative route to getting noticed doing something you're good at.
  • jackson1442 4y ago
    > A male engineering student would have to take an entire class, study new material, and come up with schemes for seeming like a "chad" for the unlikely chance that the opposite gender will be impressed with him not if you audit the class, which is what the post explains
• IncRnd 4y ago
  Maybe you can call it facemash.com or thefacebook.com. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook
• ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  Ingenious and hilarious. Trying to shut it down is probably going to create more interest, Streisand effect type thing. I would leave it to burn out on it's own. It sounds like a net positive on the whole. Hard to tell if there is really a problem here. "a number of female students" reached out to her with concerns, but "a few fellow profs either find it comical, or are happy that open labs are so full of volunteer tutors" and the boys are leading labs and offering tutoring. Of course there are hidden motives, but it sounds like for the most part everyone is getting something useful out of this.
  • enumjorge 4y ago
    I agree that shutting it down would likely backfire if the prof tries to shut it down too aggressively, but I don't know that I follow the conclusion that this is mostly a positive. There's some selective minimizing of the students that feel uncomfortable and maximizing of what some of the faculty think: ~Sure, some female students feel weird about guys in their class pretending to be in the instructor so that they can trick the hot students into "private tutoring", but some of the faculty think its funny. Sounds like a net positive~ There's a bit of boys will be boys energy in this reply.
    • ZephyrBlu 4y ago
      If you eliminate the chance of someone feeling uncomfortable you also eliminate a lot of good interactions. If there are only a few people uncomfortable with this and there is no harassment, that seems like it's probably fine overall.
    • belorn 4y ago
      I suspect the likely reason why the faculty think its funny is because the average number of volunteer tutors is likely close to zero, and having too many volunteer tutors is an unusual problem. The more cynical faculty may think that there is generally only two reasons why students would spend their time volunteering as tutors. Either because they get paid, or because they want to impress other students.
    • baryphonic 4y ago
• MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  Am I understanding correctly that some students took the publicly published racial/gender/diversity data for the college and basically made an app advertising "here are all of the women taking college seriously and pursuing STEM courses, so you can maybe find a sugar mama?" Why would a female smart enough to pass college level STEM classes fall for that "bro" logic? How is this successful at all?
  • murderfs 4y ago
    "100-level science and mathematics" classes don't really qualify as college-level. They're basically remedial high school classes.
    • MuffinFlavored 4y ago
      my fault, thank you for explaining
• version_five 4y ago
  As much as I disagree with "diversity" pushes, I don't see the publication of this data (which the author mentions at least twice) as being really important here. It should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it which classes would fit the description. It seems like the app is somehow a catalyst for coordinated activity at this school (and maybe driven by the data) but realistically you could probably find a speculative "what classes to meet girls in" thread on reddit that would give the same info
  • noduerme 4y ago
    Ah, but a speculative approach wouldn't be a misuse of data that was published to burnish the university's diversity image. Following the OP's logic here, it seems to be grounded in a complaint that the university is publishing granular diversity data as a way to burnish its image without considering potential adverse effects of publishing said data. So it's attempting to set up a scenario of two pillars of woke ideology coming into conflict - like homeless people camping in the wetlands, or trans people vs women's sports - which I think is why the writer also thinks it's something the right would pounce on. I'm offering the above analysis whilst thinking all parties in this are creating a tempest in a teapot.
• acyou 4y ago
  Ah, the destruction of centuries of academic freedom and open learning in the name of social justice.
• bikeformind 4y ago
  This sounds like the college age mischief you read about in the biographies of founders who go on to build multi-billion dollar companies. Ladies, let the sweet engineering student help you with your astronomy homework and buy you a chai latte. The world needs more smart babies.
• _aavaa_ 4y ago
  I find it a little disturbing that the top rated answer that people reached for is to bring in Title IX claiming this is discrimination.
  • extheat 4y ago
    While I normally would argue about virtue signaling, this seems like creepy and unsettling behavior that definitely warrants an investigation. That doesn’t mean there was any rule breaking, but this is one of those creepy things that I strongly oppose looking the other way at. If you’re afraid of an investigation, then it is probably something worthwhile looking into.
  • Kon-Peki 4y ago
    Title IX covers a lot more than discrimination! That said, the professor is a mandatory reporter under federal law. Either she is aware of violations and has reported them, or she doesn’t believe that what is happening crosses that line. Especially when she writes that students have complained to her. If it even begins to sound like a Title IX violation, you interrupt to tell them that you are legally required to make a report of anything they tell you and offer to let them continue talking or that you will personally escort them to the university office where they can talk to someone that is not legally required to make a report. You absolutely do not solicit the internet for advice. So this is dumb, creepy, and uncool. But it’s not a Title IX issue.
  • pavon 4y ago
    Only because the first options of reaching out to department members and administration went completely ignored. I certainly wouldn't file a formal complaint as my first action in this case (as described), but at a minimum the people who work there have experience dealing with situations like this, and could offer advice to the professor, or perhaps have a discussion with the administration about how to prevent this situation from escalating into a Title IX issue.
• smokey_the_bear 4y ago
  My university had versions of courses that engineering majors were not allowed to take. Chem 160 for most students, chem 167 for engineers, chem 177 for chemistry majors.
  • 8note 4y ago
    Mine had separate engineering versions of courses to make sure that all the courses work out. The non engineering ones were equivalent and acceptable so you could switch tracks, but if an engineer didn't get into a chem class, they'd be screwed for their whole degree. The proper engineering classes have specific times both during the day, and during the year. Engineering students allowed in the non-engineering courses, non engineers not allowed in the engineering ones
• ilyt 4y ago
  It was kinda obvious knowledge back when I was the uni on which courses have higher ratio, that just centralized this knowledge. The professor sounds like total buzzkill, "how dare they use our forced diversity program against us!"
  • onepointsixC 4y ago
    Yeah this was completely known among all where many members of the opposite sex congregate be it courses, clubs, or other places.
• nhchris 4y ago
  > This might be hard, as no unwanted advances are taking place. We simply have students excelling at the course, and drawing-in a crowd. I should've been more clear with my "leching" comment. Still, it seems harassing in nature. It seems increasingly that society demands a world where dating only happens during designated and approved dating times and venues, and outside those strictly delimited places, men are to behave as eunuchs, and all prospects of romance are to be extinguished. Then wonder why marriage and fertility rates are tanking.
  • gnicholas 4y ago
    That wasn't my reading. It seemed like the instructor was not thrilled that her course was being audited by showboaters, who were interested in meeting/impressing women as opposed to learning.
    • vermilingua 4y ago
      “College students taking social classes with no intention of learning” is not exactly headline material though.
      • gnicholas 4y ago
        I got the sense it was an academic class, not a social class. Also, most students who take classes with no interest in learning would either skip class or keep their mouths shut. The problem here is that they're degrading the learning environment for others.
        • vermilingua 4y ago
          100 level classes barely qualify as academic, and we must have had very different academic experiences if you believe that “most students… with no intention of learning… keep their mouths shut”. There has always been a population of students that attend college/uni with seemingly no higher goal than scoring and making life worse for everyone around them. The only interesting development here is that the published diversity data has allowed them to finally create Scumbaggery as a Service.
• blueblimp 4y ago
  This smells like a fake story created for trolling purposes.
  • barry-cotter 4y ago
    Dumb professors and administrators exist and the world is big. Incredibly stupid things happen every day.
    • Ekaros 4y ago
      It seems lot of people are searching for things to fight against. But, clearly then drop them when they don't get traction and the fight might actually hurt them...
  • freefruit 4y ago
    Trolling, or they have an actual app they're trying to advertise.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• thepasswordis 4y ago
  The only thing this person needs help with is how to laugh at the cleverness here. Doesn't this actually push really hard towards a perfect 50/50 split of men and women in the classes anyway? Isn't that exactly what the professor wants?
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    Think of it closer to a company where the interns are girls, the team leaders are boys (who took the job to chat up the interns) and are now in a position of power and can legitimately ask for time with the girls (in 1-1s). They don’t do anything illegal or even hit on them overtly but it is creepy as hell.
    • thepasswordis 4y ago
      Is that what's happening? It sounds like senior level students are auditing the classes, not working as TAs or something.
      • quickthrower2 4y ago
        From OP: > since we routinely have cases where a young man is leading open labs as if they're a teacher themselves (in order to "wow" their female classmates, offer "private free tutoring sessions", etc). Some of the young students in my class take up these offers, and this further demoralizes other female students seeing this happen (i.e. only attractive women being offered tutoring sessions).
    • 8note 4y ago
      Are they actually in positions of power? They are not marking papers, and nobody is required by their course to attend said 1-1s
      • wilsonnb3 4y ago
        The whole reason they chose these specific classes is because they are in a position of power in the class via already knowing the subject matter. It's not like they picked random classes that have a lot of girls in them.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• hnuser0000 4y ago
  A lot of you are okay with this?
  • ShredKazoo 4y ago
    She clarified "there are no unwanted advances". Just because someone is uncomfortable does not mean there's something untoward going on. E.g. if I'm uncomfortable with two men kissing each other in public, it doesn't follow that those two men are creepy. If you grow up with conservative parents, you may be socialized to believe that men kissing each other is creepy, when it is actually normal and healthy. Similarly, if you grow up on tumblr, you may be socialized to believe that men taking steps to meet women is creepy, when it is actually normal and healthy. >Lots of creeps here in the comments too. Some might call a 22 year old pretending to be helpful to younger 17 year olds for their ulterior motives, "grooming". You're pulling in a separate issue of someone being under the age of consent. Let's focus on one thing at a time.
    • quickthrower2 4y ago
      Not the same thing because of the power imbalance (older students, that teach labs) and obvious intent there is the threat of unwanted advances. I’d bet on even odds of actual abuse having occurred and it ends up being reported as less because who wants to go to court and face the next Epstein?
      • ShredKazoo 4y ago
        >Not the same thing because of the power imbalance (older students, that teach labs) The average marriage involves a husband who is taller, older, and wealthier than his wife. Is that power imbalance problematic? Shall we pass a law that men cannot marry women who are shorter, younger, or poorer than they are? >obvious intent there is the threat of unwanted advances Not obvious to me. What incentive is there for coercion, even? Suppose I "threaten" with an unwanted advance in this circumstance -- what would I be getting in return? The point of the prank is to meet your future wife. The best way to meet your future spouse is to find someone who's just as interested in you as you are in them. >I’d bet on even odds of actual abuse having occurred and it ends up being reported as less because who wants to go to court and face the next Epstein? "If we allow men and women in the same building, odds are good that abuse will occur at some point. All facilities need to be gender-segregated to prevent abuse."
• fzeroracer 4y ago
  It's so weird to see people defend this because this seems like fairly textbook power harassment. If this was to occur at work where some managers were organizing their pods or such so that they're the only man in a group of women for the sake of dating it would clearly be seen as a problem. If the story is true, people auditing courses should be treated with a higher level of responsibility. Giving preferential treatment as a result because you want to date them or find them attractive isn't the purpose of auditing at all. This isn't to say it's wrong to potentially date someone while auditing a course, but the intention behind joining in the first place is what matters.
  • ShredKazoo 4y ago
    >fairly textbook power harassment I thought "power harassment" is when you have power over someone. How does auditing a course give you power over fellow students? >the intention behind joining in the first place is what matters What's wrong with having an intention of finding someone to marry? Suppose a woman signs up for eHarmony with the intention of meeting her future husband -- is that problematic?
    • texaslonghorn5 4y ago
      if you know the material and are offering the tutoring sessions then you clearly have power over the person whom you are tutoring. similar reason why dating your student as a TA is questionable.
      • ShredKazoo 4y ago
        If you know the material, that gives you the power to offer tutoring sessions, which is power over people who don't know the material. >dating your student as a TA is questionable TAs are paid employees who often grade student papers. Seems like a very different situation.
        • texaslonghorn5 4y ago
          if you take a class purely to offer tutoring to less advanced students for the purpose of looking impressive, finding dates, etc., then you are taking advantage of this power dynamic sure this is different but if the advanced students are engineering situations where they are leading lab sessions then it's not that different
• texaslonghorn5 4y ago
  saw this on stack earlier, this behavior is predatory and I'm disappointed that so many fellow readers think this is respectable behavior
• neilv 4y ago
  (Assuming that the story is true, and not trolling.) I'd guess that the school administrators don't want a public scandal for the school, lawsuits for the school (if the people behind it get exposed and harassed), nor individual risk for themselves. But won't all of that happen if one of the targeted students goes to complain to a news organization (even the student newspaper), or files a lawsuit for harassment, and it turns out those administrators declined to act after they were alerted to the problem? I've heard of schools gambling like this before, and sometimes it's seemed to probably come down to individual risk to administrators (e.g., definitely taking a career hit vs. possibly taking a worse career hit), not thinking of the school, students, or study. As much as we might've been brought up hearing stories of the brilliant, principled, altruistic, fearless professor... sometimes it seems organizational behavior is better explained by assuming the more common human corporate careerists are also involved.
• jalapenos 4y ago
  Ok which one of you did this?
• 1970-01-01 4y ago
  Getting access to real, living, hot college girls in your area is a 100,000,000X user multiplier for whatever you are working on. It's literally how "The Facebook" got so much traction at other universities in its very early years.
• steele 4y ago
  Re-read every comment but imagine a Ferengi posted it. I suppose a lil demographically predatory behavior and imbalanced power dynamics are just water under the bridge for some of y'all.
  • texaslonghorn5 4y ago
    "engineering students looking for fee-males"
• dgunay 4y ago
  I'm mostly amazed that they are allowed to audit whatever class they want. I tried to audit a class in college once and the teacher refused. Now maybe that was not within their rights and I just took their word for it, but wow.
• shrubble 4y ago
  Curious how the professor met her husband...?
• wrp 4y ago
  I suspect that if the situation in this class became well-known on campus, enrollment of both men and women would increase. Maybe my perception is based on outdated knowledge. My own experience as an undergraduate was two generations ago. What I remember was that choosing classes to increase your chance of meeting good dating material was common with both sexes.
• kweinber 4y ago
  This is an economics problem and this teacher should work with their Econ department to change the rules for course auditing and increase reputational costs to disincentive this behavior. A few options: 1) Make auditing those classes more expensive by limiting the total number of courses a student can audit, or capping the number of students that can audit those courses. 2) Make auditing a remote-only class option. 3) Give lectures on how to spot this behavior which will make the perpetrators obvious and undesirable. 4)Have a no-dating policy between students within the same class under penalty of failure. 5) Couple course participation with a mandatory internship at a STEM company (something a serious student would want but a time-suck for a fake student). The economics department might enjoy testing these policy changes and could get some papers out of them. (I wish I could have posted on the original site but I need some sort of karma to do that)
  • whacim 4y ago
    It is difficult to suggest solutions without knowing exactly what the course is, but designing a class project to develop a solution for an analogous problem might be a solution. Assign the students a project to filter out students with ulterior motives from a theoretical class. The engineers will then be forced to produce a solution for the problem of their own creation while subtly alerting other students that not everyone enrolled in the course is there for the same reason.
    • type-r 4y ago
      This is a fantastic suggestion. Probably not going to be applied by this professor but I love the symmetry of 'playing games' back and forth. Sounds fun honestly, as either side.
• cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  Well, on one hand you have created "damsel in distress" classes for women who should not necessarily be in that field, so that part of the problem. On the other hand, dating is also very necessary and is more important for men and women in the big picture than an average college class. It's "How I met my future wife" app, not "How I met my latest one night stand". Places with concentration of young people should give them more transparent and dignified places to meet, get to know each other and prove their worth as a mate. In this sense, help with studies is a classic part of courting someone and there is nothing wrong with that.
  • lvass 4y ago
    Is this what chatGPT answers to "what would Stalin think of this problem"?
• jhanschoo 4y ago
  I'm appalled that so many other commenters don't see an issue with such behavior in class: > number of female students have approached me, noting they are disgusted and uncomfortable with the amount of leching taking place > It's also demoralizing several of them, since we routinely have cases where a young man is leading open labs as if they're a teacher themselves (in order to "wow" their female classmates, offer "private free tutoring sessions", etc). Some of the young students in my class take up these offers, and this further demoralizes other female students seeing this happen (i.e. only attractive women being offered tutoring sessions). So suppose you're a university student who have a mild preference for this course. Upon hearing of such behavior, you'd end up avoiding such a class to sidestep such a distraction. Not to mention being distracted with insecurities if you don't end up being offered tuition.
  • murrkat 4y ago
    Is there not a chance one of the young men offering open labs or tutoring might, in fact, be intelligent, enthusiastic about the sciences and decent?
    • joe-collins 4y ago
      If they're so intelligent and decent, why are they relying on such disturbing tactics to meet women in the first place?
      • murrkat 4y ago
        Begging the question.
        • felix_n 4y ago
          Piss off Plato.
      • fragmede 4y ago
        Because they are, in fact, decent, and find going to frat parties to engage with a drunk girl who can't properly consent, or hiring a prostitute, to be reprehensible. Online dating doesn't work unless you're in the top X% of attractiveness, so what's a college student to do? They're not generally rich enough to garner the attention of women that way, and they're competing against a larg pool of older men who are.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• steve76 4y ago
  [dead]
• thdc 4y ago
  I find the behavior predatory but not to a point that I can complain about without any more detail. If I swap out senior students with complete strangers, then it kind of sounds worse, but that may be an unfair comparison. One thing that I will complain about is the preferential treatment that these seniors are showing. In my opinion, you are in a course to learn and teach (or because you're forced to), and these seniors definitely fall in the latter, yet, as teachers, they only help select juniors. This somewhat reveals their intentions and also makes the other juniors uncomfortable. I don't see what point the app and diversity data play aside from optimizing for the courses you join and being backstory as to why seniors are joining. You're free to stick your head into courses and figure out if there are potential partners there.
• maximumcomfy 4y ago
  [flagged]
• onetimeusename 4y ago
  there is a non zero chance this post is a LARP or if it's real then greatly exaggerated. Parts of it don't sound right to me. I doubt anyone would keep this gag up throughout the whole semester if it wasn't going anywhere the first few days. But the teacher also said there are no unwanted advances happening but referred to it as leching. Then later she described the problem as: We simply have students excelling at the course, and drawing-in a crowd. The same poster also made some other strange comments.
• neilv 4y ago
  I'd guess the people doing this gaming probably think it's clever, fun, and fair play (designed by-and-for hormonal college students). Maybe all the school needs, to handle the problem without scandal or lawsuits, is for the students doing it to be called before a dean, who says it's disrupting class, and to save the dating efforts for extracurricular environments, not taint the academics. If they don't seem to get it, spell out what a scandal they almost caused, but hopefully can be averted, and that the risk to themselves starts with getting suspended/expelled, and can get worse for them in the court of public opinion/mobbing. That people should keep dating efforts out of workplace dynamics is also a good lesson for those kids to learn in the gentler environment of college/university, than to learn a harder way in a company.
  • ip26 4y ago
    Looking for dates is tainting and scandalous, worthy of expulsion?
  • 16tonsofcoal 4y ago
    >save the dating efforts for extracurricular environments Then we get: >Oh no I only joined to rec league soccer team to play soccer not so that lecherous guys can hit on me. I'm OK with the idea that there are certain situations where it isn't OK of approach women, but online at least there always seems to be a reason why any given situation is the wrong one.
    • bradlys 4y ago
      People these days just hate the other gender and are incredibly socially awkward. Look online - there’s nothing out there from people saying they love the other gender. Nothing. It’s all hate. It’s because they’re all so fucking awkward and don’t know how to interact anymore. People who only think the only appropriate avenue to ask someone out is through a dating app are very likely socially awkward and are not representative of the norm.
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  Unsettled how many HN readers think this is OK. Please think deeply about this situation, using your systems thinking, to see why this is a really bad trend. It is kind of worse than a single guy joining a yoga class for the same reasons. This is a conspiracy to get lots of men to interfere with the education and success of women to get a date or sex.
  • tayo42 4y ago
    These kinds of threads are always an interesting reminder of the kind of people that post here. They have comments on other things too... Can't take any comment seriously
  • ausbah 4y ago
    "guys being guys", "people find their partners in college so it's ok!", "men are the real victims so they're justified / understandable", "nothing is wrong so long as it's not sexual assault". grossest comment section i've seen on this site in forever
    • deely3 4y ago
      Citing article: > there are no unwanted advances Could you explain, what exactly is wrong with it?
      • quickthrower2 4y ago
        I am not sure I believe that there are no unwanted advances because of, well everything else said and that the post even exists.
        • TheHappyOddish 4y ago
          You appear to be deciding what parts of the post are true and false based on.. I'm unsure what. Some sort of personal bias? I'm unsure why you feel everything else the professor says is true except the parts that don't align with your foregone conclusion.
• topherPedersen 4y ago
  College is a great place to meet women. This professor needs to lighten up. After all, where does he think all of his students come from? To create future students, services like this are necessary.
• 8note 4y ago
  Based on my engineering school, it's literally a joke on bad stereotypes assumed of engineers, and they actually are just there to help teach
• undersuit 4y ago
  I'm quite worried that the sexual motivations of young people being subverted by insincere programs is only going to increase as we become more connected. On Twitter there are a number of male personalities with incredibly toxic tendencies. Andrew Tate and Sneako are topics that draw in an inordinate amount of unnatural attention. Bots or equivalents stalk those keyword names. Mention those male role models, even without a @ mention, and your tweet will be swarmed with responses. I stumbled upon a subreddit called transmaxxing through some Astroturfing on Twitter. It weird, they still talk about women as objects but they also couch the actions under capitalist terms like value, extract, access. It's all very concerning and I hope no one falls for the propaganda they are spreading. Sex sells... but I just don't know what these people are actually buying.
• ambyra 4y ago
  One of the reasons people go to college is to find a partner. It’s a good place for meeting new people, and getting a good idea of their personality/intelligence. Maybe the college could prioritize students that actually need the class, limit the class size, and not let so many random seniors in. I also think it would be good for us nerds to take a few art classes now and then :)
• freefruit 4y ago
  Isn't this just marketing for the app? I could be wrong, but this is more than likely someone doing some 'growth hacking'. I'm sure people will now go looking for the app.
• rayiner 4y ago
  > a number of female students have approached me, noting they are disgusted and uncomfortable with the amount of leching taking place It’s heartening to see that since #metoo, boundaries are being re-established as to where it’s appropriate for men to express interest and when it isn’t. Society used to have clear rules for courtship, and where and when it was okay for men to make romantic overtures and where and when it wasn’t. Men threw out those rules in the 1970s-1990s, but it seems that women have been pretty emphatic recently that new guidelines are in order. They want spaces where they’re not being propositioned by men: class, the office, the gym, etc; where they can focus on other aspects of their lives in peace.
• Immerse7795 4y ago
  The cynic in me thinks that the one of the reason for the post is that the instructor has lost control of the class and that showboating is not the only reason. I'm guessing some of the seniors auditing are better at understanding and explaining the course material than the instructor.
• ding_dang 4y ago
  To all the people decrying unfairness about some students being left out: Now you know what it feels like to be a man.
• noduerme 4y ago
  This reminds me of a pretty crude and unworkable site I launched in college called TheRatio. This was in 2000, before smartphones. The idea was to have people at bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn text a rough male to female ratio they were seeing, which would be aggregated so you could check the website (from your, ahem, computer) for which bars to go to before you went out for the night. I thought it was sort of clever at the time. (It was also just one of my first experiments in learning PHP and SQL). It just seems kind of crass and sophomoric, looking back, and in light of the info-commodification of sexual attraction like HotOrNot and Tinder that were on the horizon. I guess in my defense, I'd say I literally was a Sophomore, and that's what most 21 year old guys are thinking about. And that was for bars. Leveraging university course equality data and making it about classes would have struck me even then as douchey if not nefarious.
• logicalmonster 4y ago
  Whether or not this account is mostly true or not, IMO, the most important thing lost in this is that some young adults are reportedly so desperate for a date that they'll go to class more often. Think about how stunningly crazy that is. That's a clear indicator that something is really broken about society. What is it society that is so backwards right now? IMO, it's the bullshit of the last 3 years. If you're in college today, either the tail end of your high-school years, or all of your college experience has been ruined by the inhumanly stupid reaction to Covid. This has been one of the worst times in human history for meeting new people with all of the nonsensical Covid rules. How many college campuses have been fully masked up and made normal social engagements a nightmare? There's a lot more that can be said, particularly how dating apps screw over average people, but I'd say that looking at why these young adults seem to be engaging in weird behavior is the most important takeaway.
  • bradlys 4y ago
    True. Going to class to meet girls is a pretty crazy thought. “Hey man, that professor sucks and we can learn the material outside of class more effectively.” “I gotta go though man, it’s my only way to meet girls… in a lecture where you can’t really talk to each other and maybe can get a few words in at the beginning and end.” Truly we live in a dystopian time. Third spaces - even for college students are wildly absent.
• sacnoradhq 4y ago
  Sounds more like she's whining about creative reuse of open data. Most US universities are 60% undergraduate women. She should be glad some men actually want to socialize because US society is pushing most men into feeling "bad" about themselves and saying they're "stupid". Philip Zimbardo wrote several books on the subject "Boy, Interrupted", "Man, Interrupted", "Man: Disconnected" and has a TED talk on the subject. If she didn't want her university/class to be a dating service, she should go teach at nursing homes or become a nun. According to Thomas J. Stanley, a microeconomics wealth researcher, most millionaires met their spouses in college. Where do you think Google's founders met their wives, the DMV? No, Stanford parties.
• Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  I took weightlifting as my PE elective in college, and it was full of young women. I made a comment about this to the instructor one day and he said it's always like that. The young ladies sign up for weightlifting because they think it's going to be full of buff men but instead it's 75% women and the 25% of the class that's men are out of shape and taking the class because they want to get fit. Already buff guys just go to the gym and don't bother with the class.
  • steve_taylor 4y ago
    What a bunch of lecherous creeps!
• diebeforei485 4y ago
  Sounds like a clear misuse of being able to audit a class. If they're actually doing the work, and are meeting people to work with, it doesn't matter (edit: see edit at bottom). In any given class, attractive people get more help from peers. Edit: I just realized these are math and science classes for non majors. I thought it would be something like economics or geology or something, where having a STEM background would help but not directly. In this case, this is inappropriate and I don't think these students should be taking this class at all.
• victor9000 4y ago
  It sounds like the instructor has no control of the classroom. Even in the face of random attendees, the instructor should have the skills to manage and direct discussion so it benefits the intended participants, no?
• Tozen 4y ago
  Flagging this thread is an example of trying to silence any opposing views or logically examining the actions of the teacher in question.
• ofcourseyoudo 4y ago
  A lot of questionable defenses in these comments hinging on this phrase from the piece: "no unwanted advances". Keep in mind this is through the professor's viewpoint. I would love some direct testimony from the women students to see if they truly have received ZERO unwanted advances. I find that highly unlikely given that the piece also states that several of them have been demoralized by all of this.
  • thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > I find that highly unlikely given that the piece also states that several of them have been demoralized by all of this. The piece specifically states that some women have been demoralized by the fact that they aren't receiving advances. Obviously, that is the opposite of making an unwanted advance.
• satisfice 4y ago
  Nobody promised you a rose garden. Life is not fair. Boys will be boys. These phrases became cliches because they are true. The problem will not go on forever, because the men will become bored with it. Unless, of course, their plan is working. In which case, your issue is that you can’t stand the realness of reality.
• frankreyes 4y ago
  If i had to take a wild guess, the professor met her partner in university. I met my girlfriend in university, as well as my parents.
• psyfi 4y ago
  We need more seggregated colleges.
• Yizahi 4y ago
  The problem is now he(she) won't be able to "stop" this at all. The cat is out of the bag, humans accepted a new niche and moved into it. Would banning app or stats make app authors "forget" their already existing data? Of course not. Also this already public data will be a basis of this app for many years in the future, even if zero new data is available. Because courses and gender rates doesn't change a lot or quickly. Lawsuits against uni are completely pointless, maybe only as a punishment (debatable due to a disparity in power of single prof and whole uni). The only real solution is now to adapt the course itself, change auditioning rules, change program, have more individual approach to intercept predatory help etc. Basically a ton of more work from the teacher. Unfortunately.
• 2-718-281-828 4y ago
  this is so contrived and written in dramatising and fuzzy language ("perverted the data") that to me it's pretty obvious that this is a made up story by someone who takes offence in diversity measures.
• folkrav 4y ago
  The apologists in these comments for what's effectively using educational data as a means to reducing the women in their program as "potential mates" - and making them "disgusted and uncomfortable" in the process! - are really concerning.
• Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]
• bigmaneyo 4y ago
  If you can, have the classes be sex segregated, reducing the incentive for guys to enroll into those classes