"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.
A showboat youtube channel?
Inspiration for entities such as the Sunlight Foundation. https://sunlightfoundation.com/
You don't know very much about young woman, nor young people in general.
The females going on dates already know what the deal is. Telling them about it isn't going to change their mind.
I don't see how there is any issue with this if the men were respectful and didn't actually make unwanted advances. Why does the professor (a woman) feel like women are stupid, or need to be coddled? I can't think of anything more disrespectful to empowering women than assuming they don't possess the agency to make calculated decisions on their own.
Honestly, whatever their motives, that kind of interaction is what group work is for. Having students that can lead and communicate with peers is invaluable.
As a male student during my years in undergrad, I had 2 different instances of team members/partners who outright stated they would not cooperate and would just fail the lab/project unless I did XYZ thing for them. In the 2 cases I remember it was basically "do most of my work for me" despite barely having enough time to complete my own portions. To add onto this, professors often repeated in my courses that "it's your responsibility to make group/pair work succeed" and that students would need to pick up the slack for any deficiencies in the team/pair. To their credit, I occasionally had professors who graded work per team member to prevent this type of leaching but often the answer the professor would give the class was that learning how to pick up the slack was just part of the course.
It isn't much of a leap to see this kind of "if you don't cooperate we can just fail" behavior from someone who already has no academic penalty for failure (as audits don't have final grades) and who joins the class explicitly to try to get laid.
Yes?
I'm capable of saying no, even aggressively when people don't get the hint. I've even done it in the past, numerous times.
How is this any different from Bob talking your ear off about some hobby that he has that you have absolutely zero interest in? You just don't listen or tell him directly you don't care. This thread makes me feel like I'm going insane, this is basic human interaction.
It's totally okay if you say something that's totally not equivalent.
Is it 20 among a class of 600? Or is it 20 among a class of 50? How pushy are they about it? Do they stop if I tell them I don't care once? twice? twenty?
These are all relevant questions but it feels like many folks are automatically treating it as if they make up half the class and they're doing the absolute maximum amount that's just under what would be considered 'harassment'.
For what it's worth, most of the people in my college classes (including myself often) didn't give a shit about any part of the class except for the grade.
And as for how pushy they are, according to the author, these male students are trying to take on a perception of authority (acting like instructors/TAs during classes) which implies some amount of attempted coercion (whether explicit or implicit) is likely taking place.
This type of power dynamic is really dangerous and it's a matter of time before somebody particularly scummy takes part and ends up victimizing one of the female students who are actually trying to pass the class.
I don't mind - I can say "No" 20 times in a single day and then be left alone for the rest of the semester.
Yes, absolutely. If they are getting in the way of my ability to focus by talking to me about Amway products, then no. Likewise, if they ask after class "Hey, wanna buy some Amway?" and I refuse, that's fine -- one bite of the apple is reasonable. If they keep asking me if I want to buy Amway, then that becomes a problem.
A bunch of people with any ulterior motive in my class are fine with me. Those people not respecting my motives (learning) is the issue.
Young women aren't oblivious to their own charms. They know what they're doing. They're getting free 1-on-1 tuition from a nerd, and the nerd gets to be within 3 feet of an attractive young woman - maybe even more than that, let's not be naive about college campuses - which might otherwise be impossible. Everybody wins.
You might even upset the women most of all! When the quiet part is said aloud, you take away their plausible deniability. You're calling them out even more so than you are the men.
As a male, this is not a problem I ever had, but I believe her. She isn't making it up.
That your daughter is rejecting them outright would suggest that it's either a futile plan anyway, or that the women are already on to it so the announcement would be pointless.
Perhaps your daughter doesn't need or want to cash in on her attractiveness for academic favours. Others will, quite readily. Men sure as hell aren't saints, but nor are women.
Some people are just nice, some are looking to make friends, some may be confident about certain aspects of the course & want a support group for the parts they are weaker with, and some are just passionate about a given subject so they offer to help or study with classmates.
Unless the person is being super obvious, it's pretty hard to to tell whether the person offering help is one of the above types or if they are just trying to get in your pants until after the fact. When I was in uni, this was a constant issue among my female friends and it constantly left them on guard.
Then when the guy would make their intentions clear and inevitably get rejected, it'd be a coin toss whether they'd respond negatively as if they were owed for their assistance. It's mentally exhausting relying on people, having to constantly second guess whether they might want to sleep with you, and how to handle things in the event they try. Worst case if you are isolated (in a dorm, empty classroom, library study cubicle, etc), they might try to "take what they are owed" or make threats for "deceiving them". More likely they'll just drop any effort put towards helping you as you are now a missed mark and mid semester you'll have to quickly try to find someone else to study with or work on assignments with lest you fall behind.
Of course not all cases end badly but enough of them do that the majority of women will have at least one experience with some degree of retaliation for rejecting advances.
This of course is only worsened by male students like in the post who are auditing the class (i.e. no penalty for failing or stopping participating) with the explicit intention of trying to sleep with other students in the class. With the case in the post, there is even less of a chance of those making advances simply accepting the rejection and continuing to work with you. Also this particular case could be additionally problematic because if it's as pronounced as the post describes, it might shift the grade distribution (and therefore the end-of-course curve) which sets bad incentives for students.
And yet the complainants are complaining about not getting attention, which seems like a different problem that your daughter is experiencing.