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Comment by ZephyrBlu | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

> There's some selective minimizing of the students that feel uncomfortable and maximizing of what some of the faculty think

When did the goal of the university shift toward minimizing when students "feel uncomfortable?" When did the definition of "uncomfortable" expand to such a degree that men simply enrolling in and performing well in a class with mostly women is seen as "misconduct?"

> There's a bit of boys will be boys energy in this reply.

What do you mean by "boys will be boys energy?" That the vast majority of young men are attracted to young women and will attempt to create situations where they encounter young women?

What's stopping the young women from standing up for themselves? Why are they being treated like damsels in distress without agency.

I think they need to get into more detail regarding

>... uncomfortable with the amount of leching taking place.

What amount and what actions specifically, like are the guys ogling the girls non-stop. What are they talking about exactly.

Yea, the word "leching" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, and the edit doesn't really add much information:

> (edit: there are no unwanted advances, but it's painfully obvious to some students of what's taking place)

OK, but what's taking place? That's pretty important. If they're catcalling, harassing, whistling and other kinds of inappropriate behavior, that seems to be a clear cut discipline problem that should be dealt with via the university's discipline and sexual harassment policies. But OP specifically says no unwanted advances, so what on earth is OP talking about? It's definitely not painfully obvious to me.

Yeah this professor seems to be taking this really personally, like some fictional crusty dean. Simpson!

Referring to it as a “prank” is what puts it over the top for me

If guys are harassing someone - that is the problem that needs to be tackled on its merit. Not this app. Banning it will alleviate this problem.

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