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RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

The point being that eight hours a day, teachers are de facto parents. So I agree with the Lege that two consenting adults, in a school environment, are sometimes not both adults. One is an adult and the other a child and age doesn’t change that. As for your daughter — I mention her because I wonder how you would react if you were the 17-year-old’s parent. This is her coach and, to use my argument, her parent when you aren’t there.

(To Trey and other FBvians: Eric would probably win. I argue, sometimes I yell, but I haven’t thrown a punch since seventh grade. Eric’s gamier than that.)

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

I’m being asked by several FBvians how to make odds here when the fists start flying. Paul easily has the reach, youth and kick-boxing experience. But a lot of us think his height is a handicap because no one that tall could have good balance. Plus he’ll be squeamish about getting kicked in the pending nuptials.

Eric, meanwhile, has a lower center of gravity, a pit bull’s fierceness, no hair to pull, and — the trump card — he’s Sicilian. And, you know, “never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

Paul. That’s genius. Asking people not to pass along what you consider irrelevant personal anecdotes, but then dragging my daughter into your clumsy attempts to make your point. That point being … what, exactly? That because I have a daughter, I should ask the Lege to criminalize all acts that would upset me? Perhaps I’m missing the refined, subtle point you’re trying hard — so, so hard — to make. The fact that I have a daughter in no way influences what I think the law should be. I’m not that particular sort of idiot, the one who can’t separate his desire to protect his daughter from what makes sound law. My argument is that the law is silly because it makes it illegal for someone to have sex with a 17-year-old woman when she can legally have sex with any other adult on the planet. And you keep saying you think it should remain a criminal act, so the FBvians are right to point out the problems with taking that stance when the world isn’t as black and white as you make it seem.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age. Yes they do.”

Eric, you’re up.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

To the FBvians who goad Eric along so that he may continue to post his asinine opinion: stop it. Stop it because I’m on a deadline (FOR ERIC!) and don’t need to waste any more time responding to your remembrances of times past and how you once knew this guy, or Eric once knew this girl, who slept with a coach or a teacher and man if it wasn’t the student’s initiating and can’t we all agree “dollars to donuts” that this is what’s going on here. Just stop it. No, FBvian, by my reasoning the guy shouldn’t be subjected to 20 years of incarceration simply because of the sexual act. The punishment should fit the crime — whatever form that crime takes. Let’s wait and see. That’s what I’ve said all along.

I find it ironic that I, as a 26-year-old man — the same age as the swim coach — find it necessary to defend the 17-year-old girl while Eric, who has an adolescence-aged daughter, says he sees nothing wrong with this student-teacher relationship.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

A lawyer FBvian offers this tale:

I’m reminded of my senior year when we suspected one of our buddies (who was 18) was doing a little extra-curricular activity with a new, fresh-from-college 22-year-old lower-school teacher who also happened to the be the assistant crew coach. We began to get suspicious when they shared a room because of a “scheduling snafu” on a crew road trip. It all culminated with us covertly following him to her house one Saturday night, and then staking out the place out front until he emerged the next morning. Our buddy still denied it at the time (presumably to spare her job) but confirmed it some years later at a reunion.

Of course, under Paul’s logic, SHE should be subjected to 20 years of potential incarceration because, why, she corrupted her “student” from a position of authority? Fair enough, but she should at least get some kind of an offset on the time served for making him a Golden God in the eyes of his peers for decades to come. IJS.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

A poker-table-makin’ FBvian has a solution with which I wholeheartedly agree:

As the father of two daughters, I think I have a reasonable compromise to the teacher/student thing. De-criminalize the act (so long as the student is of consenting age), but also make it legal for the father of the student to beat the living crap out of the teacher at the father’s discretion. I think that’s a win-win situation for everybody.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

People, read the post before you comment. Never said it was a good thing. It’s wrong. And he should be fired for it. Just like lots of businesses do. But to make it criminal is absurd. Again, Paul, LOVE that you know circumstances that weren’t reported. So he MADE her do this with the awesome power that only an ASSISTANT SWIM COACH can wield? Please.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

Eric, you’re wrong. It isn’t like he picked her up at a bar. He picked her up at school, in a capacity as teacher/coach that is quite authoritarian. And that authority doesn’t cede until she graduates. I’ll let the FB nation speak, some I’m getting some emails.

[Eric's] dead wrong on that. Teachers should not be sexually involved with their students. It shouldn’t even happen at the college level. It certainly shouldn’t happen at the high school level.

Now, should the guy be locked up for 20 years? Every case is different. We’ll see what the evidence in this case shows. But the guy, in some manner, should be punished.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

I really don’t know where to begin, Paul. Whether it’s your “it’s okay to destroy this man’s life, because I THINK HE PROBABLY FLIRTED WITH HER BEFORE SHE TURNED 17″ legal argument, or the idea that it’s okay to lock up a 26-year-old man for 20 years for having sex with a woman who could legally spend her every evening quintuple-teaming the 1954 Boston Celtics starting five. No, wait! I think I should start with your extremely well-considered point that you should also brand this man a sexual predator if he has sex with a FORMER student for “one or two years” after that person graduates. Wait, I’ll take on all three: you’re wrong.

C’mon, people, I’m fired up today. Bring it. Hit me with some more genius.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

After that, let’s hope they make it illegal for “exceptionally hot” women to have sex with … below-average-looking men.

Careful. That would leave D Magazine without any married male editors. Paired with our respective wives, every one of us looks like an entry in a Boris and Natasha look-alike contest.

RE: LEADING OFF (ERIC’S CREEPY SECOND POST)

Gonna have to disagree with you, Eric. Yes, it’s true that age ain’t nothing but a number, but the age here isn’t a problem. The place the relationship blossomed is the problem. Look, I’ve defended “sexual predators,” but I think the Legislature got it right in 2003. Until you graduate, and even, I’d say, a year or two after, the student is always the student in the student-teacher relationship. When the student becomes more than that in the teacher’s eye, the student is taken advantage of.

And even if the sexual act occurred between two consenting adults, my guess is this teacher didn’t wait till she was 17 to flirt with her.