Gray area between students and teachers

According to lecturers invited to a Silicon Valley company for awareness sessions that I attended, it is.

The sessions were held in the early 1990s, when political correctness was in its heyday in the US. I was working in Northern California when the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearing was in full swing. We were warned that smiling at a colleague a little too long or talking with a suggestive tone could make you liable to charges of sexual harassment. I overheard many in the audience, muttering under their breaths, call the lecturers "Nazis".

It was also around this time one of my acquaintances got a big settlement check after she threatened to accuse her boss, a wealthy Chinese-American businessman, of sexual harassment. Her friends told me she had seduced her boss and secured some form of evidence because she knew he had an eye on her.

Yes, I believe the protection of victims of sexual harassment could be carried too far and used as a tool to harm rather than to protect－just like all measures of good intention. Human relations are complicated and cultures vary from one country to another, or even within one culture. To someone brought up in the conservative Chinese tradition, bear hugs, let alone social kissing, are not acceptable. Merely a century ago, people of the opposite sex, unless they were man and wife, were not supposed to have any physical contact whatsoever.

Things change. China's young, growing up with unprecedented exposure to outside influences, are engaging in physical contact that would have set off alarms just a generation ago. Other than generational differences, customs vary greatly. In the US, many colleges have rules against teachers "fraternizing" with their students while, in China, a high school teacher, presumably in a more precarious position since his students are of a more impressionable age, is often praised for spending extra time with his students, especially those in need of parental attention.