How Can You Judge?

Much of the reading and pedagogical conversations I have had about teaching composition have included the element of having students keep some sort of a journal. There are countless incarnations of this idea, but most come back to the ideology that it should be a place for students to express their opinions and thoughts freely. As long as they are writing and personally getting something out of it, the content is secondary. With this in mind, I have to say that an article I read recently about a college student who is currently suspended for writing a sexually charged entry about his professor took me aback. The student took his prompt from a Van Halen lyric about being “hot for teacher.” According to the article and video (which I will link below), the man had previously written sexual pieces and was given reinforcement for them with good grades from the same teacher. Teachers constantly ask their students to write anything they want in their notebooks without fear of judgment… but is that sentiment true?

Now, I’m not saying that I expect any of my future students to think that I am attractive in any way- but it still makes me wonder how the situation should be handled.

Here are my questions: Should there be parameters on what a student is allowed to write? If you tell the student to be open in their assignments, are they allowed to use curse words and images that speak truthfully to them? Do you discipline or question a student’s writing when it is not apparently harming himself or herself or anyone else?

I think that this situation would be a little less threatening with children rather than the older man the article focuses on, but I think it is still a tricky one to tackle. My thought would be to write a note in the student’s journal that I appreciate their writing efforts but do not find the subject matter appropriate (I would also make photocopies of all this to protect myself if any outside readers got the wrong impression). From there, I feel the solution could be as simple as researching other Van Halen songs and giving the student prompts that are in-line with their interests and do not have such an uncomfortable outcome. Obviously I do not have access to the entirety of the selection written by the student in the article but suspension seems a little extreme. It seems like there may be more to the story to make the professor so offended that she could not tolerate having the student in class.

How would you deal with a situation like this?