University Of New Mexico Professor’s Moonlighting As Dominatrix Causing Problems
In some ways, working as a phone-sex dominatrix is a lot simpler than being on a college faculty. Your relationship with others is clearly defined, no one formally complains about anything you say to them, and you stand little risk of getting caught up in messy struggles over power, according to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
It gets complicated, however, if you try to do both jobs.
Life has become extremely complex in the University of New Mexico’s English department in the three years since Lisa D. Chvez, a tenured associate professor, was discovered moonlighting as the phone-sex dominatrix “Mistress Jade,” and posing in promotional pictures sexually dominating one of her own graduate students.
Although she quickly quit the phone-sex job, admitted to a serious lapse of judgment, and was not found by the university’s administration to have violated any law or policy, Ms. Chvez remains at the center of a bitter controversy that has raised questions about faculty governance, the obligations of professors to protect students, and the exact definition of a hostile workplace in an environment of shifting sexual mores.
Several members of the English department accuse Ms. Chvez of abusing her power over students, and allege that the administration retaliated against professors who complained about her extracurricular activities. They also say that the university administration violated a basic principle of shared governance by not entrusting the investigation of Ms. Chvez to a faculty ethics committee.
Read the full article here.
