A reader writes to recount his brush with the campus sensitivity police:

I just wanted to write to tell you about my own little version of the Bonnell case. It's been a good while ago -- I was a graduate student at [large southern university], and teaching a course at the [local community college]. My students (and I, for that matter) were accustomed to wearing sloppy jeans, sweatshirts, etc. One day one of my students (female) came into class very dressed up: pretty white/aqua/silver sweater, neatly pressed denim skirt, white hose. I said (having been trained by my ex-wife that you're supposed to *notice* these things), "Nice outfit, Mitzi."

The next day, I was Summoned to the Dean's office and told (a) that someone had taken offense at (b) *something* I'd said, but that (c) I couldn't know who had complained or (d) what exactly I'd said that was offensive, because if I knew either one I might take some retributive action. I said I certainly hadn't meant to offend anyone, and would be happy to apologize to whomever was offended, but if she couldn't tell who was offended or what I'd said, I didn't know what to do. She replied that it didn't matter, but I'd better think of something if I didn't want to be terminated.

I eventually made the strangest apology ever, saying to the class that I understood that I'd said something that offended someone, that I didn't know who or how I'd offended, that I hadn't meant to offend, that if someone felt offendded and wanted totalk to me about it I promised there'd be no retribution, and so on.

This was apparently enough: I wasn't terminated. At the end of the term, another student came to me and said he'd heard the business about "nice outfit" was the issue, that it wasn't "Mitzi" who'd been offended, and that the person complaining was also a person who continually complained I was making the tests too hard. (She was the bottom of the curve, no question; the top of the curve had an 95+ percent average, and there was a fairly clean normal distribution.)

The issue was sort of moot. At that point: I had no intention of doing another term at [the college] (which was pretty horrible in a number of ways) and it didn't eventually cost me anything but a lot of humiliation -- and, hell, I was a graduate student, humiliation was my life. But it sure is hard, even today, not to think, first off, that the student who *did* complain was trying to use the complaint as a way out of a failing grade; second, that if I'd have been tenure track or a postdoc it could easily have been the end of my career; and third, that the notion of threatening termination under those conditions made it pretty clear that such a complaint could be made with no fear of consequences for the complainer (after all, there *was* no attempt at an investigation -- it went from complaint to threat of termination in less than 24 hours).

Which was, finally, one of a number of camel-breaking straws that caused me to give up an academic career.

I wonder how many other people had the same experience?

Thanks for writing.

UPDATE: The author of the above letter writes to add the following:

The thing that really pisses me off about these things, though, is that I *know* there's real harassment going on, from unwanted touching to graduate advisors who want sex for that Big Signature. I don't have any problem with doing something about this, and in fact one of the reasons I really resent having been put in this position is that I am -- still! -- immensely insulted by being put in the same category.

But, dammit, if "no tolerance" policies mean that "nice outfit" is punished as harshly, or nearly as harshly, as groping a student, we're not just elevating "nice outfit" to be an assault, we're reducing assault to be nothing worse than an unwanted compliment. We end up in this situation where everyone "knows" that a harrassment complaint is probably "just some chick with a grudge."