ROMANCING THE STUDENT

During the three months in 1993 when she was sleeping with her English professor, Lisa Topol lost 18 pounds. She lost interest in her classes at the University of Pennsylvania, lost her reputation as an honor student and wondered if she was losing her mind. If she tried to break up, she thought, he could ruin her academic career. Then she made some phone calls and learned a bit more about the professor she had come to view as a predator. In June she will tell her story in federal court, but even before a verdict is rendered, the case has prompted Penn to consider more stringent rules on student-teacher sex. Depending on the outcome of her trial, love life on campus may never be the same.

Lisa was a senior at the University of Pennsylvania when she found herself embroiled in an affair with a young English professor named Malcolm Woodfield. His tastes ran to whips and riding crops, she told Philadelphia magazine, and when she tried to get out of the relationship, the professor bullied her into continuing. She need not worry about flunking his course, she recalls his saying, because "your grade is not based on your work anyway."

In March 1993 Lisa finally told another English professor about the affair; encouraged by assistant ombudsman Gulbun O'Connor, Topol charged Woodfield with sexual harassment. A university ethics committee supported her allegation that Woodfield had abused his academic power. The embattled professor resigned last April, after admitting that he once slept with Topol and engaged in "unethical conduct," though he has denied the other details of their affair.

But Topol has since taken her case even further, in a gesture that is rattling the teeth of campus administrators everywhere. Topol had heard rumors that Woodfield had been in trouble before, and she began asking questions. Before coming to Penn, she learned, he had taught at Bates College in Maine, where some students had also accused him of harassment, but he was allowed to leave quietly in 1991, with the recommendations that helped him land the Penn job.

Topol has since filed civil suits not only against Woodfield and Penn but against Bates as well for failing to warn Penn of Woodfield's record. Having supported her before, Penn has reversed course: in a pretrial memorandum filed in February, Penn charges that the affair "grew out of her strong sexual attraction to and romantic feelings for Woodfield." Penn has asked for her diary to prove her consent; meanwhile, says Topol's lawyer, Alice Ballard, Bates is trying to get records from her psychotherapist.

In the midst of this furor, the Penn faculty executive committee has called for tougher rules against faculty-student romances; it wants to amend the policy that calls such relationships "unethical" so that it would prohibit professors from dating students under their supervision. For her part, Topol doubts this will do any good. "I can't imagine how any student would come forward after seeing what Penn has done to me," she says. "Penn's response has done nothing but make the wounds deeper and more painful."