If a UMD teacher tickles your daughter in his office and nuzzles her neck affectionately his job will be spared and he will be instructed to attend sexual harassment training. He will, that is, if he’s the Chancelor’s “personal fitness guru” and is a part owner in half a dozen successful eateries and bars.
I tried to get the Trib’s web story about this episode but by now its past its week of availability and I didn’t want to spring for the $2.95 it would have cost to read it again. Thank goodness the UMD Statesman had the story online. My friend was right. Apparantly Rod the teacher did hit on his female student for sex. They must have been hot. That seems to be an important attribute to Rod who is a motivational speaker. When I served on the School Board I heard one of his platitudinous speeches at the Moorish Room at Greysolon Duluth. Shortly afterward he gave another at some event for public school students at which a complaint was lodged that Rod’s had said remarks that fat girls might find hurtful. I don’t recall the details. It was about a decade ago. Rod has certainly parlayed his one time description in a magazine article as: “one of the five fittest men” in the universe into a modest local empire.
The Chancellor had no comment for the Statesmen Story but in the Trib piece an unrepentant Raymond bragged about his close association with the Chancellor and how he hadn’t been fired.
So I was struck today when I saw the Chancellor’s picture on the front page of the Trib high fiving a dark hued student who was marching with others against racism, a march prompted by a couple clueless UMD Coeds, presumably white, who apparently wrote unfavorably about a black student on a publicly accessable Facebook page referencing her race.
The Chancellor may be a bit of a slacker about sexual harassment but she’s out to rid the campus of racial harassment.
I copied the picture above from a UMD page which says nice things about Rod. I presume its part of the series of photos I saw somewhere, possibly the Reader Weekly, featuring Rod in various states of undress. The one that caught my eye was of a buff and naked Raymond exposing his manhood to what I presume was the Lake Superior shoreline. I’m glad to report that Rod is evidently heterosexual because there is no telling what might have happened had the Duluth Family Sauna gotten hold of these photos.
I say this because of another story in today’s Trib which reported that UMD has taken down a webcam on campus because the sauna, which now caters to a gay clientelle, had put the cam on its own website with a suggestive heading about checking out the local “wildlife.”
I suppose a few fellows could object to the possibility that gay men might be watching them walk through a college library on a webcam but, of course, such gawking hardly requires a webcam. I even know of heterosexual fellows who are a little flattered that someone, even gay men, might find them attractive. Some of us have even been brave enough to risk such prurient stares. Back in the 1970’s when the closet was still pretty full I wandered into the notorious “Gay 90’s bar in the Twin Cities for a drink. I may have had a date with me, perhaps my wife. It looked like any other bar except that a couple guys were dancing with each other.
A Google search makes it clear that Rod is no shrinking violet having put himself all over the Internet. I just hope the UMD Statesmen doesn’t suffer the web cam’s fate by having its web presence pulled from the Internet. I hope someone on staff is a good friend of the Chancellor.
