Romancing the student: The Southland’s reputation as...

Romancing the student: The Southland’s reputation as the breeding ground of controversial movements shows no sign of waning. Barry Dank, a sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach, has founded a group that endorses college instructors dating students--”Consenting Academics for Sexual Equity.”

Dank said about 70 people, including some women professors, have joined CASE after seeing his postings on the Internet system.

He admitted that he has also received several negative comments from Internet users. The publication, the Chronicle of Higher Education, quoted one professor who likened Dank and other male professors in CASE to “aging men who demand the right to keep trying to seduce the undergraduate women as a privilege of office.”

Dank, who is involved with a former student, says his group endorses sexual harassment policies but opposes “institutional regulations regarding personal relationships among consenting adults.”

He added: “Let’s get beyond the stereotypes. We are not lecherous predatory professors.”

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The fine print, indeed: No wonder Proposition 180 lost Tuesday. Don Bruckman and Jim Ephgrave note that its description in the California Ballot Pamphlet included what sounded like the extremely impractical acquisition of a very long strip of land. Actually, the reference should have been to the Imperial County town of Palo Verde.

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Remembering Mr. Footprint: Jim Rowe of Canoga Park has no sympathy for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s claims to the phrase, “Walk of Fame.”

“It’s a known fact,” he writes, “that they stole the idea from my grandfather, Hollywood’s Mr. Footprint, Jean Klossner. Grandpa built the Sid Grauman Chinese Theater and then, for over 30 years, he immortalized Hollywood’s finest in the forecourt. He, not the Hollywood Chamber, held a world copyright to placing inscriptions and body parts (hands, feet, face, etc.) in cement.”

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Never on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc., etc.: It was sort of a slow week at the Pantages when Sterling Franklin of South Pasadena visited the other day. In fact, a spokeswoman told us, the theater has no events scheduled until August.

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Words to live by: A while back we mentioned that a teen-ager bought a blouse whose cleaning instructions said: “Hand wash cold. . . . No chlorine bleach. . . . Use a condom.”

Joanna Linkchorst of Montrose found these G-rated instructions on a T-shirt: “Machine wash and tumble dry your silk screen T-shirt, clean your room and don’t stay out past 11 without calling.”

miscelLAny:

The wholesale toy district just east of the Civic Center includes an eatery called the Toy Cafe, which offers a Toytown Burger.