A new book by UCLA psychology professor Paul Abramson, Romance in the Ivory Tower: The Rights and Liberty of Conscience, claims that college students and their professors have a constitutional right to get jiggy with each other--so long as grades aren't at stake. (Though he does recommend that everyone on campus should be required to sign a kind of love contract promising they won't hold the school accountable if an affair goes awry.) Despite sporting an earring, long graying hair, a goatee and teaching courses on human sexuality, Abramson swears he is a loyal and loving husband and grandfather who has nothing personally invested in his cause.

So what about the rest of us? We never minded the ban ourselves (whether it was official or just assumed): you've got the rest of your life to date up or down the age scale; what's so wrong with limiting your dating pool to your keg-stand buddies while you're in school? Isn't that what campus life is all about? But maybe we just never had any hot teachers. Did you ever consider making a move on a prof? Would the idea have been less appealing if you'd had to sign a contract stipulating the terms of the arrangement? Would you have looked at your teachers differently if you'd known the deans didn't frown on them dating down?