Student/Teacher Meetings

After listening to tales out of school by numerous male friends, this student/teacher sex thing between male students and female teachers is not a new thing. Because men are socialized differently, I do think that, while not legal, the impact of these liaisons is not quite the same as the sexual scandals between male teachers and female students. But, this mess just seems nasty.

The arrest of two women teachers on charges of having sex with their male students has brought cries of lingering racism in one of South Carolina's most conservative counties and evoked some of the South's oldest and deepest-seated racial taboos.

Both women are white. The boys six in all are black.

Some of the blacks who make up more than a quarter of Laurens County's 70,000 residents are upset over the handling of the two cases, particularly the release of the teachers on bail.

They say the cases reflect the way crimes by whites against blacks in the segregated South were treated less seriously than other offenses, and blacks who leveled accusations against whites were less likely to be believed.

"If this had been black teachers, they would not be out of jail right now," said Corinnie Young, a 49-year-old bookstore employee who is black.