My College Professor Confessed His Feelings to Me. He Did It to five other girls, too.

I want to start by saying that for a long time, I was not sure this was worth talking about.

He did not assault me. He did not follow me home. After I rejected him and started dating my classmate, he left me alone. I told myself it was just a weird thing that happened in college, uncomfortable, inappropriate, but ultimately something I could file away and move past.

It took two years, and finding out he had done the same thing to at least five other girls, some younger than me, for me to understand that what happened was not a weird one-off. It was a pattern. And patterns like this do not stop on their own.

How It Started

I was 24, taking a digital art course at my college. The class was small, taught by a rotating group of about three professors. He was one of the main digital painting instructors, someone we all looked up to, someone who carried the easy confidence of a person comfortable in their authority.

He was the kind of professor who joked around with students, who made the classroom feel informal and approachable. He had given us his personal number for quick questions, for sharing art-related interests outside of class. It felt like an extension of the relaxed teaching style he projected. Nothing about it seemed unusual at the time.

Around that same period, a male classmate of mine had started showing interest in me. I had feelings for him too, that early, uncertain kind where you are not sure if it is mutual, but hoping it is. I decided to pull the professor into a light prank involving the classmate. It was the kind of low-stakes joke that fit the casual vibe of the class. I texted him the joke that afternoon.

That same night, at nine or ten pm, he called me.

The Phone Call

I picked up because I was a little concerned. He lived alone in a rural area. Getting a late call from someone in that situation felt like it might mean something was wrong.

It did not take long to understand what was actually happening.

He told me he had spoken to my classmate about my relationship, or whatever it was between us. I was nervous and a little excited, thinking maybe this was going somewhere good. Then he said he was jealous of my classmate.

My stomach dropped. I told myself he probably just meant he was envious of still being single, the way someone older might comment on watching young people figure things out. I tried to rationalise it into something normal.

Then he said he felt like he had a rivalry with my classmate. Over me.

And then he asked if I would consider him.

I want to be clear about what that moment felt like. This was not a peer asking me out nervously. This was a professor, someone two decades older than me, someone in a position of academic authority over me, someone I had genuinely respected, calling me late at night, drunk, to tell me he had feelings for me and describe, at length, the physical features he found attractive. He lingered when he talked about my body. I remember that clearly because it was the moment I stopped trying to find a charitable interpretation and started just trying to get off the phone.

I rejected him. He responded by telling me about his past relationships with younger women. One of those relationships, I found out later, was with a former student, someone who had been in his class when they got together.

What Came After

I started dating my classmate. The professor left me alone.

For a while, that felt like the end of it. I had handled it. It was over. I moved on.

Two years later, I started hearing things.

He had approached other female students after I rejected him. Some of them were younger than me. With some, he had been more persistent than he had been with me. One student who had house-sat for him found things in his home that disturbed her enough that she told people about it.

When it all came together, when I understood that what had happened to me was not an isolated incident but part of a consistent pattern, I could not stay quiet anymore. Not because I needed closure for myself, though being believed did matter. But because he was still teaching. Still in a position of access. Still, as far as anyone outside our small group knew, just a well-liked, informal, approachable professor.

We reported him collectively to the school. Six of us, with our accounts, our timelines, our details.

What the School Did

They informed us of our rights regarding misconduct reporting.

They told us they had spoken to him about being too close to students.

Being too close to students. As if the problem was insufficient professional distance rather than a professor repeatedly targeting female students with unwanted romantic and sexual attention.

He is still teaching.

I understand, intellectually, why institutions move slowly on these things. I understand the evidentiary thresholds, the procedural requirements, and the legal exposure that comes with taking action. I understand all of it.

I also understand that a man who has done this to at least six students, whose behaviour has been reported, who has a documented history of pursuing relationships with students, including one who was actively in his class, is still standing in front of classrooms full of young women.

That is not a procedural outcome I can reconcile myself to.

Why I Did Not Report It the First Time

People will wonder. I wondered too, for a while.

The honest answer is that when he left me alone after I rejected him, I genuinely believed it was an isolated event. Unpleasant, inappropriate, but singular. I had no way of knowing then that he was already moving on to other students. I had no way of knowing that this was his pattern.

The decision to report only came when I understood the full picture, when I realised that what I had experienced was not a weird one-time thing but a recurring behaviour that was still happening, to younger women, in the institution where he continued to hold power. At that point, staying quiet felt like participation.

If you are reading this and something similar happened to you with a professor, a supervisor, a mentor, or anyone in a position of authority, I want to say something directly: the fact that he moved on when you rejected him does not mean what he did was acceptable. The fact that it did not escalate does not mean it did not count. The fact that you were not sure it was reportable does not mean it was not.

Document what you remember. Find out who else experienced it. Report to the institution, and if the institution does not act, find out what external channels exist for student advocacy organisations, professional licensing bodies, or, in some cases, law enforcement, depending on your jurisdiction and the specifics of what occurred.

The institution's failure to act is not the end of the road.

What I Know Now

What he did was not a confused moment of misplaced feelings. It was a considered, repeated behaviour targeting students, testing who would comply, moving on when they did not, maintaining plausible deniability through the informality he had deliberately cultivated.

The casual atmosphere, the personal number, the jokes and pranks, none of that was accidental. It was the environment he created because it gave him cover.

He is still creating it. Right now.

I cannot make the school act. But I can make sure that what happened to us is not just absorbed quietly into the background noise of professional misconduct that everyone knows about and nobody discusses. I can make sure that the next student who has a weird late-night phone call from a professor, who feels her stomach drop at the word "rivalry," who spends two years convincing herself it was nothing, I can make sure she knows she is not alone, and that she was right to trust that feeling from the very beginning.

He is a creep. She is not imagining it. And it is worth reporting.