Ripping off clients and cashing the retirement funds of your dead parents is no longer the low bar when it comes to Michigan faculty. Yaron Eliav, a professor in the Near Eastern Studies department, was charged, along with a Michigan law student, with prostitution and solicitation charges last April. The law student had been advertising sex acts on craigslist in order to help pay her law school tuition (40k+ per year). Business was good (8-9 customers in the months of April and May). According to reports, Eliav met with her at a hotel and spanked her with a belt (which was allegedly agreed upon), but the law student reported assault charges after Eliav allegedly slapped her twice in the face. I don’t think schools across the country have this sort of thing in mind when it comes to restricting professor-student relationships. Both parties state that the $300 encounter contained no sexual intercourse.

I really can’t decide who’s worse between these two. You have a law student turning herself in for prostitution to report an assault case she probably can’t win (the slapping must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be non-consensual). And you have a married (to another Michigan faculty member) professor paying money for sex acts via craigslist when we all know he could have found someone else on craigslist who would have done way more stuff and for free. Oh, right. It was also illegal and pathetic.

Some tips for the future if you’re going to use the casual encounter section of craigslist:

A) Don’t pay/take money
B) Don’t think you’re exempt from the law
C) Don’t have an upstanding profession
D) Did you really think nobody was going to find out?