Dear Studious,

Well, you certainly are in a bit of a predicament. Let’s analyze all the possibilities:

You have two possible options:

(a)   Do something
(b)  Do nothing

And there are two possible outcomes,
(1)  he gives you a bad grade because you refused to date him
(2)  he takes the rejection like an adult and it doesn’t effect your grade at all.

Ideally, option b would lead to outcome 2, but you have no way of guaranteeing that. Let’s look at what your options are if you do decide to do something:

You can talk to your professor or an ombudsman at the university. If you decide to go this route, you have to do it before you get your grade. If you wait until after, it may look as if you are just complaining. Of course, the danger is that you make a complaint about the T.A. and he makes the rest of your studies a living hell.

If you do nothing, and get a lousy grade, how will you feel about yourself and the situation?  Everyone is different, I don’t want to predict how this would affect you. Do you feel any responsibility to alert the school so this doesn’t happen again? Are you worried about other repercussions if you do report him? These are all valid concerns.

Also I don’t know how important summer school is to you. Do you have a degree riding on this or are you doing it for fun?

My advice is to carefully think through all the consequences and then do what feels right in your gut. You may want to do a bit of research… does the school have a policy on sexual harassment? Does it apply to T.A’s? Does the school have an Ombudsman? If so, it is basically that person’s job to sort out this type of matter. I suggest starting there.

And if you want to know what I would do, I would rat him out for sure. But that’s just me! Whatever you do, make sure you’re comfortable with it first!

Good luck!