Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis acknowledged she was being a little irreverent when she wrote an article about student-professor relationships. “Forgive my slightly mocking tone,” she wrote in the article, “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe." “When I was in college, hooking up with professors was more or less part of the curriculum.” She was surprised, and a little amused, when she heard that students were lugging mattresses up to the college president’s office in protest of the article.