In the brave new world of campus identity harm, fictitious proper names are just as dangerous as personal pronouns.

[Keaton] Wahlbon is enrolled in Professor Bill Deane’s earth science class. Recently, Deane gave the class a quiz, and one of the questions was, “What is your lab instructor’s name? (if you don’t remember, make something good up).” The lab instructor is a kind of teaching assistant, and indeed, Wahlbon couldn’t remember her name. So he wrote in “Sarah Jackson.”

“I picked a random generic name,” said Wahlbon in an interview with Reason.

What does it mean to “make something good up?” Apparently not “Sarah Jackson” because somewhere, somehow, especially if you get to page 5 of Google, there is an off-chance you will find the name reflecting something that could conceivably, if you squint hard and avoid any use of synapses, be hurtful! And Keaton Wahlbon did exactly that when he made up “something good.”

But “Sarah Jackson” is apparently the name of a pornographic model. When Wahlbon got the quiz back, his answer was marked “inappropriate” and he had received a grade of zero.

“I had no idea it was the name of a nude model,” said Wahlbon.

Even if he did, so what? The “so what” is that his professor gave him a zero.

Wahlbon emailed Deane, asking him to reverse the instructor’s decision. In his email, Wahlbon raised some very good points: specifically, that “Sarah Jackson” is a very common name, and the top Google search results for the name weren’t even inappropriate. (As a reminder, the question had even supplied the clearly-misleading instruction: “make something good up.”)

If this sounds far too reasonable a question, relax. The academic has yet to explain.

“Dear Keaton,” he wrote. “I have no way of determining your intention. I can only consider the result. The result is that you gave the name of Sarah Jackson, who is a lingerie and nude model. That result meets with Title IX definition of sexual harassment. The grade of zero stands and will not be changed.”

Professor Bill Deane teaches earth science at the University of Tennessee, which fully qualifies him to determine what meets the Title IX definition of sexual harassment. After all, is he not an academic? He is presumptively a smart guy, and it certainly can’t be beyond his capability to either know what constitutes sexual harassment or apply it to a name, right?

Except there is absolutely nothing about what happened here that bears any connection, rational or otherwise, to sexual harassment.  Deane may know earth science (or not, but that’s irrelevant), but he couldn’t be more clueless as to the definition of sexual harassment, which at its minimum must be “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive” before approaching the realm of actually happening.

Is Deane a blithering idiot? Is Deane just covering his ass lest someone find out that a student wrote a name in a blank that could, if one googles hard enough, be arguably offensive? Or perhaps Deane is just a coward, more than willing to throw a male student under the bus so that no shit flies back and hits him? Who knows?

The substantive disconnect, far beyond the legal error of claiming that Wahlbon’s answer could conceivably be harassment under any minimally rational understanding, is what renders this professor’s reaction bizarre. In the ever-increasing universe of idiotic crap that offends someone, Deane just took a swan dive into gender chaos theory.

Had the name used been one universally associated with some horrible person, perhaps there would be a rational inference to be made that it was proffered with ill intent. Say, had Wahlbon called his lab instructor “Woodrow Wilson,” a name that causes trauma to the deeply passionate for his rank racism, or maybe even “Christopher Columbus,” the notorious rapist.

But it wasn’t “Adolph” or “Benito,” it was Sarah. Sarah Jackson. And as it turns out, there is an actual person named Sarah Jackson. Likely, hundreds if not thousands of people named Sarah Jackson. But if you search hard enough, lift up every rock to see what evil lurks beneath, it’s possible to find something, anything, that can be twisted into a justification to take offense.

If there is any skill that has been well-developed on campus, it’s finding reasons to take offense.

But even if Deane’s most insanely ignorant nightmare was accurate, what would make this wrong?  Did it traumatize Deane? Is he unable to eat, to sleep, because he now suffers from self-diagnosed PTSD at the sight of a porn star’s name? Was it Wahlbon’s failure to include a trigger warning to his answer on the quiz?  Had this prof’s fantasy been true, and despite it failing by about a million miles to meet even the most contorted definition of sexual harassment under Title IX, it still wouldn’t be offensive. It was just a name.

Yet, there is an underlying secret to Deane’s abuse of his position to give Wahlbon a zero for his outrageous answer. The forces of social justice take no prisoners, and they impose an affirmative duty on academics to police every word, every answer, for some secret hidden possible butterfly in China lest it cause a tsunami of tears on campus by outraged co-eds.

There may well be instances where offensive things are said that, despite the First Amendment which applies to state schools, will give rise to rational reactions. But this reflects the out-of-control distortions, the emanations and penumbras, striking fear in the hearts of presumptively intelligent people such that they indulge in flights of disconnected insanity.

We may never know whether Deane is a moron or a coward, but to Keaton Wahlbon, it makes no difference. He got his zero and there is no rational explanation possible. Welcome to higher education in the age of offense.

Update: Accordingly to Total Frat Moves (cool name, dudes), the initial determination that Sarah Jackson was a porn name, and decision to give a zero on the quiz (as well as comment that the answer was “inappropriate” in red pen) was made by the unnamed TA.

He ended up getting a zero for that, and a comment of “inappropriate” from the TA.

To the extent this called into question Deane’s remarkable knowledge of porn star names, or search for reasons to find offense, the fault lies with the TA rather than Deane. While the same concerns apply to the TA, it’s significantly different in that the TA, also a student, being inclined to search for reasons to be offended has become commonplace on campus. Rather than simply note that the student didn’t know his TA’s name, the TA chose to seek a reason to find his answer to be “inappropriate,” and found one.

As for Deane, the impact of his TA finding a basis for offense, which he explains as meeting whatever inexplicable definition of sexual harassment under Title IX floated in a head filled with rocks, may have given rise to paralyzing fear that if he didn’t back up his TA’s outrage, he would be the next victim of the TA’s allegations of sexual harassment.

After all, once a sexual offense is alleged by a student, disputing it is tantamount to becoming a sexual harassment apologist, Not even a professor can withstand the Spanish Inquisition. It’s not as if Wahlbon was deserving of thoughtful and mature consideration by his professor in the face of a TA’s cries of sexual harassment. It’s not as if a professor should be expected to be the adult in the room when faced with the potential threats of a unduly sensitive TA with mad google skillz.

Then again, there is no excuse for Deane’s ridiculous invocation of Title IX. Whether he believed what he wrote, stupid as it may be, or responded out of fear and was more worried about protecting himself than his male student, remains in issue. Either way, Deane’s response was inane and inexcusable.