A Request from Sarah

After class, just as Luisa unlocked her office to enter, Sarah Osbourne stepped out of her own office. "Luisa?" she called. "Do you have a few minutes to discuss a proposal?"

"I was hoping to catch up on some reading..." she started.

"It won't take long," said Sarah. "And it's important."

"In that case, sure," said Luisa. She re-locked her door and walked down to Sarah's office. Sarah was already sitting behind her desk when Luisa entered, and Luisa was surprised to see three other women already sitting in the small space -- Natalie, the head of the department; Angela, a lovely young Black graduate student who studied under Sarah; and a petite blonde woman who Luisa had never seen before.

"This is Justine Whitehead," explained Sarah with a smile and a gesture toward the blonde. "She's the head of the LWG."

"LWG?" asked Luisa.

The blonde spoke. She had a pleasant, high voice, though she made every statement sound like a question. "The Lesbian Working Group? We're a group of students and faculty working to ensure equity for lesbians?"

Sarah continue, "As you know, I've been given responsibility for the oversight of the glory hole. Recently Ms. Whitehead here came to me with some concerns about how the glory hole impacts equity on campus."

Luisa frowned slightly. "You mean they want to shut it down?"

"Oh no! Not at all!" exclaimed Justine. "We don't think that equality involves dragging everyone down to the same level, but rather raising everyone up." Luisa smiled -- this idea was an important driver of her research and her teaching, and now she was hearing it repeated back by a student. It felt like she was having an impact on the world.

Justine continued, "We just think it's unfair that men can visit and be uhh, satisfied -- and now they even get to watch through the glass."

Luisa said, "About the watching -- did you know the sessions are online? You can watch there if that's what you're interested in. Anyway -- " here she turned back to face Sarah "... I don't understand my role here. Surely this is something to be handled by you? Or maybe Natalie?" She looked at Natalie.

"I've delegated all of this to Sarah," said Natalie. "I'm just here as a courtesy, I'm begging you, please ignore me as I have enough to do already." They all chuckled at this. "But," continued Natalie, "Sarah, you should just jump to the request."

Sarah folded her hands. 'Trying to look serious,' thought Luisa.

"The LWG reached out recently about the glory hole, and the new rules have made the discrepancies even more clear. We discussed different approaches to equity, and in the end we reached an agreement to try an experiment. We'd like your assistance in running this experiment."

"'Experiment'?" asked Luisa. "What are you asking me to do?"

"It's extending some of the glory hole role-play into the classroom setting. In particular, the students will pick the clothing you wear to class each week, and then a short sexual topic for you to discuss in class."

Luisa sat back. "What? What kind of clothing? And what sex topics?"

"Well, any clothing they want, including none at all. Remember, this is just a bit of role-play, so that members of the LWG have something titillating to look forward to. And as for sex talk, the students will pick the topic, you can just be frank about it."

Luisa frowned. "This sounds humiliating. What's the supposed benefit of this? And why me?"

"It's not humiliating at all, Luisa," assured Sarah. "It's just an extension of what you already do in the glory hole -- in fact, that's worse, because it is fully sexual and the men say all kinds of degrading shit in there. No one knows that better than me. And anyway, now that the cameras are in place, remember, anybody can watch you online whenever they want. So if you think about it, this is a lot more innocent."

Sarah continued, "One main benefit is equity. That's a primary goal of our entire department! That alone should be enough, but also I have a suspicion that this experiment will show benefits similar to the glory hole experiment, that is, more pro-social behavior. So if you're interested in that aspect, there are papers that can come out of it. And, if it's successful, we may roll it out to more classes."

Luisa frowned harder, and Sarah finished, "The reason we asked you is that we know you're a strong, independent woman. We thought this might be a bit difficult for the first woman in the department -- it's tough to be a trailblazer. And since your class is mostly graduate students, we thought it might be a little less rowdy. So, how about you try it next week and see how it goes? I think you'll see it isn't such a big deal."

Luisa sighed hard. She didn't like to let down her co-workers, and she didn't want someone else to have to face this. "How exactly will this work?" she asked with resignation.

Sarah perked up and smiled. "There are a bunch of details!" she said. "You know I love those. So, each week the female students will vote on an internal web site. There's a small budget to buy anything clothing that is necessary, though you'll have to do the actual shopping. The topic of the week will also be sent to you. One another thing is that, to preserve the anonymous feeling that is so important to the working of the glory hole, you won't mention the requests in class -- you should just act completely normally, regardless of what happens. Some students might react, but you should just carry on. This is to help preserve their feelings."

"What if a student is very uncomfortable with this?" asked Luisa. "Equity is fine, but safety is also important."

"We already surveyed your class and everyone is ok with it," came Sarah's reply. "And Angela here has already set up the web site. We're ready to start today! In fact, Angela, could you take the final step?"

Angela said, "I'll finish after this meeting. Luisa, you should expect an email from the system soon."

Luisa looked around. Justine wore a big, beaming smile. "This is going to be so wonderful?" she chirped.