Really folks? Students (especially undergraduate students) having affairs with their course professors is about as appropriate as employees sleeping with their direct supervisors for good grades, promotions, and/or favorable treatment. It is wrong, it is inappropriate, and why in the world would one want to handover such power and control? I guess I have forgotten what it's like to be 18 or 19 in college - naive, meek, impressionable. Now, as a 40-something - I'm all about being bold in saying no, your pissed, or you don't appreciate being objectified!
Undergraduate students are especially at risk for mistreatment, and faculty members should recognize this (as obviously - some already know). Undergraduate students - during orientation - should be provided the definition of sexual harrassment. College is probably their first introduction to the topic...male and female students need to understand what it is not just within the context of collegial relationships with their professors but with one another.
My impression is that this is/was a more common occurrence between female students and their male professors. Nowadays, with more female professors and/or leaders, they too are in a position of taking advantage of their students. Yup, women do this too.
The point is, students (male and female) need to understand that sex cannot be used for leverage or for power. Women, especially, still have a ways to go to recognize that they are empowered, that they have the power to say NO, to say they don't like something. I still think women are encouraged to be meek, demure or timid. When it comes to being threatened or blackmailed for sex, it's okay to get pissed off and to say "hell no."
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