Student Files ‘Hot For Teacher’ Lawsuit After Being Suspended For Racy Essay

A student has filed a $2.2 million “Hot For Teacher” lawsuit claiming that his free speech rights were violated when a Detroit-area university suspended him for writing a supposedly private journal about his attraction to a teacher.

Joseph Corlett is a 57-year-old home builder who enrolled in college because of a struggling economy. He was an A-student at Oakland University in Rochester until he turned in a journal in 2011 titled “Hot For Teacher.” In the essay Corlett compared his instructor to Ginger from Gilligan’s Island and said he couldn’t learn anything in the class because he was too distracted.

Corlett also wrote about another pregnant teacher who he said was “hot, and not just from baking the bun in her oven.”

The “Hot For Teacher” essay goes into sultry details about professors, some of them imagined.

“My first battle with the hot for teacher thing, aside from second grade, was fought in Composition I at Oakland Community College,” Corlett wrote. “She was blonde and attractive in the Meg Ryan kind of way which I usually don’t go for… I shouldn’t have taken her for Comp 2 but I couldn’t resist smart and pretty.”

In the “Hot For Teacher” lawsuit, Corlett says the class challenged students to write “raw things, a personal diary that maybe we wouldn’t want anyone to read.” But when school officials came across the “Hot For Teacher” writings, they banned Corlett from attending the school for three terms and forced him to undergo counseling if he wanted to return. Corlett said the punishment violated his rights.

“When you get past the titillation, you’ve got to look into what’s really going on here,” Corlett said. “It’s academic freedom or no academic freedom. We’re all collectively dumbed when speech is suppressed or challenged.”

The “Hot For Teacher” lawsuit is seeking $2.2 million for mental anguish and embarrassment for being kicked out of school.

An Oakland spokesman said the school wouldn’t comment on the “Hot For Teacher” lawsuit.