A former student of Mayor Daniel Biss alleged the Democratic congressional frontrunner “had an inappropriate romantic relationship” with her during her time at the University of Chicago in a Monday afternoon Bluesky post.
Megan Wachspress, a Stanford Law School lecturer, was an undergraduate majoring in mathematics and political science at UChicago from 2002 to 2006, according to her LinkedIn. Her post came just hours before Primary Election Day polls open in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District.
“It took becoming a professor myself to realize the implications – what it means to be attracted to someone who categorically has less power than you,” she wrote in a second Bluesky post. “I don’t know if it’s disqualifying, but there are too many women not getting a platform as a result of behavior like this for me not to say something.”
Biss served as an assistant professor of mathematics at UChicago from September 2002 to August 2008, according to his LinkedIn.
“In 2004, when Daniel was 26 and before he met his wife, Dr. Wachspress was a 20-year-old student in a course Daniel taught during his time as a postdoctoral instructor at the University of Chicago,” a Biss campaign spokesperson wrote in a Monday night statement to The Daily. “After the course ended, Daniel and Dr. Wachspress went on a handful of dates over the course of a few weeks. Daniel realized then, as he does now, that it was ill-advised, and he ended it.”
In a Substack post Monday evening, Wachspress shared her experience as a “woman math major” in a male-dominated department. She alleged receiving increasing attention from Biss throughout the academic quarter. After the course concluded, she alleged, Biss sent her an email invitation to “meet up, socially.”
“After a few very intense evenings, he had second thoughts,” Wachspress wrote. “It was wrong to date a student, of course, so we would have to stop making out. Of course we could still hang out, and so we continued to spend time together in what to any external observer would look like dates, until gradually that stopped, too.”
She added that after crossing paths with Biss “a few years ago” through her career, the mayor reached out and “offered an apology, of sorts.”
Wachspress wrote Illinois’ 9th Congressional District primary had become “unavoidable for those of us who follow left politics” and that becoming a professor herself made it “impossible not to say anything.”
“To want someone who wants to learn from you is to want someone for their powerlessness,” she wrote on Substack. “And so, much later than I should, I realized this was my last chance, and I said something.”
Correction: A previous version of this article’s headline misattributed the acknowledgement of the mayor’s “ill-advised” relationship. The Daily regrets this error.
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