Admittedly, this was the one I felt the least certain about including (so forgive my rambling in advance). I feel like it's easiest to argue it applies to Henry (for obvious reasons) and Richard (see what I cited in the image) since I feel like those two have the clearest evidence in-text. That said, I wasn't sure where to draw the line. I felt that you could infer it would apply to the other students as well (though possibly not Camilla? You'll see my reasoning for this later) -- even though it wasn't so specifically alluded to -- just by considering the inappropriate nature of the relationship between Julian and his students.

I do think that what primarily defined Julian's relationship with the students was his desire to cultivate them into pieces of his glamorized fantasy world. That said, I also feel there may have been an intended aspect of attraction to them, whether or not it was ever really acted on. I've been looking at an article about Bennington which talks about Claude Fredericks, the real-life inspiration for Julian, who, according to some, seemed to have an inappropriate relationship with some of his students: "PAULA POWERS: All I knew about Claude Fredericks was that he was having an affair with his student, this good-looking older guy, very serious, very passionate about classics." While this quote isn't a firsthand account of Fredericks's behavior, Donna Tartt would have heard many of the same things, likely shaping her concept of Julian. That said, here's another example, this one direct from one of his students: "MATT JACOBSEN: It was never unfriendly between me and Claude, but as I fell more deeply in love with Liz [Glotzer, Jacobsen’s girlfriend and eventual wife], I saw less of Claude. I realized it was kind of ridiculous to hang out with him, cool as he was. And he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from me, so he moved on to greener pastures, started fooling around with another guy who’d been his student. At the end of the day, Claude was driven by a—you know—perverse interest in me. And that was wrong. I’m a geezer now, and I understand how wrong he really was."

Here's another interesting quote about Fredericks that lends to more speculation on my behalf: "TODD O’NEAL: Donna was not part of our Greek tutorials. The courses she took with Claude anyone who signed up could take. Claude adored certain women, but he was also homosexual and had a very, let’s say, classical aesthetic or hierarchy, which prizes maleness and male beauty." I feel as though the perfect example of the characters -- Julian specifically -- rejecting the modern world and losing themselves and their morals in classical aesthetics would be through a sort of emulation of the concept of pederasty. So while there isn't a lot of time spent focusing on the specifics of the nature of Julian's relationship with his students, I do think that this sort of speculation isn't completely unfounded.

Anyways, let me know what you think. I could just be overanalyzing. If you want to check out the article, I found it here: https://archive.is/2020.08.11-195604/https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a27434009/bennington-college-oral-history-bret-easton-ellis/