Do you ever keep student papers?

[kaysixteen]

How does the school define 'relationship'?

[Ruralguy]

Mine just says "sexual or romantic relationship."  You could argue vagueness, but I doubt it would work. I don't think the "we didn't see it as relationship" defense will work, although you could always attempt such a defense in a hearing.

[Sun_Worshiper]

My college now bans any relationship between any staff/faculty and students.

Same at my place.

[Caracal]

My college now bans any relationship between any staff/faculty and students.

Same at my place.

My general impression is that you don't tend to see these kinds of blanket rules at large state schools. After all, if have 20k students, including plenty of non traditional students and grad students, you could hardly forbid any relationships between faculty/staff and students. There's nothing wrong with a grad student in history dating a department admin for the political science department. Even professor/undegrad relationships might be fine in some circumstances. If a professor in the chemistry department meets a 30 year old engineering major on okcupid, is there really any reason to prohibit that kind of relationship?

Obviously, that doesn't mean you can't have rules about professors dating students they are teaching or have taught.

[Sun_Worshiper]

My college now bans any relationship between any staff/faculty and students.

Same at my place.

My general impression is that you don't tend to see these kinds of blanket rules at large state schools. After all, if have 20k students, including plenty of non traditional students and grad students, you could hardly forbid any relationships between faculty/staff and students. There's nothing wrong with a grad student in history dating a department admin for the political science department. Even professor/undegrad relationships might be fine in some circumstances. If a professor in the chemistry department meets a 30 year old engineering major on okcupid, is there really any reason to prohibit that kind of relationship?

Obviously, that doesn't mean you can't have rules about professors dating students they are teaching or have taught.

I'm at a large state school.

I just looked it up, out of curiosity, and I see that actually the rule is that faculty can't date students who they could potentially be in a position of authority over.

I agree that a blanket rule would be overkill.

[downer]

How do we explain the fact that after 20+ years of these policies, many, or maybe most, schools still don't have policies about these relationships?

1. It isn't really a problem.
2. People don't think it is a problem.
3. Administration thinks if you have a policy about it, then parents will think it happens. And administration don't want that.
4. Other.

[Ruralguy]

Nobody has presented any evidence that schools don't have policies. Mine does, and others have stated there's does which only proves some do and some don't. Others have declared its rare, but I'd like to see evidence of that.

In any case,  you might not need to have a policy since most schools do have sexual misconduct policies which disallow quid pro quo, etc.  At least, that's the likely administrative explanation for not having a separate relationship policy which actually isn't a terrible explanation! Imagine that.

My school has had some cases. Without getting into detail, we're rather quirky, and if anything I'd expect this to be more prevalent elsewhere.

The remaining question is why it's problematic if extant.

As it's usually stated, I think the idea is the faculty and staff are there for educating or providing support services for their student clientele, not to be provided with sexual or romantic partners.

There's lots of places to look for appropriate partners. You don't have to raid your classroom.

[mamselle]

The main concern is that an authority figure who ties sexual favors or any other kinds of approval-seeking behavior to their relationship with a student has immediately both diluted the healthy boundaries on which a mature relationship depends to nothing, and put the student (who is more often than not confused, new to the university setting, to the town, to the discipline, to everything, in fact) into the untenable position of having to engage in the relationship whether they want to or not, since they are now in the uneasy place where a refusal at any point thereafter could be dangerous to their grade, or worse.

This shouldn't actually need spelling out....

M.

[Caracal]

The main concern is that an authority figure who ties sexual favors or any other kinds of approval-seeking behavior to their relationship with a student has immediately both diluted the healthy boundaries on which a mature relationship depends to nothing, and put the student (who is more often than not confused, new to the university setting, to the town, to the discipline, to everything, in fact) into the untenable position of having to engage in the relationship whether they want to or not, since they are now in the uneasy place where a refusal at any point thereafter could be dangerous to their grade, or worse.

This shouldn't actually need spelling out....

M.

Plus, it introduces really terrible dynamics into all interactions. I teach at a school where a professor had a relationship with a student (there was more-and worse- to it than that) I check in on the reddit page for the school and a couple of people said they are taking a class this guy is teaching this semester. According to them, the whole thing was a topic of discussion on the groupie for the class and most students were trying to just avoiding any interacting with this guy any more than they absolutely had to. Not ideal.

[downer]

I did eventually find a policy about faculty-student relationships for one of the places I work at -- it says that such relationships have to be declared to HR, and they can't be between people where one has power over the other. So it is pretty standard.

I had actually asked one class there about the issue earlier in the semester, and it was plain that none of them had ever heard of any policy.

The other places have sexual harassment policies, which are basically what is set out by Title IX. But there's no general policy about relationships between faculty and students as far as I can see.

Has any research been done on what proportion of schools have policies about faculty-student relationships?
This IHE piece says that in a 2014 study, of 55 places surveyed, only Yale banned such relationships.
But the point of the piece was that by 2018 more places had policies because of #me-too
I suspect it is still a minority of colleges that have policies, but I haven't looked for more recent studies.

[Ruralguy]

I should say that my school has only had this policy since sbput 2018 or so due to there having been a case with a temp faculty member .Since  that person had no tenure protection, they were given choice of immediate dismissal or going through a hearing and following the recommendations of the hearing panel. They chose dismissal. The students were in the  profs classes. And since this was all pre policy, it was covered by TIX.

Anyway, I'd bet it's a PUI/SLAC thing. Universities don't want to start preventing an adult prof from dating an adult student in a separate school. In the case of predation, etc., it's covered by TIX and/or other general misconduct policies.  Wouldn't surprise me if , say, 50 percent of SLACs have it and maybe 25 percent of everybody else? Maybe more by now,. Remember that many colleges have completely rethought these issues very recently. I'll try looking for SLACs. I've looked at many SLAC handbooks for othe reasons. I can't recall which had this, though I know some did.

[marshwiggle]

The main concern is that an authority figure who ties sexual favors or any other kinds of approval-seeking behavior to their relationship with a student has immediately both diluted the healthy boundaries on which a mature relationship depends to nothing, and put the student (who is more often than not confused, new to the university setting, to the town, to the discipline, to everything, in fact) into the untenable position of having to engage in the relationship whether they want to or not, since they are now in the uneasy place where a refusal at any point thereafter could be dangerous to their grade, or worse.

This shouldn't actually need spelling out....

M.

Plus, it introduces really terrible dynamics into all interactions. I teach at a school where a professor had a relationship with a student (there was more-and worse- to it than that) I check in on the reddit page for the school and a couple of people said they are taking a class this guy is teaching this semester. According to them, the whole thing was a topic of discussion on the groupie for the class and most students were trying to just avoiding any interacting with this guy any more than they absolutely had to. Not ideal.

Indeed. Who would want to be one of the other students in the class? Do you really think your work will get evaluated fairly in comparison to someone else in the class who is having sex with the prof? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.....

[mleok]

The main concern is that an authority figure who ties sexual favors or any other kinds of approval-seeking behavior to their relationship with a student has immediately both diluted the healthy boundaries on which a mature relationship depends to nothing, and put the student (who is more often than not confused, new to the university setting, to the town, to the discipline, to everything, in fact) into the untenable position of having to engage in the relationship whether they want to or not, since they are now in the uneasy place where a refusal at any point thereafter could be dangerous to their grade, or worse.

This shouldn't actually need spelling out....

M.

Simply put, the power dynamics make it impossible to truly have consent, and it can create a hostile environment for other students.

[Caracal]

The main concern is that an authority figure who ties sexual favors or any other kinds of approval-seeking behavior to their relationship with a student has immediately both diluted the healthy boundaries on which a mature relationship depends to nothing, and put the student (who is more often than not confused, new to the university setting, to the town, to the discipline, to everything, in fact) into the untenable position of having to engage in the relationship whether they want to or not, since they are now in the uneasy place where a refusal at any point thereafter could be dangerous to their grade, or worse.

This shouldn't actually need spelling out....

M.

Simply put, the power dynamics make it impossible to truly have consent, and it can create a hostile environment for other students.

The question of coercion comes down to the subjective experience of the student. But, that's not really the point in terms of why professors should never have relationships with students they teach. The power dynamics can make issues of consent murky. We don't really need to go further to condemn these kinds of relationships. When you have power gaps that are so large, it can make it impossible to actually judge consent and also impossible to establish any kind of structures which could protect the institution and the people involved. There's a reason lots of companies allow for people to date people they might work with in various capacities, but usually forbid people from having a relationship with someone they directly supervise. The former is usually manageable, the latter is not.