In the coming months, faculty at the University of California will vote on whether or not to institute a ban on professors dating their students. The ban will only apply to relationships between students and professors who have an academic relationship; the idea is to prevent a possible abuse of power by faculty members who find themselves responsible for turning in their date’s grades. Georgetown’s policy, like California’s, is ill-defined. The University should clarify its policy so students and faculty alike are are aware both of restrictions on their behavior and of their rights, but should not attempt to actively police relationships between students and professors.
The most relevant part of the current policy states that it is prohibited for persons to make unwelcome sexual advances when “submission to or rejection of such conduct is used as a basis for making an employment or academic distinction.” The Student Handbook also helpfully adds that harassment between students and faculty “unfairly exploits the power inherent in a faculty member’s or supervisor’s position.”
Writing a policy for student-teacher relations is no easy task. An across-the-board ban is a deep infringement of the right to privacy, and implies a deep distrust of students and faculty alike to conduct their private lives in an appropriate manner. It’s also unrealistic; students and faculty spend far too much time with one another to expect that some won’t become involved, and even at a small, career-oriented school like Georgetown there are plenty of undergraduates who are as old or older than their professors, to say nothing of the University’s large graduate student population.
Simply requiring professors and students to report their relationships, a requirement of the University of Michigan’s policy, would infringe on the right to privacy even more than a ban-it’s hard to imagine something more humiliating than having to detail your love life for the administration-while providing little in the way of protection.
Still, the potential for abuses of power in such situations is too great to be ignored. It’s important for the University to have a firm, clear policy that informs faculty of more than whether or not it’s ethical to sexually harass their students. But the University should trust its faculty, and preserve their and students’ right to privacy.
