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from the I'm-not-touching-this-with-a-ten-foot-pole dept.
The Guardian has a fascinating piece entitled Sexual paranoia on campus – and the professor at the eye of the storm. There is a lot going on in this article/interview and it touches on a lot of different issues in both society and higher-ed in general. Some choice quotes:
But you do end up making strange bedfellows. The people supporting free speech now are the conservatives. It's incomprehensible to me, but it's the so-called liberals on campus, the students who think of themselves as activists, who are becoming increasingly authoritarian. So I'm trying to step carefully. It's not like you want to make certain allies, particularly the men's rights people.
Kipnis's original essay was provoked by an email she received about a year before, informing her that relationships – dating, romantic or sexual – between undergraduates and faculty members at Northwestern were now banned. The same email informed her that relationships between graduates and staff, though not forbidden, were also problematic, and had to be reported to department chairs. "It annoyed me," she says. The language was neutral, but it seemed clear that it was mostly women this code was meant to protect. She thought of all those she knew who are married to former students, or who are the children of such couples, and wondered where this left them. It seemed to her this was part of a process that was transforming the "professoriate" into a sexually suspicious class: "would-be harassers all, sexual predators in waiting".
On a personal note, when I interact with students (which is every day), it's always either with an open office door, or in a public area. So as not to be discriminatory, I do the same for all students, men, women, or others. This sort of culture on campuses does make everyone suspicious of everyone else and it makes it hard to trust others. Students can't trust the instructors because they might "do something", staff can't trust the students because even a false accusation can be career ending, so there's this overall chilling effect that occurs when what should be a collegiate environment turns into an us vs them thing. This is definitely worse in some places than others, but there is an undercurrent of it everywhere. I applaud Laura Kipnis for bringing these issues to the light -- if we're going down this route, it should at least be a conscious community decision rather than bureaucratic policy handed down from University Counsel and risk assessment teams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:11PM (5 children)
If you (a professor) are using your position of power to get in bed with students, there's something unseemly about that. And the asymmetry can easily lead to problems that end up hurting the student, professor, and the university's mission. Sure, banning student-teacher relationships will also prevent some connections that would have been positive and unproblematic. But in life many people are off-limits as romantic or sexual targets. Get used to it.
Children of a student-teacher couples probably realize that standards of behavior change over the years.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @12:42AM (2 children)
Not really. People are attracted to prestigious members of the opposite sex.
Yes, consenting adults are never off-limits though. If the relationship takes place off campus, there is nothing... REPEAT NOTHING that the university can legally do about it! Get used to it!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @01:54AM (1 child)
Ahh, my comment (parent) was modded troll for stating lawful and societal facts. What exactly is wrong with left-tards? What is it about personal liberty and responsibility that they find so abhorrent? That they somehow know better and people should live a life without agency? Sickening, delusional and authoritarian bunch of utter retards!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @03:28PM
> Ahh, my comment (parent) was modded troll for stating lawful and societal facts.
Nah, you are a troll because you misrepresented the law and 'societal facts.'
(a) The school absolutely can prevent it through their employment contract
(b) You misrepresented the power dynamic between faculty and students as if they are of equal power relative to each other which obviously false
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Friday April 14 2017, @01:04AM (1 child)
You don't even have to be a professor for that, you get offers even being a lowly assistant. The "Please help me pass this class" *wink*wink*nudge*nudge*know*what*I*mean* is real, you don't even have to be good looking. The university flat out tells us these days that you shouldn't be alone with (female) students one on one. If you have office hours you should keep the door open at all times - if they close it as they enter you ask them to open it again. "Open door policy" did previously mean that that students could just drop by and ask you things, now it's that the damn door stay open to your office unless you are alone in there and even then they prefer it if the door is open. When I started working here many years ago, and when I was a student, many of the smaller offices had couches in them - those are mostly gone now, no more "naps". Couches are now in public gathering areas. Some of the newer buildings look like aquariums, there are glass-walls everywhere, I'm starting to doubt they are just there for transparency, letting in the light and openness - it's a staff safety feature.
That you should not dip in the company ink just goes all around now, you can only have relations with people on your level and preferably you shouldn't even have that. That said there is a lot of dipping going on, which seems like a giant gamble cause if you do the wrong person it could be the end of the careers line for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @06:06PM
When I was a grad student doing the TA-thing, I do remember the pleas to "Please help me pass this class"; most of the time it was coming from the guys (I'm a guy, BTW). I don't seem to recall the "*wink*wink*nudge*nudge*know*what*I*mean*" part, though. Maybe the gals in my classes were just never quite that desperate? I do, on the other hand, remember one gal who I could sense a budding relationship beginning to form; she was a smart and motivated student. Nothing ever came of it though. Sometimes I wonder just what could have been. *Sigh*
That being said, I do think the policies set forth by universities are prudent and well-intentioned. This is not about stifling your social life or you "being kept in your place" but laying out measures to protect both the student and the university staff; more cynically you might say that this is the university's CYA policy to protect themselves from getting sued. My experience while in academia was that, while they had no intention of interfering with what two adults get up to on their own time, they laid out the rules so that both parties knew what the consequences could be if things suddenly went sideways. If you decided to flout the rules no one was going to go after you; but you also couldn't expect the university to stand by you if you did decide to dance too close to the line concerning the policy. Just my take on it.