Academic pursuits

Last Saturday, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system has adopted a new policy that not only bans relationships between students and professors, but also requires schools to "ask faculty and staff in positions of power to disclose any existing romances or other 'consensual relationships' that might violate the policy." A professor who doesn't tell the school about such a relationship could face "disciplinary action."\nHowever, the University of Minnesota's policy on "nepotism" and "personal relationships" dictates that "faculty members and advisers are cautioned that personal relationships with current students are unwise and may violate other University policies, even when activities prohibited by this policy have been avoided." Violation of this rule could result in, again, disciplinary action -- "up to and including termination of employment or academic dismissal". \nSo the professor can tell the school and risk disciplinary action or not tell the school and risk disciplinary action. \nBrilliant policy.\nAt this point, many of you are thinking there's a simple solution to this: Don't get involved in professor-student romances. This is essentially IU's reaction. The University's Code of Academic Ethics mandates that "a faculty member shall not have an amorous or sexual relationship, consensual or otherwise, with a student who is enrolled in a course being taught by the faculty member or whose performance is being supervised or evaluated by the faculty member." It also states that "a faculty member should be careful to distance himself or herself from any decisions that may reward or penalize a student with whom he or she has or has had an amorous or sexual relationship, even outside the instructional context, especially when the faculty member and student are in the same academic unit or in units that are allied academically."\nNow I know this is a well-intentioned effort to keep predatory professors from seducing students, but there's one major problem: Based on my informal observations of faculty behavior over the past five years, I'd hazard a guess that, were it not for the professor-graduate assistant hookup, the professorate would risk extinction in much the same fashion as the giant panda. \nOK, that's an exaggeration. But there is a fair number of seemingly happy, normal academic married couples around who started out as professor-and-student and who, had they not been so fortunate as to meet in a decade before sexual harassment litigation, would have been fried by a dean. I can't claim to have the final answer as to where the line between normal relationships and abuses lies, but I think those of us in the younger generations, the grad students and nontenured faculty, should ask: Is it fair that we face such strict restraints, when violating it worked out for many who now have tenure?\nAnd no, I'm not out to date a professor or student. However, if you're neither, ladies, I am still single.