Harvard bans fraternisation between professors undergrads

Harvard University has officially moved to ban sex and romantic relationships between students and their teachers.

Relationships between undergraduates and faculty members are prohibited. Faculty are also prohibited from relationships with graduate students who are under their supervision, while graduate students are prohibited from relationships with undergraduates only “if the graduate student is in a position to grade, evaluate, or supervise the undergraduate”.

The actions follow those of Yale University, which banned student-faculty relationships in 2010; the University of Connecticut, which banned them in 2013 and Arizona State University, whose faculty voted to prohibit themselves from dating students whom they might “reasonably be expected” to have academic authority over in January, according to Arizona Central.

A spokesperson for Yale said that several faculty had been disciplined since the rule was imposed.

In a statement given, a spokesperson for Harvard said that as part of the process of reviewing the university’s Title IX policy, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ committee on sexual misconduct had “determined that the existing language on relationships of unequal status did not explicitly reflect the faculty’s expectations of what constituted an appropriate relationship between undergraduate students and faculty members”.

“Therefore, the committee revised the policy to include a clear prohibition to better accord with these expectations,” the statement concluded.

Faculty are also prohibited from relationships with graduate students who are under their supervision, while graduate students are prohibited from relationships with undergraduates only “if the graduate student is in a position to grade, evaluate, or supervise the undergraduate”.

Alison Johnson, the professor who chairs the committee on sexual misconduct, told Bloomberg that the decision had not been particularly contentious on campus. “Undergraduates come to college to learn from us,” she said. “We’re not here to have sexual or romantic relationships with them.”

Other universities take a more laissez-faire approach to the issue. “The best time to date your professor, if at all, is after you have graduated from school,” is the advice given by the University of California, Santa Cruz, and reproduced on the website of the Women’s Center at Northwestern University.

“While it is true that some students have been able to date their professors without any problems, this is the exception rather than the rule.”