Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 14, 1993 TAG: 9304140323
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE UVA BAN
NOTES from Sex 101 - Romance and Higher Education:Sexual abuse is a crime, sexual harassment forbidden. Let's get that straight. They have no place anywhere, including on college campuses. And sex between a teacher and his or her student should be impermissible.
But to ban all sexual relationships between faculty members and undergraduates, as the University of Virginia is proposing? That's going too far.
To be sure, there is an imbalance of power between professors and students. Professors shouldn't be allowed to get involved with students whose academic careers they're in a position to affect - particularly if the student is taking the professor's course and depending on him or her for a fair grade.
A conflict of interest is inherent in such relationships. An affirmative response to an overture by a professor might be taken as a condition for success in the course, whether that is stated or not - or, indeed, even intended.
The imbalance of power also extends, to a degree, beyond actual classroom relations to the populations of faculty and students generally. Professors are inevitably authority figures for students, most of whom have only recently parted from their parents.
Still, where there is no direct student-teacher relationship or undue influence or control, two consenting adults ought to be able to let an underlying attraction bloom into romance, if both so desire.
It's going to happen in any case. Undergraduates cannot always be protected from their own foolishness. These are college students, most of them 18 or older, who expect to make their own choices, wise or not, about affairs of the heart. They have the right to do so.
The powers of academia cannot hope to prevent disappointment or heartbreak. What they can, and should, try to eliminate is abuse of power.
That is the focus, for instance, of Virginia Tech's strategy. There is no policy banning student/teacher relationships, but any abuse of authority for sex is covered under the university's sexual harassment policy.
Tech's policy notes the ethical problems inherent in even a consensual relationship with a student who is taking a professor's class, and warns that if a complaint is filed the faculty member will be held accountable for unprofessional behavior.
That may be too timid. If a professor must have a relationship with a student, why shouldn't he or she have to wait until the class is ended, grades are assigned, and the inherent conflict of interest has passed?
UVa's proposal, on the other hand, goes too far the other way, in assuming that every student/faculty relationship is improper. "This is about the abuse of power, not romance," said Cindy Aron, a member of the university's Committee on Women's Concerns.
Where it is about the abuse of power, the university should act vigorously.
But surely there are circumstances under which students and professors - some just a few years out of college themselves - might meet and, dare we say, fall in love.
There should still be room - recognized by the Committee on Women's Concerns as well as others - for respecting the autonomy of students, and for romance.