I think realistically, any faculty at Harvard should be "socially exemplary" and wouldn't resort to boning the students. I'm 30, and banging a 19 year old sociology major takes a valiant exertion of will to listen to their inane horseshit to find common ground. So, I don't think that's unrealistic. Especially in that area, where it is literally possible to drown in college student pussy, why bother pissing off the paying customers?
An acquaintance of mine is, how shall we say, a dirtbag. He holds 2 master's degrees, but is relegated to teaching highschool english. He married one of his students. From highschool. He met her when she was 16, in his class, but he claims nothing of impropriety occurred until she was 18 or 19, when they happened to meet again (through facebook). This is me nodding, mmhmm, alright, yeah. They were recently divorced and he had the balls to claim he really thought it was going to work. He's over 30. If there's a line, that is tip toeing right next to it, shy of actually having an affair with your highschool student. Another acquaintance was fired for smoking/selling pot to his students. But that's a different thread.
I am not saying I could stand a 19 year old long enough to bang her. But what is the difference between someone that isn't your student at the school, and someone you meet outside of school. Hell with a school that big you may meet her outside of school and not even know she went there.
That's not an ethical line I would want to toy with, but I'm having a hard time justifying the rule of there being no relationships (versus profs can't have sex with current students). Those people are technically adults. A 25 year old English faculty member shacking up with a 22 year old Bio major doesn't seem wrong to me. The rule would outlaw that as soon as it would the 75 year old professor trying to hook up with a 19 year old coed. This law seems to be drafted in response to male faculty / female student relationships. However, it seems like there are plenty of young women who would gladly get with their professor sans academic/professional benefits. Wasn't a TiBette posting about that recently? If she isn't in his class, there shouldn't be a problem. People at some point have to be treated like adults. This causes issues at the high school level too. I think it is a felony in most states for high school faculty to sleep with a student. That doesn't seem like a problem at all. As a male teacher, I can't imagine sleeping with one of my students. However, what if a 22 year old female kindergarten teacher hooks up with an 18 year senior student on spring break? That doesn't stir moral revulsion in me. Here is an interesting read about the high school issues in Texas. A Closer Look at the Texas High School Student-Teacher Sex Epidemic I never did, but I would have liked to with a few. Hell, I took a speech class because my buddy said his TA was hot. And man she was. She was super interesting too. I remember she was doing her thesis on Iraq War propaganda. I also had a poetry professor who was super hot and super smart. Big Mark Strand fan. Also, the only silver lining to being unattractive is being a high school teacher by profession. I feel bad for teachers who are attractive male or female. That onslaught of teenage hormones can't be easy.
I don't know any Ivy Leaguers. But wouldn't the opposite be the case? Wouldn't these people be sexually frustrated nerds at their core?
I can see why the policy exists. Just because a professor isn't teaching a given student at the moment doesn't mean there's no potential for conflict of interest. That undergrad could quite easily have to take that professor's course in the future, or have friends who are taking the professor's course. These are all minefields for trying to maintain fairness and impartiality towards students. The same sort of dynamic exists at my place of work. While there's a definite divide between management and non-management, some people seem really lax about the divide as long as one person isn't in the other person's department. The problem is that people move positions so frequently that one person who you think isn't your boss today could easily become your boss next month. You're better off getting your meat on the outside, but some people just can't seem to avoid it.
See, I think this is in part to save the profs from themselves, as there's more of a stigma on the prof than the student when this gets found out. I can very well imagine the student bitching to the powers that be that his/her mark wasn't good enough, and it was because their relationship failed and the prof was taking it out on him/her. Personally, I think they should allow profs to fuck their students, but only if the student's records have a clear annotation of "FUCKED THE PROF" beside the appropriate classes, regardless of if it's before or after they were fucking.
It does. Not just boning, as there's a reason why a high percentage of people meet their SO at work. A hell of a lot of HR departments have done back flips to try and limit their liability in these situations, forcing employees to "officially notify HR" when non-work relationships occur, etc. They also tend to have parts of the employee employment manual that provides them the ability to fire or reassign individuals in such situations in order to eliminate conflict of interest, without repercussion.
I had a TA who really wanted to bone my then girlfriend. It was uncomfortable as he would hit on her after class and infront of me. But then she and I broke up, and the class ended and they started dating/banging in mid 2005, and then they broke up a few months later. In 2007 I show up for a section and he is my TA. He wants us all to introduce ourselves, and talks about himself first and says: "I've been married for 4 years, and my wife just got back from two years working in Japan" When he got to my name, and then saw my face I truly saw the first "Oh shit" face I had ever seen. Nothing like having a relationship with a student while your wife is out of town, and one of your students knows it. I did get an A in the class with minimal effort though.
Just throwing this out there. Harvard, in essence, is saying that they don't trust undergrads to be able to make the right decision for themselves regarding sleeping with a professor - basically citing the power differential. And maybe that's right. However, they seem to have no problem with undergrads incurring a bill of @$62,000 a year to attend and potentially go into life altering debt. Seems to be an interesting dichotomy.
Harvard doesn't give a shit where the money comes from, why would they? I think this is a bigger problem at the graduate level, and I think this is Harvard trying to stay a step ahead of the competition. Looking at the pain in the ass that Columbia had with their rape case (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/0 ... 55612.html), doing nothing AND charging $62k a year is not acceptable. Schools are struggling with this issue across the board and it gets absurd. One of the things that contributed to the Pumpkin Riot in New Hampshire last fall was the added security. The students had invited friends, said friends couldn't get into the dorms/common areas without key cards and thus, had no where to go when the police said "disperse".