Sex Between Faculty and Students?

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I find myself largely in agreement with Ruth Ginzberg's comments, except the
focus always seems to be on the most crassly obvious of cases. Of course one
shouldn't have sex with one's students when you're teaching them, supervising
or giving them references. But there are all sorts of situations where students
and professors meet outside a professional relationship - they can't help it,
when so much of university life is not academic. What then? What is the
difference between meeting a student whom one is not teaching etc, and someone
you might meet in another situation off-campus? Why should a professor in, say,
a philosophy department and a student in a biology department, with no
prospect of a professional relationship, be prevented from having a sexual
relationship? There would still be an imbalance of power in terms of age,
experience, income etc, but what would be the difference between this relation-
ship and those between people with similar imbalances outside a university?
 
A.Atkins, 3-5 Humanities Centre, Dept. of English, University
of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2E5. Tel (403) 492-7833. Fax
492-8142. Email: aatkins  @  vm.ucs.ualberta.ca

 
>What do people think about two different but related cases?:  (1)
>verbal, in-class discussions of sexual subject matters; and (2) use of
>sexually explicit pictorial material in teaching.
 
One distinction sometimes made in social/political philosophy is between
the following liberty-limiting principles:
        a) Harm To Others Principle, which says...
                Individual's liberty may be limited to prevent
                harm to others.
        b) Harm To Self Principle, (Paternalism) which says...
                Individual's liberty may be limited to prevent
                individual from harming his- or her- own self.
        c) Offense Principle, which says...
                Individual's liberty may be limited to prevent
                offense to others.
 
I haven't argued that *students* should be prevented from engaging in
sexual relations with professors, or penalized if they do (#b above -
Paternalism).  The issue of restricting *professors'* liberty to
engage in sexual relations w students is #a above - Prevention of Harm
to Others -- which is different.  It is like requiring people to stop
at a red light, EVERY TIME, even though there might inded be
individual instances in which not stopping at the red light would not
in fact cause harm.  Overall, the amount of liberty lost (liberty to
travel forward unimpeded by red lights) is trivial compared to the
amount of harm prevented by so limiting everyone's liberty in that
way.  This is analogous, I would argue, w restricting *professors'*
liberty to engage in sexual relationships w students.
 
I do not think that students ought to be prevented from doing what
others believe might cause harm to themselves, just because others
believe they might suffer.  They have the right to take risks TO
THEMSELVES. Ergo, I would *not* favor restricting students' liberty to
engage in sexual relationships with anybody whomsoever.  However, I do
favor making professors responsible for not engaging in sexual
relationships with students, for the reasons above.
 
Note the issue of whether *professors* ought not to have sex with
students is DIFFERENT from the issue of whether *students* ought not
to have sex with professors.  It is exactly because the relationship
is *NOT* symmetrical which makes the whole business a bad thing
in the first place.
 
The 2 additional issues you raise about in-class discussions of
"sexual subject matters" and use of "sexually explicit pictorial
material in teaching" seem to fall into yet a 3rd category, #c above
(Offense Principle).  I don't think these issues are very much related
at all.  If universities are charged with avoiding offending students'
sensibilities IN THE COURSE OF INSTRUCTION, then we're in deep
pedagogical trouble.
 
It is entirely appropriate to charge universities and individual
faculty members with not causing HARM to students (#a above), but that
is different from not causing OFFENSE to students (#c above).
 
This is one of the conflations that has seriously hampered efforts to
get HARMful sexual harrassment and racial harrassment (etc.) off of
campuses and out of classrooms: it is that those who don't wish to
have their liberty to harrass restricted are trying to claim that
harrassment is merely OFFENSIVE, not HARMFUL.  Those who want campus
environments (or classrooms) free of harrassment want to claim that
harrassment is MORE than "offensive", it is actually HARMFUL.  When
talking about "(1) verbal, in-class discussions of sexual subject
matters; and (2) use of sexually explicit pictorial material in
teaching" it is important to keep this distinction clear.
----------- Ruth Ginzberg (rginzberg  @  eagle.wesleyan.edu) ------------

 
I agree with Ruth Ginzberg that the most important distinction to made in
limiting sexual relations between faculty and students is the one of
professional standards.  It is the professor, the person in the position of
authority and power because of his/her occupation, who must be held
accountable to a rigorous standard of behavior.  Almost all of the
professional organizations to which academics belong have policy statements
governing the actions of their members toward students both in and out of the
classroom.  This is not a matter of treating students as children or of
preventing them from making choices about self-harm, it is a matter of living
up to the standards of our profession which require that we as faculty do no
harm to those who are under our sway so to speak.
 
Jackie Wilkie
wilkieja  @  luther.edu

 
David Austin writes:
>
> What do people think about two different but related
> cases?:  (1) verbal, in-class discussions of sexual subject matters;
> and (2) use of sexually explicit pictorial material in teaching.
> If truly informed consent to a sexual relationship
> between powerful professor and less powerful
> student is infeasible, can a student be adequately
> informed by a syllabus, reviewed in class, about the
> likely effects of sexually explicit course material?
 
Hmmm...David has raised two different points here.  One is that
teaching sexual material or subjects is, in some ways, comparable to
a sexual relationship between teacher and student.  The second is
the issue of informed consent--how can students be adequately prepared
for course material or relationships?  I don't have any deep thoughts
about the second, but I would like to address the first.
 
I actually think that the parallel between sexual relationships and
academic discussions of sexuality is something of a red herring, since
it draws on the similarity of content but ignores the difference in
*context*.  This parallel treats the key problem in teacher-student
sexual/affective relationships as the sexuality, rather than the
inappropriate use of power.  As I see it, sexual relationships between
teacher and student (or between boss and employee, etc.) are problematic
because they can involve an abuse of power, in that the teacher may
(consciously or unconsciously) pressure the student to engage in behavior
outside of the requirements of the class, simply by virtue of his/her
position of power relative to the student.
 
However, teachers can also pressure students to do menial work
(like xeroxing, etc.) which is not part of the course requirement
(think of some of the horror stories of graduate students doing a
professor's work, for example).  It may well be that the latter
form of pressure is not as distressing to students as sexual
pressures, but I believe that it is a more comparable
example than teaching sexual material, insofar as it is legitimately
part of the course requirement.  If I teach a course on human sexuality,
it is completely appropriate (and not an abuse of power), to discuss
genital functions, orgasm, sexual behavior, etc.  On the other hand,
if I am teaching a course on geology, but I use sexually explicit
examples in class, that may well be an abuse of power (creating a
hostile atmosphere, perhaps), _because it is not a legitimate requirement
of the course_.  In other words, rather than assuming that sexually
explicit material is inherently problematic or inappropriate, I would
rather examine such teaching in its context;  similarly, rather than
assuming that non-sexual requirements are always appropriate, I would
also examine those within the context of what is a reasonable requirement
for students in the class.
 
In my opinion, then, it is more centrally a matter of power, and sex
is simply one aspect of how power can be abused.
 
Deborah Stearns
stearns  @  cattell.psych.upenn.edu
 
P.S.  For those who were around for the "teaching touchy topics"
thread that I started, you might be interested in what I finally
decided.  I did teach a section on pornography (both last term and
this term), but I did not introduce actual pornographic material
in the class (largely because of the tales I heard of people being
fired for doing so).  Thanks to everyone who gave me advice!

 
Has anyone read the account of Jane Gallop's alleged harrassment of two
lesbian graduate students in the recent issue of Lingua Franca?  Or has
everyone already discussed this?  I thought it brought up interesting
issues about which acts have to be consented to in advance and which are
"free goods".  Relationships  between women, even professors and
grad students, seems to involve a lot more free goods areas than
relationships between men and women.  I suppose because women touching
women can so often be interpreted as "motherly".
 
What does anyone else think?
 
Anna

 
        A few days ago, a WMST-L subscriber posted a message about an
organization called CASE (Consenting Academics for Sexual Equity) that had
appeared on another list, FEMJUR.  That message named Professor Brian
Baigrie of the University of Toronto as a member of the CASE Executive
Committee.  Prof. Baigrie has written to me, asking that I post his
disavowal of CASE.  I have appended that disavowal below.
 
        Joan Korenman        Internet: korenman  @  umbc2.umbc.edu
                             Bitnet:   korenman  @  umbc
_________________________________________________________________
 
For the record, I entirely support Ruth Ginzberg's remarks about
student/professor relations, esp. her remarks about the parallels
between the student/professor relationship and the client/care-giver
relationship in clinical contexts.  It is uncontroversial, I take it,
to insist that we respect the vulernable positions of students.
 
I lent my support to CASE on the supposition that it was created to
provide an intellectual forum for discussing the nature and extent of
sexual harassment, consent, and equality in academic culture. I think
it important that we not identify asymmetrical relationships with
abuse per se, as do many who are now working on regulations to control
the non-academic conduct of faculty at universities and colleges. I
believed that CASE was dedicated to the proposition that harassment is
the problem, and not asymmetrical power relationships.
 
Looking at CASE's mandate, I am deeply unsettled by what appears to be
an endorsement of faculty/student relationships.  I do not support,
and never did support, what I regard as a violation of a trust between
faculty and students.  There are exceptions, of course, as when an
academic has a partner who is working in a different field, but by and
large I believe that the professor/student relationship must not be
violated.
 
I have therefore withdrawn my support from CASE and urged its
proponents to put an end to its activities since CASE can only cause
anxiety and confusion in what is already an explosive academic
culture.
 
yrs,
Brian Baigrie

 
Ruth Ginzberg has clearly and cogently argued the difficulties of
attempting to restrict students' behavior and has made a strong
case for regulating the behavior of professors instead.  In
theory this makes sense, but it could present difficulties in
practice.  Aside from a professional code of ethics modeled
after those in other professions such as medicine and law,
I don't see how one can regulated the personal behavior of
professors without in some way infringing on the liberties of
students.
 
I spent my undergraduate years on a campus that practiced
en loco parentis, which was a paternalistic sheme designed to
control the sexual mores of the entire campus.  As one might
expect, everyone's sexual behavior turned out to be controlled
simply by controlling the goings and comings of the female
students.  Men could do as they please, more or less, so long
as they left female students/faculty alone.  They had no
curfews, no room checks, no chaperone forms.
 
Women students had room checks twice each evening.  Anytime
one left campus at night one had to fill out a card naming
the person one was going with (going alone was forbidden).
"Dates" required double-dating or chaperones.  No men were
allowed in the living areas of the women's dormitory, nor
were women allowed to visit living areas in the men's
dormitory.  The system of surveillance (room checks, filling
out permission forms for dates, etc.) gave the college all
kinds of neat records to monitor whether students' behavior
was in line with the campus code.  If a man WAS found in a
woman's room, for example, or if a lesbian encounter WAS
discovered during a roomcheck, the students involved were
expelled.
 
An agressive female student seduced a young married faculty
member, who left his pregnant wife to continue his affair
with the student. The faculty member was fired and the student
was expelled.
 
Unmarried students who either became detectably pregnant
or got married during the school year were expelled.
 
Unmarried faculty who wised to date students had to get
permission from the college administration to do so, and
had to request special exemption for special occasion dates
without double dating or chaperones.
 
I graduated 25 years ago, and lest people think these are
entirely archaic instances, a friend of my daughters is
attending just such a college and reports that recently a
couple who ended up pregnant were presented to the entire
student body as examples of how not to behave, were expelled
from the college from one year and told they had to get
married before they could reenroll.  They have re-enrolled.
 
The rationale for putting so much control on the female
students behavior under the system of en loco parentis
was simply, one has to control one of the members of the
group, and the women were the  easiest ones to control.
 
Anyone who has sat at one faculty meeting knows how impossible
it is to control the behavior of faculty.  If one cannot
expect them to teach to uniform course syllabi, how can
one expect to control their sexual behavior?
 
Karla Walters           kwalters  @  bootes.unm.edu

 
Thanks again to Ruth G. for making important distictions. I have one
caveat, however. Of course we shouldn't avoid "offensive" material when
it is central to whatever the pedagogical enterprise is; there are
times, however, when it is necessary to determine whether the offense
students take at sexually explicit material or language gets in the way
of larger, more important points that a teacher is trying to make. I
therefore argue only for keeping a sharp eye on the pedegogical
appropriateness of ANY kind of material and language we employ in the
classroom. Robin Martin.
 
Roberta C Martin, assistant professor
East Carolina University
English
GCB 2112 Greenville, NC 27858 (919) 757-6721
Bitnet: ENMARTIN  @  ECUVM1   Internet: ENMARTIN  @  ECUVM.CIS.ECU.EDU

 
I spent one year studying, three years teaching in a graduate
writing program which used grad students to teach basic creative
writing, as well as keeping a few grads around to teach the
slightly upper-level classes.  It seemed to me that it was, to
be quite frank, the nerdier of the TAs and junior profs who dated
or hung out with students.  This was officially not-sanctioned --
but the head of the department ignored any and all complaints
by students or other faculty.  At any rate, I think that points
to some of the allure of the relationship for a professor -- that
it's a way for them to find someone who regards them as cool and
knowing and altogether wonderful.  And I think if you take that a
little farther, it points to why the relationship is problematic,
even when it's not a quid pro quo (you give me sex and I'll give
you a good grade) thing -- that both participants may be terribly
deluded about what's going on -- it just doesn't fit into my
definition of a healthy relationship, even though both sides might
be swearing up and down that this is the love of their life and
it's pure chance that one is in a position of authority over the
other.
 
Still, every time I conducted orientation, the grad students would
get terribly insulted that I was accusing them of being so low as
to take advantage of the students and then, once they had seen that
some of the faculty did it, they started too.  It was not confined
to the males, although they did seem to be in the majority.
 
Catherine

 
Ruth Ginzberg (rginzberg  @  eagle.wesleyan.edu) writes:
 
>One distinction sometimes made in social/political philosophy is between
>the following liberty-limiting principles:
>        a) Harm To Others Principle, which says...
>                Individual's liberty may be limited to prevent
>                harm to others.
>        b) Harm To Self Principle, (Paternalism) which says...
>                Individual's liberty may be limited to prevent
>                individual from harming his- or her- own self.
>        c) Offense Principle, which says...
>                Individual's liberty may be limited to prevent
>                offense to others.
>
<lots of good stuff deleted>
>This is one of the conflations that has seriously hampered efforts to
>get HARMful sexual harrassment and racial harrassment (etc.) off of
>campuses and out of classrooms: it is that those who don't wish to
>have their liberty to harrass restricted are trying to claim that
>harrassment is merely OFFENSIVE, not HARMFUL.  Those who want campus
>environments (or classrooms) free of harrassment want to claim that
>harrassment is MORE than "offensive", it is actually HARMFUL.  When
>talking about "(1) verbal, in-class discussions of sexual subject
>matters; and (2) use of sexually explicit pictorial material in
>teaching" it is important to keep this distinction clear.
 
Distinctions between harm and offense are certainly
important here.
One might want also to distinguish between
necessary and unnecessary harm, often one
purpose in obtaining informed consent.
The most controversial cases  here would involve
pornographic material (as characterized by
Steinem, MacKinnon/Dworkin, and others).
Some have argued that using such material would
almost always be unnecessarily harmful.
This view is reflected in  the following quote:
 

Teachers who wish to teach such materials should be
prepared to explain what they are doing to avoid creating a
hostile learning environment* and to provide all students the
equal benefit of an education....
        Pornography, under current conditions, _is_ largely
its own context.  Many believe that in settings that encourage
critical distance, its showing does not damage women as
much as it sensitizes viewers to the damage it does to women.
My experience, as well as all the information available, make
me think that it is naive to believe that anything other than
words can do is as powerful as what pornography itself does.
At the very least, pornography should never be imposed on a
viewer who does not choose--then and there, without any
pressure of any kind--to be exposed to it.  Tom Emerson said
a long time ago that imposing what he called "erotic
material" on individuals against their will is a form of action
that "has all the characteristics of a physical assault."
Equality on campuses, in workplaces, everywhere, would be
promoted if such assaults were actionable.
(Catharine MacKinnon,  _Only Words_, 108-9)

 
[*There is a clearly intended parallel with the language of
sexual harassment law on 'hostile work environment'.  For
case law on the contextual nature of hostile environment, see
Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyards, Inc.  760 F. Supp. 1486
(M.D. Fla. 1991).]
 
Suppose that a woman takes a university course on current debates
about regulation of pornography; students are told on the
first day (and in the syllabus) that some pornographic material
will be shown for illustrative purposes. The course is not
required in the student's curriculum.  She takes the course,
views the material, and believes that the showings
create a hostile learning environment for women in the
course.
 
This case is radically underdescribed - without further
information, I doubt that it's possible to evaluate the
student's belief.  The question I'm interested in is how
in general to think about such cases; what sorts of
additional details are required, and how do they
affect the evaluation.
 
Thanks to all those who have responded to my original
posting.  I've found the response very helpful.
 
David.
 
 
 
David F. Austin <david_austin  @  ncsu.edu>
Associate Professor of Philosophy and
Assistant Head
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Winston Hall 101A
Box 8103, NCSU
Raleigh, NC  27695-8103
(919) 515-6102  FAX (919) 515-7856

 
I remember feeling so mature as an 18 or 19 year old when a middle-aged faculty
member paid personal attention to me. This was just added proof to my rather
young mind about how adult I was that such a distinguished and intelligent and
mature person could take such an interest in my mind -- and whatever else.
 
I know more about middle-aged men now that I, too am of that age, and I am more
convinced than ever that regardless of age it is imperative that professors
exercise a personal and professional code of ethics that says if you can't wait
until the course is over or find alternative mentoring, the "maturity" problems
are as much on the side of the professor as the student.
 
 
Virginia Sapiro
University of Wisconsin - Madison
sapiro  @  polisci.wisc.edu

 
Ruth Ginzberg (rginzberg  @  eagle.wesleyan.edu) writes:
 
>One distinction sometimes made in social/political philosophy is between
>the following liberty-limiting principles:
>        a) Harm To Others Principle, which says...
>                Individual's liberty may be limited to prevent
>                harm to others.
[...]
 
Doesn't it depend on the nature of the harm? In some cases harm might
be prevented by means other than limiting liberty.
 
For example, fighting "bad" speech with good speech, often prevents
most of the harm caused by the "bad" speech, avoids the harm of
limiting speech liberty, and avoids the harm of giving the authorities
more power to suppress speech.
 
- Carl

 
A person who is well known for filling many Usenet newsgroups with
hundreds of lines of tireless arguments for a radical libertarian
position defending Freedom of Speech at all costs, no matter what
those costs might be, posted to wmst-l:
 
>For example, fighting "bad" speech with good speech, often prevents
>most of the harm caused by the "bad" speech, avoids the harm of
>limiting speech liberty, and avoids the harm of giving the authorities
>more power to suppress speech.
 
Nobody was speaking here of "bad" speech -- the argument you have
dived into was about sex between students and professors, not speech.
----------- Ruth Ginzberg (rginzberg  @  eagle.wesleyan.edu) ------------

 
I have been reading the debate on this issue with much interest. I was also
remind of the dilemma by the fim " the Pelican Brief." I believe that this
may also be a problem in New Zealand but perhaps not to the same extent as
in the US,
As a teacher I could recall a couple of situations where other teachers
eventually married their former pupils from a relationship established
initially while one partner was still still attending as a student. These
relationships have successfuly survived to the present day. Similarily I
know of Principal and a begining relationship also which has also endured
well.
It seems to me to be a question of professional ethics. The doctor or
counsellor who begins a relationship with a cient should be ethically bound
to stop having that person as a client. in the case of lecturers or
professors the student should go to a different class,take a modified
course or maybe the professor should arrange for another  lecturer to take
the course to avoid possible conflict of interest..
I would suggest rather than a prohibition law which in itself is fraught
with difficulties that a professional code od ethics form part of the
employment conditions the purpose being to protect the vulnerability if
both parties. Also I believe that systems be put in pkace to asist those
who wish to share an emerging problem in confidence wiyh a third party,
Conscious raising information as suggested by some respondents should also
be given a higher profile and visible support by the University
authorities.
 
Bruce Beath
ph {03} 4542219
e-mail bruce.beath  @  stonebow.otago.ac.nz