It’s the only class worth attending. The subject doesn’t even matter and concentrating in class is impossible when your mind drifts. It seems like office hours have never been so appealing. Because you’ve got the hots for the teacher.
But what are the consequences, if any, of a student entering into a romantic relationship with his or her instructor?
Technically, there isn’t a rule forbidding these kinds of relationships, according to the University’s faculty handbook, but there are caveats. If a conflict of interest arises, the situation is supposed to be neutralized. In this case, a conflict of interest would be any time an instructor has grading authority over a student and has any kind of an outside relationship that might induce a bias in his or her grading.
Faculty are responsible for reporting conflicts of interest if a student they have dated or are dating is in a class they control so that the student can be reassigned.
“Sexual relationships between employees of the university and people over whom they have supervisory, evaluative or other power involve conflicts of interest and abuses of power,” according to the handbook.
Marian Friestad, associate dean of the Graduate School, said these relationships create a power differential.
“The University understands that it cannot dictate people’s hearts, but it is the absolute responsibility of the person who has more authority or power to make sure that conflict of interests do not occur,” she said.
“It is something that the individuals involved have to understand that there are constraints on their behaviors. We can’t do much about people’s feelings, but this is a professional setting and people’s behaviors are set to rules and regulations.”
A University psychology and sociology double major, who wished to remain anonymous, said she was unaware of the policies about dating instructors while she dated a University professor for six months. She met him while taking classes for her minor.
She kept it a secret from everyone except her closest friends.
“A lot of people might have thought that I was interested in him to get an A. I didn’t want people to know about it, or think that I was after something that I wasn’t,” she said. “If I knew of one of my friends dating a professor, and we were in the same class, I don’t know how I would feel about that. I didn’t want to be ‘that girl.’”
She said the relationship was exciting because she had a crush on him for so long. The 21-year-old had taken three classes with the professor and got to know him through office hours. They began going to lunch together, and after her classes with him ended, he took her on a formal date.
“I wasn’t trying to get him to like me, but you know when you have a crush on someone you do what you can to be near them,” she said.
She said she was surprised when he asked her out because she thought her feelings were one-sided.
“It made me feel good that he liked me, because I had admired him for so long,” she said.
She said it was her most mature relationship.
“I think it was pretty level, it was a nice relationship,” she said. “Older guys treat girls a lot better.”
While they dated, they met off campus, and she said she feared possibly being expelled from school or causing the professor to lose his job if they were caught.
“I wouldn’t say that it was like sneaking around, but I was worried about people seeing us together,” she said. “For his benefit as well as my own.”
Once they began dating, she stopped taking classes with him.
“I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to be in his class. I didn’t want that to be on my shoulders,” she said.
Around December of last year, she ended the relationship because she said didn’t want to get too attached and, considering the professor was her senior by nearly 30 years, she didn’t see the relationship developing over the long term.
“There is no, like, bitterness or hard feelings, it’s sort of like nothing ever happened,” she said.
Friestad stressed that professors and faculty are not supposed to start relationships with students while they are in their classes, but if they do, they need to be reported. Because this student’s relationship occurred after the class, there was no need to report the relationship.
Psychology Graduate Teaching Fellow Chuck Tate said he avoids relationships with students he is teaching, and a couple of times a year one of his student will confess their feelings for him.
“When I’m teaching people, that’s not even a thought on my mind,” he said.
Tate said he is weary of those relationships because the classroom can be an artificial setting that can lead students to have crushes with their instructors.
“I think that the situation is in some ways conducive of those kinds of feelings. It’s easy to be both smart and funny, qualities that people tend to find attractive.”
“These relationships obviously do happen … and I think they can be good relationships but going into it people need to realize what some of the potential pitfalls are,” he said.
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