Graduate Program
Appendix 1 - General University Policy Governing "Consensual Relationships"
1. Instructional/Employment Context: Faculty members and graduate teaching assistants are advised against having an amorous relationship with a student who is enrolled in a course taught by the faculty member or graduate teaching assistant or whose academic work (including work as a teaching or research assistant) is supervised or evaluated by the faculty member. This includes the medical school which has many categories (full time, hospital based, and clinical, etc.) of faculty or staff who work with medical students. Likewise, supervisors are discouraged from having an amorous relationship with students or an employee who is in their line of supervision.
2. Outside Instructional/Employment Context: Amorous relationships between faculty members and students (graduate teaching assistants, research assistants, etc. included) or between graduate teaching assistants and undergraduate students occurring outside the instructional context may also lead to difficulties. Particularly when the faculty member/graduate teaching assistant/student are in the same academic unit or in units that are academically allied, relationships that the parties view as consensual may appear to others to be exploitative. In these types of situations, the faculty member/graduate teaching assistant may face serious conflicts of interest and should be careful to distance himself or herself from any decisions that may reward or penalize the student with whom the faculty member has or has had an amorous relationship.
3. Professional Power Differential: Romantic and sexual relationships between faculty members and students and between supervisors and their employees do not necessarily involve sexual harassment. However, a faculty member who enters into a sexual relationship with a student (or supervisor with employee/student) where professional power differential exists, must realize that if a charge of sexual harassment is subsequently lodged, it will be exceedingly difficult to prove immunity on grounds of mutual consent.