Harvard University has officially banned its professors from engaging in "sexual or romantic relationship" with undergraduate students.
According to Bloomberg News, several other institutions have already taken similar measures while many more frown upon sex between instructors and pupils. Other prominent New England schools like Yale and UConn have similar policies in place, even though professor groups typically disagree with them.
Harvard said in a statement the new policy was part of their internal Title IX review. The Education Department recently returned its decision in its Title IX investigation, determine the Ivy League institution favored the accused in sexual misconduct cases.
With the national discourse on campus sexual assault reform, these kinds of policies are aimed at protecting professors as much as they are for the students. Still, Harvard's new policy seems carefully worded, Bloomberg noted. It states sex with "one's students" is not allowed, which could mean a student would have to be in a professor's class to make the relationship prohibited.
"Undergraduates come to college to learn from us," Alison Johnson, a Harvard history professor who chaired the panel that wrote the policy, told Bloomberg. "We're not here to have sexual or romantic relationships with them."
The policy also bars graduate students from engaging in such relationships when the latter is in an authoritative position for the former. The ban can also apply professors and graduate students if the latter is advising the former in some way.
Jack Smith, a senior sociology major, served on the committee that revised the school's sexual harassment policy. He said he assumed this was something like a universal policy.
"It should have been the policy everywhere," Smith told Bloomberg. "Most of the people I've come into contact feel the same way."
Billie Dziech, a professor at the University of Cincinnati, told the Washington Post she has studied relationships between professors and students in the past. She said she has found students typically disagree with bans on them because they see themselves as "grownups [who] can choose with whom [to] have sex."
"Originally, there were no policies," she told the Post. "Institutions wouldn't go near it, just wanted to avoid pushback from faculty. We've come a long way from that time. There are many institutions that have what I personally would describe as very weak policies. There are policies that don't mention it at all. What Harvard and an increasingly long list of universities has done is to have prohibitionist policies.
"It sends a message: You don't sleep with other people's children - whether they agree to do it or not - because you're abusing your power."
