Samantha, a 21-year-old photography student at the New School, was watching an art film with a group of classmates about four years ago when her 30-something professor took advantage of the dark room — and began to caress her thigh.
It was a bold gesture that eventually progressed into a no-holds-barred affair when she was just 17 years old.
“We had a really trashy romance,” recalls Samantha, who kept her relationship a secret (and asked that her real name be withheld to protect her paramour professor’s career). “We had sex in the woods in Connecticut and hooked up in a pile of leaves,” she says.
But in addition to wild sex, there were other perks.
“I got an ‘A’ in his class and didn’t have to do any work . . . It was pretty sketchy.”
Education between the sheets is an institution nearly as old as academia itself. But last month, Yale University announced an all-out, no-exceptions ban on all relationships between undergraduate students and faculty members. Should an incoming freshman in the class of 2014 find herself dating that hot assistant professor, she may as well help him pack up and start hunting for a new job.
The policy, which was included in a revised faculty handbook this academic year, is intended to protect students, according to Yale’s director of public affairs, Tom Conroy.
“Undergraduate students are particularly vulnerable to the unequal power inherent in the teacher-student relationship because of their age and relative lack of maturity.” Conroy adds that the burden will be on professors, not students, to adhere to the new rule. “It is certainly the expectation that all faculty will voluntarily comply with the policy, which controls faculty behavior, not students’ [behavior].”
Yale’s approach makes it one of the strictest such policies in the country. Many universities, particularly in anything-goes New York, have rules that are much softer.
At Columbia University, romances with faculty members are “not expressly prohibited,” according to the university’s Office for Communication and Public Affairs, although the school frowns on relationships between students and the professors who direclty supervise them.
At the New School, official policy on student-faculty liaisons dictates that “Faculty members (and administrative staff) should be aware that any romantic involvement with students (or staff members who report to them) is considered inappropriate, and it might make them liable to formal action.”
Still, Yale’s move has sparked a heated debate among students and experts who think the ban patronizes adult students, and that, rules or no rules, romance will prevail. Jokes one source close to top academics at Rutgers University, “Dating a professor is practically a policy here. Half of the science department seem to have left their wives and married their grad students.”
Dr. Susan Strauss, who consults with universities and private companies on their sexual harassment policies, says that Yale’s ban takes things too far.
“It’s a classic case of overreaction, which is something we see institutions do all the time. They mean well, but suddenly they’re banning hugging or even compliments,” she says. “I don’t know that Yale’s policy is realistic or fair, though perhaps there were some negative incidents that provoked the move.”
While Strauss accepts that professors should be banned from dating students under their supervision “as a given,” she adds, “You can’t control everything. If a nursing student meets an engineering professor in the local coffee shop, that’s their business. We’re talking about adults here.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by Lauren, a graduating senior studying human rights at Columbia University, who agreed to dish about her extracurricular pursuits on the condition that her real name not be used.
Lauren first fell for her 30-something professor during a class she had with him during her sophomore year, in 2008. And while she admits to having had a “huge crush on him,” they didn’t actually become an item until six months ago, when she asked her former teacher for a recommendation letter. The request evolved into a steamy romance.
The two are now in a serious relationship and considering moving in together after graduation this summer.
“I’ve always dated older guys,” she says.
“I mean, I could’ve met this person in the library and fallen in love. Am I supposed to wait four years to act on my feelings? That’s crazy.”
Yale’s new policy also raises the question of enforcement.
“I doubt that anyone in the Yale administration fantasizes that this policy is watertight,” says Professor Phil Kasinitz, the head of CUNY’s Ph.D. program in sociology.
Still, Kasinitz says that universities are increasingly taking their role as foster parents more and more seriously.
“In the 1960s, you had curfews and rules saying men weren’t allowed above the first floor in women’s dorms. Things went in the opposite direction for a while, but the pendulum is swinging back these days. [You’ve got] adults who are ages 18 to 22 . . . Legally, they may be adults, but really they’re in a different category, especially when their parents are paying $40,000 for them to get an education.”
Samantha, the New School student, got an education in real life when she realized her teacher was two-timing her with another academic. She broke things off with her lover and they never talked again.
Still, Samantha feels that the torrid affair was a valuable experience, and taught her more about the world than the art films she endured in class. “I’m not the victim,” says Samantha. “It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”