Another post at Big Other:
It happens. I think we all hear about it. I don’t think most of us talk about it much. It’s a subject for whispers — a dirty academic secret. The TA really is making out with the student she recognized from suicide girls. The married, “monogamous” professor who hosts get-togethers at the home his wife keeps for him and his kids is slipping his own hors d’oeurves to the obnoxious boy who won’t shut up in class…
I am aware that teacher/student romances are the subject of many an erotic fantasy, but I’m the odd one out on this kind of eroticism. On a gutteral level, I just don’t get it. Students — especially younger ones — are… bleah. They’re students. I could no more think erotic thoughts about them than I could my siblings or parents. I’ve become fairly good friends with a few of my ex-students, and even so, when they do things that I’d never blink at another young adult doing — like post pictures of themselves topless and drunk at a party — I have to suppress my gag reflex. Because ew. Students…
I think it’s a good thing to discuss taboos rather than leave them hidden. I was once involved in a really interesting discussion with anthropologists about how a lot of people have relationships with their informants in the field. By making those dynamics overt, anthropologists gain the ability to discuss them, analyze them, and hopefully deal with them productively.
So, here are my questions to fellow people who are working in academia (though I know people might want to go anonymous to comment on this):
1) Policies against student/teacher relationships are a fact at most (all?) institutions. Should they be? Are the ones that exist reasonable? Are there tweaks that would make things more practical or safer for students?
2) If your students are attracted to you, how do you deal with that? If you’re attracted to your students, how do you deal with that?
3) Have you been in a relationship with a student or ex-student, a teacher or ex-teacher? From that point of view, are such relationships just like any other relationship — sometimes exploitative, sometimes fine — or are they particular minefields?
4) Are student/teacher relationships inevitable? They seem to be. Is there a way of dealing with that better than we currently do? Is there a version of the campsite rule that people involved in such relationships should follow?
5) Is it less problematic to date someone right after they get out of your class (or right after you get out of their class)? Or does that not make much difference?
6) Anyone care to attempt a good explanation for why teacher/student relationships are problematic? Obviously it’s got something to do with power, but is that sufficient? After all, heterosexual relationships involve systemic power differentials, and almost no one opposes those.
Is it just the mechanics of grading that makes these relationships untenable? Is it the nature of institutionalized authority? Is it the incest taboo, repurposed to cover a different kind of relationship? Is it just prudery? Let me know what you think.
