I admit it's unwise to do this stuff for all sorts of reasons. But this inches awfully close to 18th century "need to be within 3 class rankings of the other person to have relationship, lest the power imbalance be too great" rhetoric.
And I'm seeing it elsewhere too, to the point I've seen people openly say that having relationships with junior people in your field is unethical, even if they don't work at the same company.
People are going to fall in love and do stupid shit (and should be allowed to), and as long as the person in the teaching position is not in the same department or has any kind of influence over grading or upper admin I can't criticise it too much.
It's nothing to do with class or financial status or anything like that, it's just that there's a dynamic in a student - teacher relationship that makes consent complicated. If the people really want to date they can just wait until the student graduates (imagine they're doing their masters lol). I'm just saying this from the perspective of a university student. Also from the perspective of someone from a high school in which a teacher was eventually fired for "coercing students" (statutory rape) after the school couldn't cover it up any more.
High school is different, as is the case with a direct Student-teacher relationship or senior admin. No one reasonable doubts that that's gotta be banned. I'd go so far as saying anyone in a department that the student takes classes at should be banned.
But a post-doc in a completely different faculty doing research and some lecturing? Or even a junior lecturer. Universities are big. One in my city has 60,000 students, and 10,000 faculty over 3 campuses. Also in my country the concept of liberal arts education doesn't really exist, degrees are specialised so arts, science, social science, medicine, and business people don't really mix together. Sometimes they don't even set foot on the same campus.
Imagine the younger party is doing 3rd year and then goes on to a full, 5 year PhD. What actually happens is that these people resist for awhile, date anyway, and then marry 2 weeks after Thesis acceptance. And everyone knows but the rules are stupid so they don't say anything.
But it's far more acceptable for a post-grad and a full professor from a different university in the same city to hook up at a conference, even though the latter situation arguably has far more impact on career and the power imbalance far worse.
I admit it's unwise to do this stuff for all sorts of reasons. But this inches awfully close to 18th century "need to be within 3 class rankings of the other person to have relationship, lest the power imbalance be too great" rhetoric.
And I'm seeing it elsewhere too, to the point I've seen people openly say that having relationships with junior people in your field is unethical, even if they don't work at the same company.
People are going to fall in love and do stupid shit (and should be allowed to), and as long as the person in the teaching position is not in the same department or has any kind of influence over grading or upper admin I can't criticise it too much.
It's nothing to do with class or financial status or anything like that, it's just that there's a dynamic in a student - teacher relationship that makes consent complicated. If the people really want to date they can just wait until the student graduates (imagine they're doing their masters lol). I'm just saying this from the perspective of a university student. Also from the perspective of someone from a high school in which a teacher was eventually fired for "coercing students" (statutory rape) after the school couldn't cover it up any more.
High school is different, as is the case with a direct Student-teacher relationship or senior admin. No one reasonable doubts that that's gotta be banned. I'd go so far as saying anyone in a department that the student takes classes at should be banned.
But a post-doc in a completely different faculty doing research and some lecturing? Or even a junior lecturer. Universities are big. One in my city has 60,000 students, and 10,000 faculty over 3 campuses. Also in my country the concept of liberal arts education doesn't really exist, degrees are specialised so arts, science, social science, medicine, and business people don't really mix together. Sometimes they don't even set foot on the same campus.
Imagine the younger party is doing 3rd year and then goes on to a full, 5 year PhD. What actually happens is that these people resist for awhile, date anyway, and then marry 2 weeks after Thesis acceptance. And everyone knows but the rules are stupid so they don't say anything.
But it's far more acceptable for a post-grad and a full professor from a different university in the same city to hook up at a conference, even though the latter situation arguably has far more impact on career and the power imbalance far worse.