Student-professor relationships are always a controversial topic—conventional wisdom holds that they're probably a bad idea (see: Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt), though there are plenty of websites devoted to defending and promoting them. One thing is undeniable: they happen a lot more than you think. Now, CUNY has proposed banning professor-student relationships entirely with a stricter sexual-harassment policy. “They’re trying to ban love!” one male professor told the Post. “It’s not realistic, because grown women fall in love and have affairs with older men, and nobody can legislate against this.”
The current CUNY policy "strongly discourages" professor-student hook-ups; the new policy would completely forbid professors from having relationships with “students for whom they have professional responsibility.” Universities across the country have been implementing these kind of bans for over two decades, insisting there’s no such thing as a “consensual relationship” between teachers and students—many of those policies are largely there to protect the universities, avoiding sexual harassment lawsuits and grade inflation.
“We’re in a post-secondary facility—we don’t need to be baby-sat or monitored,” said 26-year-old Atossa Ghaemi, an English major at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We’re adults, and we’re going to live as we please.” This month, Columbia University has also moved to complete a new policy that would forbid any romantic or sexual relationship between a student and teacher. “Where there is a power differential between the parties, these relationships are highly susceptible to being characterized as non-consensual or coercive,” associate Provost for Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Susan Rieger told the Columbia Spectator. Philosophy professor Patricia Kitcher put it into perspective: “New York is filled with other possible romantic partners. It’s not a good idea to get involved with a professor.”
