In 2017, Cornell University’s policy for consensual relationships between students and faculty members needed an update. It had been in place since 1996 and had obvious shortcomings, like its lack of distinction between undergraduate and graduate students and its vagueness about when such relationships were outright banned.
Martha E. Pollack, Cornell’s president, charged a committee to draft a policy that was “easy to understand” and “inspires ethical behavior.” The committee, co-chaired by a Ph.D. student and an emeritus professor, got to work.
Of most importance was talking to as many stakeholders as possible, said Anna Waymack, the Ph.D. student. Having those conversations made Waymack realize just how far apart people’s concepts of power imbalances and conflicts of interest are. And for Charles F. Van Loan, the emeritus professor and dean of faculty, the mere act of discussing the policy was the most valuable part of the project, because the issues it raised can be tricky to talk about. For instance, there are faculty members in Van Loan’s age range who, 30 or 40 years ago, married their graduate students, he said.
Both Van Loan and Waymack said that having co-chairs from different disciplines and at different vantage points on the academic hierarchy was important to the process. Some people might not be comfortable telling certain things to a graduate student; others might not want to talk to a senior faculty member. “Anna and I were great bookends,” Van Loan says.
Eventually the committee put forth two policy options for discussion. Both prohibited faculty members from pursuing relationships with undergraduates. Neither allowed faculty members who had a current or past romantic relationship with a graduate student or a postdoctoral student to exercise academic or professional authority over that student.
The difference? One proposal also banned relationships between faculty members and all graduate and postdoctoral students who are affiliated with the same field or degree program. The other proposal permitted those relationships so long as faculty members disclosed them and created a plan to limit their own authority over the student.
Everyone from students to staff to faculty members discussed the proposals. Richard Miller, a philosophy professor, argued that the cost of banning intradepartmental relationships was too high, the student newspaper reported. “Ithaca is a small city, in which extremely busy, unattached junior faculty find it hard to develop emotional attachment with those who share their intellectual interest broadly defined,” Miller said. Other professors worried that either option would breach the privacy of the people involved.
The committee recommended that the final policy include the ban on relationships in the same field or degree program. Pollack considered all the feedback and endorsed a compromise: Sexual or romantic relationships between faculty members and graduate or professional students are banned whenever the faculty member exercises direct academic authority or “is likely to in the foreseeable future.” It allows for certain intrafield and intradegree-program relationships.
“I believe that these prohibitions adequately protect the interests of students and faculty while minimizing risk to the university and its mission,” Pollack wrote. Cornell’s policy office ironed out the details, and the new rules became final in December 2018.
For other universities that want to embark on something similar, Van Loan says, make sure you get the people who will be most affected by the policy — students — in the room. Otherwise, he says, you will lose credibility.
