Sex rules reviewed

why do only women faculty get to decide the guidelines?

It is public knowledge that in July 2009 Yale settled outside the court for the sexual harassment law suit of the current chairman of pharmacology department where Annie Le was a graduate student.

Re #1: Yale’s current procedures do meet the criteria you set out. What is needed is that the campus culture match the procedures a bit better.

Re #2: Of course, it is not true that the reviews, and any new policies will be written only by women. This comment is simply inflammatory rhetoric.

Observation: I am surprised that no undergraduate has taken umbrage at the statement in the new policy on faculty-student relationships that characterize undergraduates as “immature” and for that reason cannot be allowed consensual relationships with faculty, even absent any conflict of interest aspects of the relationship.

You can’t really make a serious issue out of sexual harassment if you’re also going to prohibit consensual relationships, regardless of who they’re between. Two human beings should be allowed to be in whatever kind of relationship they want for themselves. What if you have a 21-year-old student and a 22-year-old faculty member?

“Members of the committee responsible for the report worked with the General Counsel’s Office to ensure that the policy changes offered in the report were legally feasible.”

Meanwhile, actual victims of Yale’s sexual misconduct, and those who feel threatened sexually or otherwise while at work in Yale lab facilities can complain directly to CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Re: #9. The former policy DID exactly what you assert. It was reasonably based on the principle of conflict of interest. The newly revised policy goes beyond that principle, however. It seems to be aimed at protecting “immature” students from some unnamed and unusual perils and appears patently paternalistic. No doubt,some timid administrators, who see litigation potential everywhere, are simply responding with the usual, obvious, burocratic action: YCA.

In general, these rules are are approriate, and the the grievence board is very appropriate. But the following statement:

“Under the new rules, graduate and professional students acting as teaching fellows may not engage in consensual relationships … with undergraduates they might expect to work with.”

is worrisome in that it would seem to prohibit ALL consensual relationships between undergraduates and graduate students in the same department. I agree that it might not be a wise choice, but wisdom should not necessarily be regulation. Moreover, Faculty#9 ‘s comment that there are a “lot of fish” is not particularly helpful because it fails to acknowledge that, in fact, someone with the same interests in precisely the sort of person one might reasonable want to date. A 21 or 22 year old undergraduate and a 22 or 23 year old graduate student should not be expressly forbidden from dating. That said, a relationship should preclude that graduate student from ever grading papers etc. of the undergraduate. That can be solved by less stringent methods (have someone else do the grading). This is different than a relationship with a tenured faculty member, where one might be precluded from taking a course later in one’s career. In general, though, empowerment (through more resources, clear grievence rocedures, etc.) ought not to mean treating students like children. That is the opposite of empowering, and dangerous, because these relationships WILL happen, and if the consensual relationships are prohibited, they will only be pushed into the closet, where the potential for abuse actually rises. This needs to be carefully considered.

In the modern day, the voice of males ought to be included in the discussion of sexual harassment. As homosexuality has become increasingly accepted, sexual harassment no longer occurs purely in a heterosexual context (e.g. males harassing females or even females harassing males). Indeed, as a straight male I’ve been made to feel extremely uncomfortable at various points over the course of the semester by a gay professor and a gay teaching assistant. These are concerns that the committee should take into account and address.

Welcome to Yale. Here we acknowledge our collective guilt as oppressors by showing obsequious respect to all vocal lobby groups, holding talks and forums, celebrating minorities via their most extreme stereotypes. It is easier to parody it than to deal with it.

These discussions are all missing the point. There has been no increase in real sexual-harassment problems. The current policy, which is about 10 years old, is pretty standard and works well for that. What has happened is that a few nasty incidents show that infantile males can say mean things about women and get away with it. And the “women’s faculty forum” doesn’t like that. So they are inventing a new term (“sexual misconduct”) that lumps together sexual harassment with, for example, holding offensive signs in front of the women’s center, or circulating comments about the appearance of first-year students. This is a classic tactic; they have to keep redefining oppression to imply that they are still oppressed, even when conditions change.

Stupid signs in front of the women’s center are not sexual harassment. Once we label this as forbidden, however, then someone in the administration (by definition a woman, as one poster noted) will have the authority to rule on whether any particular sign is forbidden. This will not survive court review because of this thing called the 1st Amendment. So this is not a way to save Yale money.

BTW, anyone who wants to have bad dreams should download and read that report. It is truly frightening. It endorses the case involving Prof. Bloom as sexual harassment. In that incident, the accuser first wrote an account in which she claims she was trying to seduce him. Later she changed her tune. Putting this in the report just tells us all what this is really about.

Although the idea of having a romantic relationship preclude a faculty member (graduate student TA or higher) from directly having power over a student may seem to make sense superficially, what if that person is the one and only person at the University that can provide a specific, necessary part of the student’s education? Should the student then be asked to get that education elsewhere?

Why are all of the students under the assumption that this policy is making statements about their maturity? Doesn’t it really also reflect on the faculty’s maturity?

The faculty, as part of their PROFESSION, is charged with the task of providing and maintaining a fair environment for ALL of the students to receive their education. I think that as a professional, abstaining from romantic relationships with the students is part of the faculty’s committment to the students. If some of the faculty don’t like the fact they are asked not to sleep with the students, perhaps they should not have become faculty.

Again, this discussion of whether and why the faculty should be forbidden to have relationships with undergrads is just beside the point.

The whole idea here is to conflate sexual harassment with saying things some women find offensive. Most people think those are two different things, but the proposed policy would make them the same.

@25… Ok.. back to basics… Yale’s existing policies ALREADY prohibit the faculty/graduate student interactions you describe.

The focus of the discussion is a NEW ADDITION to the policy that now broadly covers undergraduates in toto with no distinctions… justified by “their age and relative lack of maturity”.