UC sets limits on classroom courtship
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- University of California regents on Thursday joined other schools in setting limits to classroom courtship, banning faculty from dating students they supervise.
UC's policy stops short of an all-out ban on professor-student relationships. Instead, it bars faculty from having relationships with students they oversee, or are likely to oversee.
Faculty members who break the rules face punishment ranging from a letter of censure to dismissal.
UC's Academic Assembly, which represents faculty, approved the change in May, but regents' approval was required for it to become policy.
Some UC campuses had guidelines on dating students, but a systemwide policy was missing. UC has nine campuses and about 200,000 students.
The question of student-faculty relations attracted attention last fall after the dean of UC Berkeley's law school was accused of harassing a student and resigned.
Nationally, universities have taken different approaches to the question of professor-student relationships.
At the College of William & Mary in Virginia, dating between professors and undergraduates was banned after a former instructor wrote an article about his affair with a student.
At Ohio Northern University, the faculty handbook dictates that "faculty and staff members should not have sexual relations with students to whom they are not married."
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