@ladyj79, if the incedent/s weren’t consensual then I fully support SS in this case. Any sort of assault or threats thereof mustn’t be tolerated.
I don’t know TS or anyone involved so I don’t know any details. I do have friends who have had lives badly damaged by accusations made after the end of long term consensual relationships.
1 Like
I am curious to know what you consider “a few years ago”? and which university it was.
The dissertation advisor/grad student is a classic example of the transference phenomenon and what is perceived as a power imbalance. Under today’s rules in most universities, due to the power imbalance, that would be a very serious offense.
The procedure that is allowed for this pair of soul mates is for the grad student to complete her dissertation, preferably working under (no pun intended) a different supervisor, get a job elsewhere, and then “let the relationship blossom” and marry the guy. It’s not just the lower power lover that is at issue, there is the issue of preferential treatment that disfavors other students.
There are plenty of successful marriages today that resulted from these relationships back when they were allowed.
Most universities also ban relationships between faculty who have no obvious power imbalance between them, and even if they work in different departments.
Obviously enforcing rules inconsistently is bad. But that means that rules should not be enforced inconsistently, not that the rule should be jettisoned.
I really doubt that SS is attempting to enforce things to degree that most universities are. For example, I don’t think lateral relationships (professional colleagues with no obvious imbalance) are prohibited by SS. Also, I provisionally trust SS to match the punishment to the offense, so I doubt they would have handed down a three year suspension unless there were elements beyond the relationship itself (such as quid pro quo, retribution for saying no, etc). Since SS investigations are confidential, of course I have no idea what the details are.
ETA. You bring up the issue of two adults, for whom a power imbalance exists, entering into a mutually consensual relationship, then somewhere down the road the relationship goes south and since the higher power individual usually has more to lose, the lower power individual uses the fact of the relationship to damage the previously more powerful person. Part of the purpose of these rules is to highlight the potential for those ugly dynamics. The higher power person should consider the possible consequences down the road, and refrain from putting himself in that position.
11 Likes
The people who make these rules at universities are hardly blind or unaware to the needs of professors or faculty. Indeed, these rules are created to protect both sides of the equation. The professor gets clear rules of conduct and clear procedure to follow to head off a problem before it is too far gone. The professor can be trained to see the danger signs and know how to protect themselves from a situation that could put them in jeopardy.
The student is a student and still learning. Students naturally have less training in professional, appropriate conduct, but they do get some at orientation and can be guided appropriately by faculty when they overstep. This is not just about protecting the student from the faculty member, but also protecting the faculty member from unwarranted accusations from students angry now or in the future.
There is not just the angry breakups to consider, but as YankeeDuchess mentions, the difficulty of fairly and impartially evaluating a student when there is a larger relationship involved. Other students may have reasonable cause to be upset about possible preferential treatment, and a brilliant student who deserves those high grades and additional opportunities will always have an asterisk by them - were they truly earned by scholarship?
One other thing.
When there is a power imbalance, it is often the case that the person in power honestly believes that there was affirmative consent when there was not. Older men especially have had few opportunities to learn what consent even means, raised on movies and and novels and the rest where the woman was to be ‘seduced’ … which can have connotations of “tricking a woman to like you when she otherwise wouldn’t” … and which can lead to some serious mistakes. Being aware of and following the guidelines we are discussing make these kind of horrible aftermaths that you fear far less likely. And at the end of the day, SafeSport is not here for punishment, but for prevention.
14 Likes
You have just made the case for one of the reasons these rules are necessary. :yes:
12 Likes
So she had a dorm room with stained glass windows and you didn’t? Hmm, I wonder why.
If the prof did not have tenure, almost certainly contract not renewed. If he did have tenure, that’s something that he could still be fired for, despite having tenure.
Lots and lots of the things we learn in college are not in the textbooks.Unfortunately, this is more true in theory than in practice. I leave this intentionally vague, but a professor I know married his Ph.D student, and has been left to happily run his prestigious lab. Big Ivy League School had little interest in losing one of the most prominent researchers in the field. Sadly, I can name several other cases, in which I know the people involved, where the department/university didn’t care or gave a little warning. Even when something goes wrong, they will do quite a bit to keep someone “of value”. Just look at Cal Tech.
I think that there could be an analogy here to the horse world. Does USEF/other eq. organization stand to lose something by alienating a BN trainer? For sure.
Presumably, that’s why SS exists. I personally had to make a bullying complaint against a tyrannical power figure as a grad student, as did several other employees in the department. In-house HR exists for one reason at universities-to protect themselves. So I can see how a neutral third party who was required to investigate claims might have been a huge benefit.
6 Likes
I don’t think marrying your thesis student is prohibited as long as you simply met while professor/student and the romantic/physical relationship is delayed until after the professional relationship ends. By extension, I can see that some couples can get away with it if they are sufficiently discreet.
Depending on the university, I agree that some universities will tolerate considerable bad behavior on the part of their stars. Harvard comes to mind.
One of the really old fashioned arguments for not admitting women to all male universities, desirable professions, etc was that if males and females were working side by side, even in noble endeavors and professions, “stuff could happen”. Remember that at one time the solution to this problem was to keep all male institutions all male, not admit women to medical school, etc. Replacing that ridiculous “fix” with a rule that says professors cannot sleep with their students, etc. seems much better to me.
Different institutions have different standards on what they will “pay” to uphold their ethical standards. When MIT learned that one of their star faculty members, who ran an important media lab of some sort, had accepted millions from Jeffery Epstein, he was asked to resign within days. (He had accepted significant money not only for the lab, but also personally, and covered up the actual source of the donation to the lab.) There was no accusation that he had consorted with the trafficked women, just that he had accepted Epstein money and obscured who the donor was.
4 Likes
Safe Sport has definitely taken the tough decisions away from USEF. :yes:
6 Likes
A university has something that the Olympic sports world was mostly missing: an HR department.
If a big university wants to ignore best HR practices and deal with the consequences, well, that’s on them.
But the competitive sports world is predominantly run by independent contractors and glorified clubs. There was no oversight whatsoever. For the love of everything, someone needed to step up and hold people accountable for bad behavior! The NGBs certainly weren’t.
14 Likes
It’s off course, but I also am able to know that all due process was taken with Morris while still recognizing the many great gifts he gave me, personally. I’m not ISWG which is utterly Abhorrent to me. It’s just rankles a little when I know that so many other LUMINARIES used Ace to the point of putting rubber bands on the geldings sheaths to keep them up. I don’t know that those doping committed Safe Sport violations. These two conversations seem mutually exclusive.
2 Likes
That doesn’t that make him responsible for “most of the atrocities in hunterland”.
GM being caught for doping a horse while a member of the AHSA drugs and medications committee
doesn’t that makes him responsible for “most of the atrocities in hunterland”.
Maybe not, but he was hardly the paragon of horsemanship that he demanded others should be, yet failed to live up to himself.
It just makes him a hypocrite, and a very loud and angry one at that.
6 Likes
Agreed. And the same can be said for a few BNTs and BNRs today.
5 Likes
I tried to quote the above, but can’t. I agree.
1 Like
They appear to have fixed that. I had the same issue yesterday.
