Amitai Etzioni has a post up about workplace relationships, which addresses a number of genuine issues, and it certainly says far more about me than anything else that I can’t stop giggling about them.
The communitarian position on workplace relationships is not, as I’d expected, the unequivocal condemnation that one might have expected (simply on the basis that a random sampling of communitarian position papers suggested to me that they might be against anything fun). It’s quite nuanced and well worth a read. It’s all very easy to get all moralistic and say that this, that or the other kind of relationship is “off limits”, but to be frank, with working culture going the way it’s going, where the hell else are we going to meet people our own age?
Update: To make it clearer, the post is specifically about the University of California’s code of employment which basically is meant to stop professors from interfering with the cargo. I have to say it seems like an extraordinary imposition to me:
“However, as one professor argues, the rules are necessary because of the power gap that exists between professors and students, which precludes such relationships from ever being truly consensual. ”
Is it just me, or is this unbelievable balderdash? Are we really trying to claim that a relationship between a dashing young prof and a graduate student can never be “truly consensual”? Only according to a standard by which there have been approximately five “truly consensual” relationships in the history of sex. You don’t have to be Michel Foucault to see through this one.
{ 40 comments }
ogged 10.08.03 at 7:57 pm
Which was funnier, the false accusation or the woman whose father died?
There may be some “own age” situations in which one can imagine a relationship being acceptable, but others should be “off limits,” absolutely.
dsquared 10.08.03 at 8:05 pm
The lass who legged Amitai over for a course fee by threatening to claim that, well, he’d legged her over was the funny bit of course. I’m sorry, but you have to have a heart of stone not to chuckle at that one.
I think you’re being far too much of a prude; surely the presumption has to be that adults are allowed to arrange their sexual affairs how they please. The fact that some kinds of relationship tend to be unequal or to end badly is hardly a reason to ban them; why should academics be singled out as not having the option to choose to have really bad sex?
carla 10.08.03 at 8:31 pm
Actually, I don’t think it’s just academics who are or should be subject to such rules, though it’s probably the case that academics are more likely to be in situations where the inequalities of power and experience are greater as a general rule. Of course adults should be allowed to arrange their sexual affairs how they please; it’s when one of the people involved is constrained such that they perhaps DON’T please, but feel that they must, that there’s a problem.
And even then–pretend I’m a grad student, and a fellow grad student gets involved with a professor of about her own age. The professor doesn’t supervise or evaluate the work of my fellow in any way, so there’s no harm there. However, when it comes time to recommend grad students for positions, who has the advantage? Me, or the fellow grad student who’s boinking a professor? If I’m a student of that professor, do I think I’m going to get a fair shake if we’re all applying for the same jobs or post-docs? In a world where jobs and post-docs are definitely finite and limited, this isn’t a trivial consideration–if I’m shut out now, I may not be able to stick around.
I don’t know what the solution is, or whether there’s only one, but I’d argue that it’s also not the case that there’s no problem here.
dsquared 10.08.03 at 8:48 pm
But this is an illusory problem (or rather, an illusory aspect of a real problem).
Say that none of you are shagging the professor. But one of you shares his obsession with Ayn Rand, or his athletic interests, or his political views. Say that one of you just hits it off with her a whole lot better, and they have a sort of mentorship relationship going on. Or maybe one of you is the grandson of someone who can help him with his career. The rest are just as screwed.
You’re not actually proposing to get rid of politics, mentorships, nepotism or any of the other human relations that can lead to favouritism (or at least, if you are, then you’re proposing an utterly unrealistic and probably undesirable ultra-strict meritocracy). You’re just taking the normal way that human beings deal with each other, and declaring it to be illegitimate because sex is involved. There are no “fair shakes”, and only an utterly repugnant world could provide them. I don’t see why sexual intercourse creates a special problem.
Brian Weatherson 10.08.03 at 10:14 pm
I probably shouldn’t comment on these cases, but I really don’t think the kind of thing Carla is discussing is really a problem.
There’s no way that ‘boinking’ the prof will help the students get a good reference from that prof. As long as this is not a secret (and in the kind of small communities we’re talking about, the odds are very high it won’t be) a reference from that prof will be utterly useless to the student involved, because whatever the prof says will be massively discounted. If it is somehow kept secret that’s a different matter, but unless they’re in a very big department, or they’re much better at keeping secrets from others than most, I’d be surprised if this could be commonly pulled off. (If there are strict rules against these relationships then the prof will have a strong incentive towards secrecy, and that may make secrecy a little more likely. So that’s a reason for less regulation I think.)
But maybe the other profs will give the student a better reference in this situation. This might happen, though again it isn’t obvious. If other profs don’t approve (not an uncommon situation) they may be disposed to provide worse recommendations. Or if the prof sleeping with the student is (perhaps because of this) unpopular with the faculty, associating with that prof won’t help get recommendations.
So there’s a chance grad students will do better this way than they otherwise might, but I’m (very) sorry to say it’s really not in general a way for students to improve their professional chances.
(Just to be clear, nothing here is meant to take a stand one way or the other on the issues about regulation. I’m disposed to having fairly liberal rules, but there are obviously situations where some kind of regulation is appropriate.)
dsquared 10.08.03 at 11:48 pm
What situations? I’m genuinely curious. What are the situations in which actual regulation, written into an employment contract, would be a solution more appropriate to the task than informal social sanctions.
Munch 10.09.03 at 12:04 am
This link (http://www.csulb.edu/~asc/love.html) written by Barry M. Dank, California State University, Long Beach, and Joseph S. Fulda, New York City, explores some of the issues in the history of professorial perambulations, and cites (among other sources) an excellent article in Harper’s, September 1993, pp. 33-42 (“New rules about sex on campus”) that originally came to mind when I was reading the comments, but that I cannot locate on line.
What has stayed with me for continued consideration is that instituting rules saying that professors are forbidden to have relationships with students, treats the students as immature idiots, and the professors as predators. On the other hand, every time I have seen such relationships I can’t help but get the feeling that there is something wrong with them, that something is out of balance. But who
am I to say? The rich breadth of erotic life will continue despite the prohibitions.
Seth Edenbaum 10.09.03 at 12:12 am
I’m not particularly interested in reading the piece, but yes there is a difference between a student sleeping with a professor and a student sleeping with his or her professor. It can be called sexual bribery, or sexual abuse, pick one. But maybe it’s true love? Then it’s unfair to the other students.
But this fits into a more general sense of what is or is not appropriate. My father for example would never have let me take a course with him, to avoid even the appearance of favoritism. And he had all his students call him Mr. or Professor because as he said: ‘I’m not you friend, I’m your teacher. Friends can’t give you an ‘F.’†He thought there were good reasons for formal behavior.
My rule would be a little different than his.
“You want to fuck me? Drop the class, then give me a call.â€
I guess I’m more modern than he was. But then again, I’m not a teacher.
Zizka 10.09.03 at 12:27 am
At my 30th college reunion there was a couple whom had gotten married in undue haste immediately after she graduated from our alma mater, at which he taught. (He was a **8** years older than her). I marched straight up to them and explained to them in no uncertain terms that they were illegal and should have their marriage annulled. I don’t know whether they did or not because I never saw them again, but I presume they recognized my authority and did the honorable thing. In a way it seems sad, because they were a happily married couple actively involved in the community, but right is right and wrong is wrong.
During this same period a number of the gay male faculty were involved with students. This was still the love that dare not speak its name way back then, but it happened. I was approached a couple of times, but not interested. One of the suspects turned out to be the best teacher I had while I was there.
There’s a novel, possibly by Mordecai Richler, in which the protagonist says that he had sex with the A students because they were A students, not the other way around. There’s a considerable literature (starting with the Greeks) on sex as a teaching device. Perhaps it should be a special elective course, with added tuition, sort of like music lessons.
I’m speaking theoretically, of course. In actual fact, sexual relationships between students and faculty are a very bad thing, something which I would never, ever, think of doing. And the argument high school teachers make — Who’s going to treat her nicer, me or some 16-year-old-jerk? — while valid, is something we should banish from our minds.
Tom T. 10.09.03 at 1:26 am
Brian, I’m not an academic, so I’m not familiar with the inner workings of that world, but your suggestion that sexual relationships cannot create professional opportunities seems to be predicated on the notion that one professor cannot ever exercise meaningful influence over another. Thus, powerful Professor A cannot lean on weak Professor B (despite B’s disapproval) to provide some sort of advantage to A’s squeeze, Grad Student X. Aren’t there situations, though, where Prof. A, because of departmental position or seniority or funding advantages, can exercise influence over B’s tenure review or grant success or some such? If so, then wouldn’t there be opportunities for Student X to benefit through sexual advantage? (Obviously there are limits to how far one can go on sex alone, but even marginal advantages can be significant sometimes).
Zizka, your example of the married couple does demonstrate a certain absurdity to which these rules can extend, but I would point out that anti-nepotism rules are quite common in the corporate world. Certainly, the company cannot order that a marriage between employees be annulled, but it can certainly require that one member of the new couple transfer to a new department or division, or in some circumstances resign from the company altogether. Many organizations extend this rule to significant dating relationships as well.
Dsquared, your contention that drawing lines around sexual relationships is purely arbitrary has a certain rationality to it, but it prompts the question as to whether you would draw any lines at all. Would you say that it should be permissible for a professor to announce in class that he is ready and willing to exchange good grades for sexual favors? And what about simple monetary bribery? Should a professor be permitted to announce to a 100-person class that he is prepared to give out ten “A” grades that semester, and those “A”s are available to the highest bidders?
Zizka 10.09.03 at 3:30 am
Well, my suggestion was that teachers should exchange sexual favors for good grades.
Zizka 10.09.03 at 3:36 am
That is, teachers should give their sexual favors to the better students. Of course, this conflicts with my idea that sexual favors should be given for credit on a tutorial basis, like music lessons.
Brian Weatherson 10.09.03 at 4:04 am
Dsquared, I think undergrads in a class the prof is teaching should be simply out of bounds. I think there probably are times when this wouldn’t be problematic, but there would be enough when it would that it’s OK to err on the side of caution. (I should add that last I looked Brown’s policy was never any stronger than ‘advise against’, just as you suggest. The advice comes with a reminder that in some cases, when say the student is one whose grades you are responsible for, you’re going to not have a lot of fun, or a lot of help, defending a harassment suit if/when things go wrong. I haven’t checked the formal rules too recently because, well, that seemed like good advice.)
Tom, I agree that’s a possibility that other profs might help the student in question out because of the relationship. But I don’t think it’s likely. This will vary from school to school a lot, but often there’s going to be just as many other profs who disapprove of both the prof and the student in that situation that it could easily _harm_ the student. Of course, if the other profs are also dating students, they might not be so moralistic ;)
dsquared 10.09.03 at 7:01 am
Would you say that it should be permissible for a professor to announce in class that he is ready and willing to exchange good grades for sexual favors? And what about simple monetary bribery? Should a professor be permitted to announce to a 100-person class that he is prepared to give out ten “A” grades that semester, and those “A”s are available to the highest bidders?
Well no. Nor would I approve of professors stealing the biscuit money, driving drunk or committing securities fraud. Or anything else obviously illegal. The question is; why should a behaviour which is not generally regarded as a bad thing to do (the having of sexual relationships) become unacceptable simply because it occurs between a prof and a student?
I get the strong feeling that the real intuition at work here is a desire to raise the age of consent to 21 for the middle class.
derrida derider 10.09.03 at 8:43 am
dsquared is dead right – what’s so specially awful about sex-based favouritism compared with other forms of favouritism? They’re all undesirable – wise people know that mixing pleasure and business can be bad for both. But favouritism is also impossible to stamp out; attempts at regulatory cure tend to be much worse than the disease.
And, yeah, there certainly is something in the new prudery that really wants to treats young adults as children. The young women I know are capable of crushing an unwelcome suitor of any age – which is as it should be.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 9:14 am
False analogy; at the university level, handing out good grades for money is not illegal. It may affect the school’s accreditation, but that’s something else again.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 9:18 am
[Focussing just on the professorial end, when it’s a professor and a current student.] Most of us see a slippery slope here:
1) “We can have sex, it won’t affect your grade.”
2) “We can have sex, it could affect your grade.”
3) “If we have sex, it will affect your grade.”
4) “If we don’t have sex, it will affect your grade.”
I think most professors, being frail and fallible but basically decent humans, would drift halfway from 1 to 2 and then stop there. But 3 and 4 are real risks and legitimate concerns. Dan seems to be taking a rationalist-libertarian view that, sex being no different from any other human activity, we should be willing to remove all regulation and let all concerned take their laissez-faire chances. I think this is applying rationality a bit too stringently to an area where humans are notoriously nonrational.
(What’s so special about sex-based favoritism? Well, for one thing, it appears to be hardwired. Chimps don’t band together based on obsesions with Ayn Rand, sports teams, or political views. But they most certainly do swap favors for sex. And there’s a pile of empirical evidence to support the proposition that people have trouble being objective about sex and sex partners.)
Doug M.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 9:23 am
“I get the strong feeling that the real intuition at work here is a desire to raise the age of consent to 21 for the middle class.” I think that’s just plain silly.
No, wait, I know it is. The average age of first intercourse for Americans is about 15-16 for boys and 16-17 for girls. I can’t find a survey that correlates with income as such, but the average U.S. college undergraduate has been sexually active for about four years already and has had about two partners in the last 12 months. (Source: the U. of Chicago study, which is a decade old but should do for a first approximation.)
If the American middle class really wants to raise the age of consent to 21, they’re doing a remarkably bad job of it.
I think you’re talking through your hat, Dan.
Doug M.
clew 10.09.03 at 9:26 am
Well, there is another potential problem, which is that the breakup of the relationship is likely to hinder the student’s absorption of knowledge from that teacher. I have also heard of plausible cases in which all the professors in a dept. loathed a student, respectively for having the affair, breaking it off, or trying to continue it.
One of the better arguments against nepotism is that family politics is too gruesome to extend. Sexual pride, likewise. Sleeping only with students completely outside the department would be one not-age-based restriction; or, better, waiting until the peach-cheeked beauty graduates. Much will get done in the study meetings until then.
dsquared 10.09.03 at 10:28 am
Derrida: Absolutely. It’s certainly not ideal to mix business and pleasure, but there’s so much fucking business around these days that if it wasn’t for mixing, we’d be hard pushed to get any pleasure at all.
Doug: Taking your points in order:
1) But giving out grades for money is certainly something that you would expect to be a breach of a professor’s contract of employment, while having sex isn’t.
2) You make a good point, but I think you’re pushing it too far and I don’t accept the charge of libertarianism. Sex is an incredibly regulated affair, probably correctly, but in almost all spheres of sexual life it’s regulated by social pressure, not by the tort of breach of contract.
3) It is entirely possible for people to have preferences about the age of consent which are wholly inconsistent with teenage behaviour; ask any parent of daughters.
Ian 10.09.03 at 12:40 pm
There doesn’t appear to have been anything said here which doesn’t also apply to work relationships. Since you can’t control who you fall in love/lust with, the answer is presumably for one or the other to move jobs/course. The willingness or otherwise to do this is perhaps a good litmus test for the seriousness of the relationship.
dsquared 10.09.03 at 1:07 pm
Since you can’t control who you fall in love/lust with, the answer is presumably for one or the other to move jobs/course.
Or alternatively, to not move jobs and be an adult about it.
Nababov 10.09.03 at 1:31 pm
Re the above two posters. It’s all always, eventually and continously about being human.
Can anyone point to any law, rule, regulation, proscription or guideline that successfuly manages humans on heat so that no one feels disadvantanged or hurt?
Tom T. 10.09.03 at 1:49 pm
The question is; why should a behaviour which is not generally regarded as a bad thing to do (the having of sexual relationships) become unacceptable simply because it occurs between a prof and a student?
Here is where we disagree, I think. As I see it, there are all sorts of laws and institutional or corporate rules regulating sexual behavior, often out of concerns involving consent or nepotism. A university that places limits on professor-student relationships is presumably concluding that far too many of these relationships present problems for the university, either because the student fears bad academic consequences if she refuses, or because the relationship facilitates a type of favoritism that the university deems unacceptable. Sure, there will be exceptions where a relationship is truly loving and beautiful, but the university has presumably decided that the enforcement costs of separating the sheep from the goats are sufficiently high as to justify a blanket rule.
And yes, I think it is legitimate for a university to decide that sexual favors are a form of favoritism that it considers unacceptable. You’ve said that you think favoritism is impossible to eradicate, but your conviction appears to have limits, since you seem willing to proscribe monetary bribery. Yes, monetary bribery may be illegal and contrary to contract, but that just begs the question; why should favoritism based on monetary favors be illegal and favoritism based on sexual favors not be?
Or to turn your statement around and apply it to monetary bribery: “The question is; why should a behaviour which is not generally regarded as a bad thing to do (the [exchange of money]) become unacceptable simply because it occurs between a prof and a student?” Answering that question helps, I think, to develop reasons why a university might want to impose similar rules based on sex.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 2:15 pm
[Replying to Dan responding to me]
“But giving out grades for money is certainly something that you would expect to be a breach of a professor’s contract of employment, while having sex isn’t.”
Shifting your ground here; you first said it was illegal.
So why would I expect a professor’s contract to prohibit trading grades for money, but not trading grades for sex?
“You make a good point, but I think you’re pushing it too far and I don’t accept the charge of libertarianism.”
Darn. I was all ready with the _Simpsons_ quote, which I am irresistibly reminded of whenever libertarians start talking about sex.
(What? Oh, well… it’s from the episode where the Mensa members take over Springfield.
Comic Store Guy: And from now on, sex will only happen once every seven years — on the model of the Vulcans, the most rational race in the Universe!
Bystander: But won’t that mean…?
Comic Store Guy: For most of you, yes, a decrease in sex. For me — a vast increase!)
“Sex is an incredibly regulated affair, probably correctly, but in almost all spheres of sexual life it’s regulated by social pressure, not by the tort of breach of contract.”
Mmm no strictly speaking that’s not true. Quite a lot of the regulation of sex takes place within and through the institution of marriage, and marriage is at root a contract. (In fact, until fairly recently it /was/, formally, a contract.)
But that’s not what you meant. Okay, are you saying that it’s never appropriate for sexual conduct to be regulated by contract? If not never, then when?
N.B., I just had lunch with a West Point graduate who went through four years of celibacy-except-for-leave — WP cadets don’t get to have sex on campus, at all, and they can be expelled for doing so. They are not, however, formally part of the US military. They are college students, albeit somewhat unusual ones.
Well, they are volunteers. But would you allow a civilian professor at West Point (there are some) to have sex with a student? Since it could get the student expelled, it would be morally very wrong… but would you formally prohibit it? Or not?
“It is entirely possible for people to have preferences about the age of consent which are wholly inconsistent with teenage behaviour; ask any parent of daughters.”
But there’s absolutely no reason to single out the middle class for this. I’ve noticed this occasional tendency to epater les bourgeois, Dan, and it’s not one of your more endearing qualities. What’s the American middle class ever done to you?
Doug M.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 2:28 pm
“surely the presumption has to be that adults are allowed to arrange their sexual affairs how they please.” Nope, don’t agree. There’s no ‘surely’ there.
A narrow majority of adult Americans are married. Married people who arrange their sexual affairs as they please are vulnerable to a wide range of sanctions both informal and formal, from opprobrium through ugly divorce lawsuits to impeachment.
Seriously, there are formal, legal penalties for adultery. The criminal ones are rarely enforced any more, but the civil ones go to court a thousand times a day. The spouse who cheats puts him/herself in a vastly worse position in divorce court. That’s more than a social sanction; it may involve large and burdensome financial penalties, whose collection will be backed by the power of the State.
People have never been allowed to arrange their sexual affairs as they please. States have been regulating sex for as long as there have been states. The liberty that we presently enjoy in these matters is relative, limited, and historically recent.
Doug M.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 2:30 pm
For the record, I agree with “profs should leave the undergrads alone”. (Grad students, well, they take their chances either way.)
The narrower rule — “profs should leave their own undergrad students alone” — is also good IMO, but trickier for a variety of reasons: any student but a last-term senior is a potential future student, the complicating effects of gossip, etc. etc.
A simple ban is crude but, well, simple. Simple is clear, clear is good.
Doug M.
Nabakov 10.09.03 at 2:39 pm
“Simple is clear, clear is good”.
Took the words right out of my penis.
Real life is not simple and so not immediately clear and then good.
dsquared 10.09.03 at 3:02 pm
I think you misunderstood my original reply. Selling grades, for cash, sex or cleaning services, is wrong and it is correct for a university to require that its employees don’t do it. But that leaves the large category of potential relationships which are not based on quid pro quo
Zizka 10.09.03 at 4:54 pm
I quite agree. D-squared’s attempts to be provocative are to be condemned.
Nobody has picked up on my thoughtful posts above, so I’ll just note that we have apparently moved into a world which is in these respects far more puritanical than the early Sixties (pre-“Sixties”) world I remember. Back then it was “don’t ask / don’t tell”, but faculty-student weddings (I remember three) were not regarded as scandals at all, even though you had to assume that fornication preceded them. In two cases I know that the bride was hired by the school. There was no victimization (I’ve run into all three brides fairly recently) and the hirees were competent at their jobs.
It was always male faculty of course, and I actually lost twice personally — as a young guy competing with older guys with money, and also as a young non-gay guy some of whose avenues to recommendations were thereby blocked. But really, life isn’t fair.
Matt Weiner 10.09.03 at 5:00 pm
Daniel–
What do you think about doctor-patient sexual relationships? Psychiatrist-patient? These seem to me cases in which, at least arguably, a professional code of ethics ought to prohibit a consensual affair between adults.
(Professor-student is not exactly like either of these, of course–I’m just trying to counterexample your general principle, and then we may be able to think about why professor-student relationships might or might not be OK.)
(Oh, and that’s doctor-own patient. I would hardly like to say that a doctor should be prohibited from sleeping with anyone who is a patient.)
dsquared 10.09.03 at 5:26 pm
Can’t see much of a case for a blanket ban on either, to be honest. Certainly not for medical doctors, and neither for psychiatrists dealing with people who would be considered capable of consenting to relationships with someone else. It’s just a general scepticism about attempts to take the power out of sex. As I say, sub-Foucault.
matt Weiner 10.09.03 at 6:18 pm
Fair enough. My general feel is that bans on faculty/student (and other similar) relationships can serve the purpose of discouraging the faculty from hitting on the students, which can be bad when the student isn’t interested. So this isn’t meant to say that the power asymmetry undermines consent, when that consent is really there. The idea is more that, if your student really is interested in you, your relationship should wait till the end of term.
From what I recall of the UC policy, it is (1) far more restrictive than desirable for the purposes I’ve proposed and (2) not necessary to deal with the situation that inspired it, in which the conduct that was alleged was non-consensual (the student said that she was passed out).
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 6:58 pm
“I think you misunderstood my original reply.”
No, I understood it just fine. I just disagree with it, and am trying to draw you into an argument that I think you’ll lose.
You, in turn, are wiggling away. Which you’re perfectly entitled to do, to be sure.
Doug M.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 7:10 pm
“Selling grades, for cash, sex or cleaning services, is wrong and it is correct for a university to require that its employees don’t do it. But that leaves the large category of potential relationships which are not based on quid pro quo”
Well, do you have some way of telling a relationship that’s 100% driven by love or lust from one that’s, say, 60% so and 40% sex-for-grades?
— Of course you don’t. So you’re basically willing to open the door for sex-for-grades, and also various subtle forms of sex-by-intimidation. Because, well, adults should be free to arrange their sex lives as you see fit.
I dunno. You reject the charge of libertarianism, but this has the look and feel of a libertarian argument to me — right down to the _de rigeur_ charge of irrationality (in this case, “prudery”) against those holding opposing views.
Well, I read “Savage Love” every single Tuesday… and I think prof-undergrad sex is a questionable idea at best, and entirely appropriate for prohibition. Basically it’s a rational burden/impact test. Is the regulatory burden (no prof-undergrad sex) proportionate to the good achieved (blocking or at least curbing abuses)? Well, the impact on the sex lives of the undergrads is pretty minimal — it’s not like your average UG lacks for sexual opportunities. And the possible abuses are pretty significant. So IMO the scale tips in favor of some sort of regulation — and, as noted upthread, a simple ban seems the most straightforward way to do it.
Doug M.
Doug Muir 10.09.03 at 7:31 pm
“Can’t see much of a case for a blanket ban on either, to be honest. Certainly not for medical doctors…”
Well, the American, British, and Canadian Medical Associations would all beg to disagree with you, Dan. They all have exactly those bans, and have for many years.
Here’s the AMA’s official position:
‘Sexual contact that occurs concurrent with the physician-patient relationship constitutes sexual misconduct. Sexual or romantic interactions between physicians and patients detract from the goals of the physician-patient relationship, may exploit the vulnerability of the patient, may obscure the physician’s objective judgment concerning the patient’s health care, and ultimately may be detrimental to the patient’s well-being.’
The AMA is also very down on relationships between doctors and /ex/-patients. They don’t constitute misconduct per se, but they are viewed very askance:
‘Sexual or romantic relationships between a physician and a former patient may be unduly influenced by the previous physician-patient relationship. Sexual or romantic relationships with former patients are unethical if the physician uses or exploits trust, knowledge, emotions, or influence derived from the previous professional relationship.’
A number of states have enacted the AMA rules into law; in Colorado, for instance, boinking a patient can land you in jail for up to a year. Even in states where they haven’t yet passed such laws, a doctor who has sex with a current patient has still committed professional misconduct. That means he/she is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including suspension or loss of his/her license to practice.
Now, you can argue that you’re right and they’re wrong… but the AMA and CBA are self-regulating organizations; in other words, they’re doctors regulating doctors. And most doctors do indeed support an absolute ban. One recent survey of Canadian doctors found that over 95% thought a sexual relationship with a patient could never be therapeutic, nearly 70% thought it was “always” an abuse of power, and 62% supported an absolute ban (Ovens & Permaul-Woods, CMAJ, 1997).
So, maybe you “can’t see much of a case”, but the doctors clearly can… and I’d suggest that they’re a little closer to the issue than you are.
Doug M.
ogged 10.09.03 at 8:29 pm
All “blanket bans” seem unfair, and particularly so in this case because the exceptions are heartwarming tales of amorous bliss.
But there’s a major and, for dsquared, fatal, disanalogy between universities and corporations (or even hospitals and doctors’ offices): the mission of the university is–in part and at least nominally–to guide and to teach. I’m surprised in loco parentis hasn’t come up yet, because I think some parts of it are worth salvaging. Undergraduates–like everyone else, I’m willing to throw grad students to the dogs–are entrusted, and have entrusted themselves, to the university. Framing the issue in terms of “consent” is rhetorically effective, because it appeals to our by-now-almost-reflexive distaste for the PC Nanny Regime, but it glosses over the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, having sex with a youngin’ who is in your thrall just isn’t very nice.
The university, as a repository of knowledge (and even wisdom), isn’t obligated to play dumb and treat all the individuals within its ambit as equal and equally competent actors. It’s entirely consistent with the university’s mission for it to say that it knows what’s best for its undergraduates–in fact, I think there’s a good case to be made that the failure to institute such a ban would be a dereliction.
clew 10.10.03 at 2:20 am
I wouldn’t throw grad students to the wolves. They will, presumably, be at least four years more mature, but they’re a lot more ‘stuck’ to their departments professionally.
Besides, one of the most vivid little love tales *I* remember is that my grad school dept. chair had married two of his students. Neither finished; at least one committed suicide.
The other vivid little tale is that two of my profs were very happily married, after a lengthy long-distance courtship and then a two-body problem career. “Never fall in love until you both have tenure”, one of them said to me.
And then they solved a Hilbert problem and were offered the colleagues of their choice in some lovely little New England powerhouse. So! What I left out of my first post, but was probably also said by one of the Hilberters, was that
Sublimation is a powerful force in scholarship.
Jason McCullough 10.10.03 at 8:09 am
“Chimps don’t band together based on obsessions with Ayn Rand”
I wouldn’t bet on it…..
Doug Muir 10.10.03 at 10:44 am
Ogged’s post is so good that I hesitate to quibble. But, really, what else are we here for? And anyhow, it’s a very small quibble.
I firmly agree with him on the “guide and teach” point; and further, that the university isn’t obligated to play dumb — in fact, that it may have a clear obligation to /not/ be dumb. Agreed further, that it’s entirely consistent with the university’s mission for it to say that it knows what’s best for its undergraduates. (And I note in passing that the “market” for universities, while very imperfect, is big enough that a dissatisfied student does have options; if you don’t like Conservative State U, transferring to Good Times College of Liberal Arts is at least theoretically an option).
The quibble: _in loco parentis_ is a term of art, and WRT universities it has been weakened to the point where it can now be considered moribund if not altogether dead. Ogged obviously knows this, but from a legal POV you can’t actually “salvage” bits of an exploded doctrine; you have to build them up again, as it were from scratch.
As far as I know, the various bans and codes have not yet been thoroughly tested in court. There have been cases, but there is not yet a clear body of doctrine on how to address these issues. That doctrine may be as simple as “colleges can ban as they please, or not”, but lawyers being lawyers — or, more precisely, judges being lawyers — I suspect it will be a bit broader than that, with some attempt to provide more intellectual justification.
Check back in five years. (“The common law: it’s like watching someone else do bonsai!”)
A bit of googling can turn up the interesting details of _loco’s_ decline and fall, and various attempts to breathe new life into it. The Invisible Adjunct had a recent post on just this point (July 30, 2003) with a link to an interesting article. (The Adjunct also has a recent post, today or yesterday, referring to this very thread.)
Doug M.
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