EDITORIAL: Sex policy is best left as advisory statement

Proposed policy covers decisions best left to consenting adults.

University Senate discussed a policy this week on consensual sexual relationships between faculty and students.

Several senators expressed concern about the policy, and their concern is warranted. Originally introduced by the Student and Campus Life Council as an advisory statement, the policy states that instructors having sexual relationships with students in their courses would be re-assigned.

While this idea is well-intentioned, and has no glaring moral or ethical lapses, we question the necessity of it. Faculty members, along with the vast majority of students, are all adults. They can vote, join the military, smoke, view pornography and make their own decisions about who to pursue a relationship with.

Obviously, students and faculty members should not enter relationships lightly and should be avoided completely when the student is in a class taught by the faculty member. But these are adult decisions and ones that should be left to the adults in question.

Also disturbing is the apparatus by which violations would come to light: fellow faculty members.

While faculty should not turn a completely blind eye to ethical, moral and legal violations by their fellow academics, the university should also not encourage them to rat one another out. The need for solidarity, and the natural flaws of trying to legislate morality, combine to make us believe this policy would be better in its original form, as an advisory statement.

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