Boise State examines policy regarding
relationships between students and faculty

“I’m all for it! Whatever gets you an

‘A’!” jokes Boise State junior, Jenny Kassis,

about a developing policy regarding consensual sexual relationships

between professors and students.

While Kassis is taking a humorous standpoint on these types of

relationships, the Professional Standards Committee (PSC)

isn’t fooling around.

The PSC and the Boise State Human Resources Department are putting

pens to paper, molding a potentially wide-reaching policy regarding

consensual sexual relationships on campus. The goal: to make sure

what goes on in the bedroom stays out of the classroom.

Pam Gehrke, associate professor from the College of Arts and

Sciences, and other members of the PSC noticed that the current BSU

sexual harassment policy was lacking in this area. Gehkre says that

consensual relationships with an “unequal balance of

power” needed to be addressed to eliminate the possibility of

favoritism during professional or scholastic evaluation.

While Gehrke could not cite a specific example, she did say,

“There is an element in [the PSC] that knew that sometimes

these relationships occurred.”

Gehrke says that the problem is not the relationship itself, but

the potential for the imbalance of power to show itself on an

evaluation or in the grade books.

The PSC decided a policy was necessary to prevent these types of

imbalances from becoming an issue in the first place. The proposed

policy states that “Intimate relationships to which both

parties consent, but in which there is a reporting or evaluative

relationship between the two parties, pose special problems for the

University and must be addressed.”

According to Gehrke, if the policy goes into effect, it would

affect “all employees, students and faculty.”

Specifically, the policy demands that, “where such a

relationship exists, the person in the position of greater

authority, power or influence will bear the primary burden of

accountability and must ensure that he or she does not exercise any

supervisory or evaluative function over the other person in the

relationship.”

This would also include situations where the person in the position

of authority is the spouse of the person that they are

evaluating.

“Faculty have been put in that position where their spouse is

in their class,” says Gehrke. “If you don’t

[report this] it’s a problem.”

The policy has sparked a heated debate in the faculty senate and

with some students about whether it constitutes an invasion of

privacy.

“I don’t know how I’d feel about having to report

who I’m dating,” says sophomore Colleen DeBolin.

Steven Nicolaysen noted that dating outside of favoritism can still

potentially show up in the classroom. Friendships between students

and professors can lead to certain students getting the benefit of

the doubt while other students might not receive the same benefits

and complete fairness may be difficult to achieve.

“You cannot legislate against favoritism,” Nicolaysen

says.

While Gehrke sees kinks yet to be ironed out, she says the policy

is broad enough to circumvent most types of problematic situations,

“In general, this is a policy we should have.”

Grace Lucas
Special to The Arbiter

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