The College Fix

Answer: seemingly, no

The modern American university is a strange place, vacillating as it does between perverse sexual anarchy and Puritan-style sexual priggishness. At Columbia University, however, may just be one of the strangest campus sexual policies in the country: there, staff members are apparently allowed to initiate sexual relationships with their students at will. School policy simply dictates that staff members “should” refrain from shacking up with students, not that they must.

No staff member should hook up with students: Sage advice! But as policy it is positively absurd, because it quite plainly leaves open the obvious possibility that an advisor, dean or director may end up romantically entangled with a young student under his or her supervisory. In fact, that’s just what happened at Columbia, leading to a dean’s getting fired for his “unacceptable” conduct. Columbia is now being sued by a student who claims the dean emotionally abused her and took advantage of her vulnerability. If the lawsuit is correct, then he certainly did. But it’s not at all clear that the sexual relationship itself was at issue here.

It’s similarly not clear how this policy actually functions at Columbia. Officials there refused to respond to a College Fix reporter’s repeated inquiries. Maybe that’s understandable; such a policy is a genuine embarrassment, and most of us would be reluctant to own up to it, as well. It would be easy enough for the university to fix this problem—just a small, one-word tweak in one particular policy—but first they must acknowledge that it is a problem, and sadly they have given no indication that they are willing to do that. A shame—for Columbia, and for the students that go there, and deserve better.

MORE: $50 million sexual harassment lawsuit shines light on Columbia’s staff-student sex policy

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