Chapter 33 Summary

In “Consensual Sex on Campus,” Leslie Pickering Francis defends a moderate position on the question of whether sexual relationships between faculty and students should be allowed. In Francis’s view, such relationships should be prohibited when the faculty member in question has supervisory authority over the student and should be strongly discouraged when there is a significant imbalance of power between the two parties. Although considerations of personal liberty and opposition to paternalism make a powerful case for a more permissive position, Francis contends that sexual relationships between faculty and students create several problems that justify their prohibition in some cases. The first of these problems has to do with the quality of education. Faculty-student relationships create distractions and conflicts of interests that can interfere with the core function of universities, namely, the development and transmission of knowledge. In addition, such relationships have the potential to impact equality of educational opportunity. For example, the overt expression of a sexual relationship in an educational setting can make others uncomfortable and thus disinclined to participate in classroom activities. And when a faculty member is known to be involved romantically with one of his or her students, other students may believe they will not be evaluated fairly and be left less motivated to work hard as a result. A final problem concerns consent. Drawing on accounts of consent taken from medical ethics, Francis contends that a student is often not in a position to consent to a relationship with a faculty member in a genuine, fully informed way.