A panel of University of Hawaii faculty and staff from UH campuses around the state are putting the finishing touches on a proposed policy to make it clear that romantic and sexual relations between faculty members and their students are prohibited.

Current UH policy warns against faculty-student romantic relationships but it does not ban them.

UH President David Lassner is expected to receive the draft policy next month.

UH Manoa Women’s Studies Chair Meda Chesney-Lind is on the committee that drafted the new policy.

Students on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus in February 2014.

PF Bentley/Civil Beat

Chesney-Lind says the proposed new policy clearly states that amorous relationships are forbidden when there is a power differential between a faculty member and a student.

Chesney-Lind says when a faculty member has grading and other powers over a student, a sexual relationship can never be considered consensual.

“We are trying to remove sexually predatory behavior from the educational experience of our students. That’s the bottom line,” says Chesney-Lind.

In the draft policy, faculty members as well as all UH employees are forbidden to have romantic relationships when one of the partners has evaluative powers over the other.

When there is a pre-existing amorous relationship involving a UH employee before the employee’s partner was promoted to a supervisory role, then one of the partners must be transferred to another department.

‘A Line that Should Never Be Crossed’

Graduate student Penny-Bee Bovard says she’s been troubled by faculty-student relationships she has seen develop during her time at the UH and finds them reprehensible.

“Nothing good comes out of these relationships. When they happen, it has a ripple effect like a rock dropping in a pond. It affects the student, it affects the particular department, the university and the community.”

Bovard is a Ph.D. candidate at UH Manoa in sociology and women’s studies.

“A professor should not even think of hitting on a graduate student. It is a line that should never be crossed, “ says Bovard.

“A professor’s responsibility is to mentor a student academically, not to mentor a student in a personal relationship.”

Chesney-Lind says when she was a student at the UH Manoa, faculty-student sexual relationships were so common, “I thought that’s the way it is in graduate school.”

University of Hawaii President David Lassner is pushing for the policy to address romantic relationships between individuals of different power levels on campus.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“It was real corrosive,” she said. “A number of my classes felt compromised because I knew the professor was having an affair with one of the graduate students.”

In my own graduate school years at the UH, one of my professors had an affair with a student who he later married.

UH Manoa is one of 50 universities being audited by the U. S. Education Department to determine how it handles allegations of sexual harassment and sexual violence.

In February, the UH updated its policies on sexual violence and harassment to comply with the federal Violence Against Women Act and Title IX guidelines.

“We are trying to remove sexually predatory behavior from the educational experience of our students. That’s the bottom line.” — Meda Chesney-Lind, UH Women’s Studies chair

UH President Lassner decided then to create a separate policy to address romantic relationships between individuals of different power levels on campus.

Lassner asked Chesney-Lind and other committee members to develop a stronger, clearer, university-wide policy in line with what other schools are doing.

Colleges and universities across the country are creating stricter prohibitions against faculty-student dating and sexual relationships.

Among the universities banning such relationships are Harvard, Yale, the College of William and Mary in Virginia, the University of Connecticut and Stanford.

Stanford’s sweeping ban makes it very clear why faculty members must be prohibited from engaging in sexual affairs with undergraduates “because of the relative youth of undergraduates and their particular vulnerability in such relationships.”

Other Colleges in Hawaii

Here at home, Hawaii Pacific University bans intimate amorous relationships when one of the partners has a supervisory, evaluative role over the other.

HPU’s policy says,  “Such relationships constitute a conflict of interest and are prohibited.”

But the relationships are allowed to continue if the evaluative relationship is ended.

That means if a student decides to transfer to a class taught by another professor, the relationship with her romantic professor can continue.

HPU’s Director of Strategic Communications, Richard Rapoza, says, “We don’t have a blanket ban against such relationships because we have a lot of non-traditional older students.”

Chaminade University appears to lack a specific policy on romantic engagements between students and faculty.

Colleges and universities across the country are creating stricter prohibitions against faculty-student dating and sexual relationships.

Chamindade communications director Kapono Ryan emailed me a statement saying that Chaminade is updating its anti-sexual harassment policy to insure compliance with Title IX

But she did not answer my question about how Chaminade handles faculty-student romantic relationships or if such relationships are prohibited.

There was only this vague line in Ryan’s email that might address faculty student romances: “Chaminade recognizes the inherent dignity of all people and is committed to providing an educational and work environment that is free from sexual misconduct and harassment in any form.”

Ryan did not clarify if “sexual misconduct” at Chaminade means student-faculty romantic relationships.

The University of Hawaii’s draft policy on faculty-student sexual relations will have a long way to go after it is reviewed by Lassner.

Other agencies that also must review it include three public worker unions representing employees on UH campuses, as well as the Faculty Senate and  student and graduate student associations.

Chesney-Lind says say the goal of the new policy is to create a bias-free educational environment for students; she laughs “not a dating service for professors.”

She says she hopes for a sea change from the bad old days when “It was like the female students were part of a hunting ground with some professors stalking them.”

“My hope is the new policy will do some good.”