Professors approve sex policy

By mail ballot this summer, Faculty Senate members approved new policies on consensual sex between students and professors and on just cause for sanctions against faculty members. The policies have been recommended to University President Judith Rodin and Provost Stanley Chodorow, who have not yet acted on them. The first new proposed policy would bar all consensual sexual relations between professors and their students, and would strongly discourage all relations between a student and a faculty member -- even when the student is not in the professor's class. The policy was developed in the wake of a number of cases at the University, including former student Lisa Topol's filing of sexual harassment charges last year against former Assistant English Professor Malcolm Woodfield, with whom she had a three-month affair. And last year, Economics Professor David Cass alleged that he had been denied the graduate group chairmanship in his department because of his on-going relationship with Claudia Stachel, a former Economics doctoral student. The just cause policy governs the way in which the University must proceed when deciding whether to fire or demote a professor. The new just cause policy, which took years to formulate, would give a faculty member or the University president the right to appeal a sanction issued by the Senate Executive Committee if either party objected to the way SEC reached its decision. It would also allow the president to reduceE-- but not increase -- the severity of any disciplinary action SEC takes. Emeritus Finance Professor Morris Mendelson, who began working on the new just cause policy in the fall of 1991, said he is "delighted" that both new policies were approved by his peers. "It takes [punishment] out of the hands of the schools, and puts it in the hands of the university, and that is a major improvement," he said. Mendelson added that when disciplinary action was kept within a school, it tended to be "prejudiced for or prejudiced against the respondent." Law Professor Stephen Burbank, who chaired the subcommittee that developed the new consensual sex policy, said he expects faculty members to approve it. "I've always regarded this as a clarification of existing University policy, and one that is designed in part to protect their interests," he said. Although some faculty members voiced objections to both new sets of rules when they were under discussion last spring, Chodorow said he is in favor of them. "I think that the professional relationship between a faculty member and a student under his or her supervision requires great care in managing, and that excludes certain other kinds of relationships," he said. The vote on the sexual relations policy was 401 to 267, while the vote on the just cause policy was 419 to 79, according to Almanac. Voting closed on June 30; all 2,049 members of the standing faculty received ballots.