Universities can no longer turn a blind eye to staff dating students | Anna Bull and Tiffany Page

Students view staff dating their peers as ‘predatory’. Yet few universities have policies on appropriate teaching relationships

The #MeToo movement and institutional sexual abuse scandals have shown that sexual exploitation is widespread across many areas of society, but it has a distinctive pattern in universities. This stems from the power imbalances between students and staff in higher education, and the ways in which these can be exploited by staff to gain sexual access to students.

This power imbalance, enabled by the blurred boundaries between staff and students, can lead to toxic cultures in which students are required to make a judgment as to what behaviour is appropriate. Equally, refusing sexual advances from staff or reporting such behaviour places students at risk of punitive responses, such as loss of access to teaching, resources, references, job opportunities and career networking

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H5srYp