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Can a Student “Consent” to a Sexual Relationship with a Professor? (Part 3)

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Davidson chapter.

No question, in many teacher-student relationships, the student plays a significant role and may even take the lead.  Students have a share of the responsibility; they exercise consent, in some sense of that word.  In some (a few?) instances, everybody wins: the relationship, which may fizzle, doesn’t ultimately hurt anyone and may even fuel intellectual exchange, as Cristina Nehring contends.  But in many more cases, the student who thought she was consenting will discover that, instead, she was deluded and, what’s more, taken advantage of.

David Archard’s concept of term “exploited consent” speaks to this matter.  The term refers to consent predicated on the very imbalance of power between a professional and a client, patient, or student.  That is, “exploited consent” is consent given by a person of lesser power or status to someone with more power or status because of that person’s greater power or status.  In Archard’s words, “A pupil sleeps with her teacher or patient with her therapist because he is her teacher or therapist.  She would be most unlikely to do so if he was not in this position” (qtd. in Leslie Francis, Sexual Harassment as an Ethical Issue in Academic Life, 216-17; originally published as “Exploited Consent,” Journal of Social Philosophy 25: 92-101 (1994).)

Discussing the degree to which a “client”—in this case, a student—may be harmed or exploited in a relationship characterized by asymmetrical power, Archard comments, “The literature on sexuality within the context of work and professional organizations is very thin.  If, however, one takes sexual relationships within the context of professional education, what studies there have been suggest that the vast majority of students who enter into affairs with their lecturers suffer as a consequence.  They do not subsequently report that they were glad to have had the experience.  Quite the contrary.”

At my home institution, our Faculty Handbook includes a statement that’s intended to cover that very scenario.  I know that’s the intent because, lo these many years ago, I co-authored it with a male colleague.  At that time, I was aware of more than one episode on my campus in which a student had thought she was in a consensual relationship, but later changed her mind and lodged a complaint against the professor in question.  The sentence in the handbook reads, “The claim of mutual consent to [an amorous or sexual relationship] will not prevent the faculty or staff member from being subject to administrative sanctions.”  What may appear consensual at one moment may, later, reappear as the unfair advantage of one person over another. 

What students often lack, as those of us who teach them understand, is perspective.  The perspective of a student who worships at a professor’s altar or who just thinks that dating a professor would be cool is likely to shift radically when the professor and the amorous involvement are exposed to the harsh light of time.

I'm the Charles A. Dana Professor of English at Davidson College in North Carolina. My literary fields are Shakespeare, Shakespeare's contemporaries, and Renaissance literature. I'm also a writer of creative nonfiction. My writing web site is at http://cynthialewis.net