Between faculty and students

The following revision to University of San Diego’s policy on faculty-student relations came from an early May email.

2.2.11 Policy on Consensual Relationships Between Employees and Students

The integrity of the educational process depends on the maintenance of professional relationships between employees and students. This is especially true when an employee occupies a position of authority over a student. Employees must recognize and respect the ethical and professional boundaries that necessarily exist in these relationships. 

Consensual relationships between employees and students can create conflicts of interest and/or appearances of impropriety or bias that impair the integrity of academic, employment or other decisions. Consensual relationships can be disruptive to the educational and work environment and can result in a real or perceived abuse of power by the employee in the position of authority. In addition, relationships that begin as consensual can later change and give rise to claims of sexual harassment or other misconduct.

Accordingly, no employee shall occupy a position of authority over a student with whom the employee has or has had a consensual relationship. Similarly, no employee shall enter into a consensual relationship with a student if the employee occupies a position of authority over the student. Moreover, any consensual relationship between an employee and any student under age 18 is prohibited. These prohibitions similarly apply to consensual relationships between university volunteers and students, and to activities on- campus or off-campus.

Even where the employee is not in a position of authority over the student, the university strongly discourages consensual relationships between employees and students.

Employees and students should be aware that entering into a consensual relationship will limit the employee’s ability to teach and mentor, direct work, provide references, employ and advance the academic and/or professional career of a student involved with him or her in the consensual relationship. Individual schools or departments may adopt more restrictive standards than those of this policy….
(April 30, 2012)

 

READER COMMENTS

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:19 AM By Dan
“Consensual relatioships”– is this a euphemism for sexual liasons between instructors and students? Can’t a Catholic college get brave and declare unequivocally that such is a grave sin and sufficient grounds for dismissmal from the faculty?

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 6:15 AM By Joan of El Cajon
Gee, I wonder if this policy applies to openly-lesbian theology and religious studies professor Evelyn Kirkley, who since her 1995 hiring nearly 20 years ago has constantly agitated homosexual activism on USD’s campus, including mentoring its “Pride” undergraduate and “Pride-Law” law student groups, and who has fomented pro-sodomy activities like last month’s “drag show”?

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 7:39 AM By Dana
Thank you CCD for shining a light on the activities and habits of the creatures who love to live in the darkness under rocks and crevices. So many of these amoral and shocking practices have been going on unreported for so long it must come as a real shock to these people to be exposed. I can just imagine their beady little bloodshot eyes popping open and hear them cry out in a huff “Well! You prying hypocrites! You have no right to judge us! It is perfectly legal. Who are you to criticize?” blah blah blah Oh, and don’t forget ‘the Church should stay out of our bedrooms’ and “What about your priest scandal?” etc. Feel free to add your own list of grievances. It’s so sad. No one can bear the heat of Truth for long. Keep them on the grill. Oh, dear, I just thought of that deliberately ironic and funny bumper sticker from NOR which shows a 1950ish cartoon of a woman at a barbecue grill smiling and saying “I’d rather be barbecuing heretics’ or something very like. And no Jon, I don’t have it on my car…but only because my husband would have a hissy fit. (grin)

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 8:19 AM By Ted
I would never pay one red cent for one of my children to attend USD. Every time the university has the opportunity to do the right thing – they refuse to consider it as a course of action. This is an example. They mention a “consensual relationship” instead of saying what they actually mean, a sexual relationship by mutual consent. What they call it is irrelevant to the fact it amounts to fornication. Don’t be afraid to tell it like it is. Of course it makes you look as if you’re irresponsible, but you ARE irresponsible, go ahead and flaunt it, as you do your outright stupidity in promulgating garbage like this. Where is the bishop ? Why has he not painted over the word “Catholic” anywhere it’s found on that campus ?

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 9:02 AM By Sarah
Joan of El Cajon: I didn’t know that an “openly-lesbian” woman can be a professor of theology and religious studies at a so-called Catholic university. Pardon my naivete, but I can’t understand how this can be permiited. What excuse can Bishop Brom give for allowing this scandal to continue for 20 years?

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 9:18 AM By NUTUNE
THE ONLY ONES WHO WILL PAY ANY ATTENTION TO THIS INFORMATION IS THE ONES WHO DON’T NEED IT.

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:38 AM By Abeca Christian
So what about condemning the Drag show?

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:50 AM By Maryanne Leonard
Isn’t it amazing how many people choose academia so that they can be in continuing close contact with our children? We once placed our teachers and professors on such a high plane, trusting and respecting them instinctively, as they merited, but now we have to look at each one as a potential molester or opportunist. I went to work in the vice president’s office of Stanford University at age 17 and began dating a young professor there who told me about girls trying to come on to him to influence their grades. He turned them down and even downgraded them if it continued and warned his friends against certain students. Nowadays it seems the tables have turned, and today’s youngsters are at risk of exploitation by opportunistic teachers and professors. What a shame. College was once a safe, fascinating and serious place to learn – now the purpose seems to be maximizing fun and minimizing work, while preparing for the most lucrative jobs possible, so college is now too often seen as a combination trade school and hookup haven where the campus motto is “whatever . . . ” Thanks be to God and to the hard-working founders, none of the above applies to our beloved Thomas Aquinas College, the everlasting pride of Ventura County and Catholics everywhere.

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:07 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
Jean of El Cajon, VERY GOOD POINT, unfortunately we most likely already know the answer. Where is Bishop Flores when all this is going on? Oh, I know, he is too busy advocating for the non existent rights of cold blooded killers on death row to not be justly executed , and for the equally non-existent rights of illegal aliens and doesn’t have time for actual Mortal Sins! Pray for our very compromised Church! God bless, yours in Their Hearts, Kenneth M. Fisher

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:20 PM By Bud
Since the Church only seems to instruct laity about the acceptance or non acceptance of homosexuality, why should I care now that the church is so lax in controlling it’s own fonts of education. With the likes of the lesbins hired under auspices of religious orders like the Jesuits etc. et.al., who cares?

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:26 PM By Don Guillermo
USD’s policy is actually better than the one at another college I know. There, the policy is to be discreet and avoid scandal. Although these relationships should be banned outright, USD’s policy could be a lot worse.

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 2:42 PM By Abeca Christian
Joan of El Cajon thank you for exposing what you just posted. People don’t see how bad this school has become! We can no longer continue being in denial, we need to blast this school and close it down! Reclaim it’s campus and surrender it to real Catholic lay faithful! Bring back the devout nuns to teach, bring back holy priests and holy theologians!

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 9:49 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
Abeca, The Faithful Religious Women’s Orders are rapidly growing, but even that is not fast enough to fill a College faculty, and our faithful priests are too busy fulfilling their duties at parishes. The fact is that the bishop, at best was asleep at the switch, at worst, he was and is one of them. The Chastisement has to come! We are too far gone for anything else to work. God bless, yours in Their Hearts, Kenneth M. Fisher

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:16 PM By Joan of El Cajon
Sarah, I don’t know either how an “openly-lesbian” woman can be a professor of theology and religious studies at a so-called Catholic university. And I don’t know what excuse Bishop Brom can give for allowing this scandal to continue for 20 years, because Lord knows I’ve done everything I can to enlighten him. He has never responded to my many emails about USD, and two personal conversations I’ve had with him about the pro-sodomy shenanigans at that school have obviously borne no good fruit.

Posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:19 PM By Joan of El Cajon
Abeca Christian, USD needs to be exorcised. It won’t do any good to bring back the devout RSCJ nuns, who founded USD, to teach, because they got wigged out with Vatican II. I know; they taught me when I was a little girl during the early 1960s. I attended their Convent of the Sacred Heart in El Cajon from 1963 through 1969, when Vatican II was in progress. When I started there, they were still fully-habited, holy nuns. By the time I left six years later, the habits had come off. The RSCJs are now as liberal as any modernist order. They are part of the problem with USD.

Posted Friday, May 11, 2012 4:32 AM By PETE
Let us not blame the Church, but blame the Diocese BISHOP who is responsibile for everything “Catholic” within his own Diocese. This school is in the Diocese of Bishop BROM. – Right? What is he doing about it since their is no mention of SIN? In addition, has he yet to actively request that all Catholics in his Diocese (including Priests and Nuns) read and study the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition”? CCC: “2396 Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.”

Posted Friday, May 11, 2012 11:04 AM By Abeca Christian
Joan of El Cajon thank you for sharing with me a bit if USD’s history, I never knew that. : ) You are right it does need to be exorcised. I agree with you completely. After it is exorcised, then we can hand it over to real Catholic leadership. I would hate to see those beautiful buildings abandoned to the secular folks.