A Syracuse University professor argued in an August essay that university policies prohibiting romantic and sexual relationships between faculty and students restrict the freedom of women.

Amardo Rodriguez, a professor in SU’s communication and rhetorical studies department of College of Visual and Performing Arts, argues in his essay that the goal of faculty-student relationship bans, like restrictions on abortion, is to impede a woman’s bodily autonomy. Rodriguez also likens opposition to faculty-student relationships to that of same-sex and interracial relationships.

Springer Nature published Rodriguez’s essay, “Feminists Betraying Feminism to Restrict Faculty-Student Romances,” about a year after the university reformed its policy regarding romantic and sexual relationships between SU employees and students.

The university bans all romantic and sexual relationships between employees and undergraduates, as well as between employees and graduate students with whom the employee has a supervisory, research, departmental program or advisory connection.

Rodriguez said he’d like the university to reverse the policy banning faculty-student relationships, as well as “all others that violate core human rights,” in an email.

In his essay, Rodriguez cites several sources — largely from 1997 to 2003 — to question the effectiveness of these bans and whether higher education institutions can know if prohibiting these relationships benefits women.

“Although these new bans promise to protect women from relationships with power differentials, there is no research that speaks to the challenges of these relationships being any different to other kinds of consensual relationships between adults,” Rodriguez states in his essay, citing a source from 2003.

The university’s faculty manual states that there is significant institutional power and risk of coercion present in relationships between undergraduates and faculty.

Citing the findings of five sources dated between 1997 and 2017, Rodriguez claims these relationship bans patronize women, obstruct learning, downplay sexual harassment, advance the values of capitalism and further the power of institutions over women’s lives, among other assertions.

“He seemed to think that the only power relationship was between a male professor and a female student,” said Margaret Susan Thompson, an associate professor of history and political science. “(The question) is not the sex of the person exercising power, but the power relationship itself.”

Chancellor Kent Syverud asked the University Senate in January 2018 to review the university’s governance concerning relationships between faculty and undergraduate students. USen voted to ban such relationships in April 2018 following a review conducted by senators on the Academic Freedom, Tenure and Professional Ethics, and Women’s Concerns committees.

Thomas Keck, a professor of political science, presented the AFTPE and Women’s Concerns committees’ resolution to USen.

Thompson said she found Rodriguez’s essay unpersuasive. She didn’t see the connection between faculty-student relationships and abortion and found the use of sources from the 1990s to be problematic. Attitudes surrounding issues of sexual power have changed since then, she said.

“To view a relationship between an undergraduate and a professor, or an undergraduate and somebody in a supervisory position, as a consensual relationship, it ignores the power dynamic,” Thompson said.

Rodriguez told The Daily Orange that if there is an abuse of power present in faculty-student relationships, the policy should also prohibit any person from entering relationships with people of different ranks. For example, an assistant professor shouldn’t be able to have a relationship with an associate professor, he said.

Thompson said the supposed similarities between inter-employee and faculty-student relationships are not true. Along with there being a lack of recent evidence to support a similarity between these types of relationships, Thompson said most SU students are much younger than university faculty.

LaVonda Reed, associate provost for faculty affairs and professor in the College of Law, said in an email that Rodriguez has the ability to freely express his personal academic and intellectual ideas as all faculty do.

The university’s faculty manual policy is applicable to and protective of all undergraduate students, regardless of their gender or racial identity, she said.

“Our University policy is informed by the power differential between those in positions of authority on our campus and those who are not. Protecting our students from potential abuses of that power differential is our primary concern,” Reed said.

Published on September 26, 2019 at 10:12 am

Contact Emma: esfolts@syr.edu