The
best time to date your professor, if at all, is after you have graduated from
school. While it is true that some students have been able to date their professors
without any problems, this is the exception rather than the rule.
Some of the
problems inherent in dating your professor are:
When he/she has so
much power over your grade(s) (and hence your future), it is difficult to
have a relationship of equals;
If your relationship
is known to other people and your grades are excellent, some students and/or
faculty may question the validity of your grades and find it hard to take
you seriously as a student;
If your relationship
is secret people could still find out about it and again question the validity
of your grades. Because you have a personal relationship which is likely to
influence your professor’s objectivity, you, yourself may be unsure of
your true academic performance which can lead to self-doubt;
If the relationship
ends badly with a lot of hard feelings on both sides, depending on his/her
position:
he/she could sabotage
your grade, or at least leave you wondering if his/her personal feelings
influenced the grade;
he/she could talk
about you to other teachers and negatively influence how they perceive
you;
if he/she is the
only one teaching any courses that you must take, it will be very awkward
being in those classes. It will be difficult to ensure that his/her personal
feelings wouldn’t affect his/her behavior toward you in class or
at grading time;
if he/she teaches
in your major department, you might feel very uncomfortable not only with
him/her but with others in the department as well. Indeed, some women
go out of their way to avoid both a professor who is an ex-boyfriend and
his/her department in general, and end up feeling alienated by the whole
experience;
it would be extremely
difficult to use him/her as a reference for graduate school or for employment;
Even if the relationship
ends amicably it would be difficult to know for sure if your grade was influenced
by the professor’s personal feelings, and it might still be awkward to
be in any of his/her classes in the future.
The UCSC Academic Senate’s Resolution On Romantic Relationships states that even a single advance
to a student by an academic appointee, whether or not the advance is welcomed,
invited, or rebuffed, must be regarded by the academic community as a serious
breach of professional ethics and proper standards of professional behavior.
