The official Ohio State University policy on student professor consensual sexual relationships

After a 1 1/2 years of  consideration, evaluation and debate the OSU issued its formal policy on consensual sexual relationships between students and professors on July 1, 2006; the policy can be viewed here.  And a myriad of OSU documents relating to the process leading to adoption can be viewed here.

What ended up in the final policy was essentially proposed in the Work Group Report.  And it appears that the Work Group report was not criticized by anyone or any entity associated with OSU.  The dankprofessor believes that it has been only on the dankprofessor blog that the work of the Work Group has ever been directly criticized.  The reality was that the work of the Work Group was accepted as the final word.  A lot of huffing and puffing occurred when the Task Force released its report to the OSU community, and the changes that did occur were not ultimately of a substantive nature.  And last but not least the consensual policy became a subpart of  the sexual harassment policy of  Ohio State University.  

So now in 2008, faculty and students entering OSU can internalize the OSU sexual norms in a bureaucratized and dehumanized framework. No romance; no passion; no love.  If there be passion, love and romance between a student and a professor, it must be a secret love.  And as I am sure we all know, love will survive and is surviving at OSU.  Such came to be at OSU and so many other universities by the usage of fear tactics, fear tactics that included  farcical beliefs that the permitting of student professor sexual relationships has in some way undermined the quality of academic life.  The quality of academic life was never undermined by allowing for student professor sexual relationships at OSU or any other university.  What has been  diminished is the quality of life since freedom and consent and choice have been diminished and authoritarian thinking has formally replaced independent thinking, and an authoritarian  institutional bureaucratic “ethic” has replaced a personal ethical engagement.

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Barry M. Dank aka the dankprofessor^TM
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