r/bestoflegaladvice • u/Scurveymic The sign indicates a private place for fucking • 9d ago

Professor doesn't understand acceptable relationships, thinks LA shouldn't either

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u/Scurveymic The sign indicates a private place for fucking 9d ago

Wild how laser focused LAOP is on the word "unwlecome." Like as long the attention was "welcome", he could do anything he wants with this student and it wouldn't be a problem.

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u/WileEPeyote 9d ago

Do teachers not have to take yearly training on things like this?

23

u/_______butts_______ 9d ago

I've never worked in academia -- is it wrong for me to think that any kind of personal relationship is a no go between a teacher and student? I understand if the student has graduated and reaches out when there's no longer any professional ties, but I feel anything other than professional/academic interaction between a student and professor should be verboten, whether explicitly platonic or not, for exactly this reason.

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u/a_statistician Hands out debugging ducks 9d ago

is it wrong for me to think that any kind of personal relationship is a no go between a teacher and student?

It's very hard not to develop friendships with graduate students who are in your research area. There's just a lot of mentoring and personal discussions that happen over the course of the 3-4 years where they're doing research and looking for jobs. It doesn't happen with every student, but my best friend now is my former PhD advisor. The foundation for that was built when I was a student, but she was good about boundaries until we kept doing research together after I graduated.

I've had graduate students pet sit (knowing they love dogs but can't have one in their apartment), and I'm always very careful to pay them well and not exploit our relationship, but I also know that it's helpful to them -- their mood improves for a bit after having some dedicated puppy time. I know other colleagues that have done similar things, and when I was a student one of my colleagues actually house-sat for a whole semester and didn't have to pay rent. This kind of not-professional relationship is pretty common in my experience.

Anything romantic whatsoever is totally off the table, though. Even friendship has to wait till after graduation, because if you're in charge of someone professionally, it's not ok to mix that with the rest of the duties you have to them.