CAMPUS/AREA
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, January 28, 1994
3
Student leaders support plan
Policy protects students, they say
Doug Hesse / KANSAN
Emil Tonkovich listened to University Council members discuss consensual relationships yesterday.
By Stephen Martino Kansan staff writer
As faculty fought about definitions to the policy on consensual relations yesterday, the policy's impact on their rights seemed at the forefront of the discussion.
However, just as important to the policy is the way students will be treated and how their consensual relations with faculty members might change.
According to the policy passed by University Council, faculty members should not initiate or accept a relationship with a student whom they can grade or otherwise evaluate. Furthermore, if the relationship preexists the enrollment in a class, the faculty member must remove himself or herself from the power of grading that student. Failure to do so will violate the Faculty Code of Conduct, which could result in disciplinary action against the faculty member.
John Shoemaker, student body president, said yesterday that the student body was against rules that prohibited all relations but said the policy before Council was agreeable to students.
Student Senate, at its meeting Jan. 19, endorsed the proposed revision that was voted on yesterday.
John Altevogt, SenEx member and graduate student senator, said that the policy that eventually passed was a good start on consensual relations. He said the policy would help protect students from being victimized.
Altevogt also said that Student Advocacy, a group he helped create, would assist anyone who felt a faculty member had violated the consensual relations policy.
"We are going to start gathering information about procedures in different departments and schools to
get students out of a class where a professor has asked them out," he said.
Altevogt said that faculty members who asked students out but were rejected might have just as much or more reason to be unfair to that student than those who had a relationship but broke up.
"Students have been victims too long at this University," he said. "It is time for them exert some influence and power."
Yet students who make it a habit to date their teaching assistants might
not find that so easy anymore. The policy affects all faculty members, not just professors.
Jill Bechtel, SenEx member and holdover senator, said that even though there had been a long history of successful relationships between students and faculty members, the policy was a good one for students.
"We were concerned about students being caught in a power differential," she said. "We only outlawed the conflict of interest and not the relationships."
The Bottom Line
FACULTY: Faculty members cannot initiate or accept a relationship with a student whom they can grade or evaluate. If a relationship pre-exists, faculty members have to remove themselves from the evaluative power or risk violating the Faculty Code of Conduct, which
could lead to disciplinary procedures.
STUDENTS: Students will not be able to have a relationships with a faculty member that can grade them, without that faculty member breaking the Faculty Code of Conduct. They can still have relationships with faculty members who do not evaluate their work.
Source: Kansan staff reports
KANSAN
Task force member condemns policy
'Irregular procedures' cited in letter to Judicial Board
By Stephen Martino Kansan staff writer
A member of the Special Task Force on Consensual Relations seeks to "null and void" the consensual relations policy that was passed Dec. 9 at the University Council meeting through KU Judiciary Board.
Elizabeth Banks, associate professor of classics and task force member, wrote a letter on Jan. 3 to A. Kimberley Dayton, professor of law and head of the KU Judicial Board, to begin the judicial process.
The task force submitted two options for consideration by Council and University Senate Executive Committee. One was written by Banks and another was written by Robert Friau, head of Council.
In her letter, Banks wrote that the policy presented to Council for its Dec. 9 meeting from SenEx was "arrived at by irregular procedures."
Banks said in her letter that Option C, the third consensual relations policy written by T.P. Srinivasan, head of SenEx, and Friusur畏u
the two options written by the task force and contained language that was inconsistent with the spirit of what the task force concluded in its report.
Specifically, Banks said that the two options written by the task force contained the phrase "while not expressly forbidden" with reference to consensual relationships. The
Elizabeth Banks
third option did not use language forbidding a ban.
Banks said that Srinivasan and Friai did not want to discuss the lack of a ban in Council, and both wanted to present their policy — with a ban — to the administration.
She said she was recommending that the policy be declared null and void because of the procedural irregularities surrounding its passage by Council.
"For whatever reason, Srinivasan and Friau
chose to do an 'end run' around what is right and
proper, and consequently, 1 challenge the
result." Banks wrote.
Dayton and Friauf declined to comment about Banks' letter.
However, Srinivasan said that he welcomed the challenge to the policy and the procedures surrounding its passage so that Banks could be shown how her letter was wrong.
"I am glad that she filed the complaint," he said. "I will welcome any individual or group of individuals to meet with her so she can see the facts that are on the record and not as she imagines them to be."
Srinivasan said he wanted to stress that even though he and Banks were on opposite ends of this issue, he held her in high regard as an educator and as a contributor to governance issues.
According to University policy, once the head of the Judiciary Board receives notice a complaint, the board has five class days to begin the hearing process. Even though Banks filed her letter Jan. 3, classes did not begin until Jan. 11, so Jan. 17 was the fifth class day. No action has yet been taken.
"I can't understand why Betty Banks is don'i it," he said. "She's not that kind of person."
Banks said that she had not been told why no action on her petition had been taken and that she had been given no indication by Dayton as to when the process might begin.
Doug Hesse / KANSAN
Policy's ability for solutions questioned
By Stephen Martino Kansan staff writer
While the University of Kansas was mired in the Emil Tonkovich dismissal hearings, calls for a consensual relations policy were being heard from every corner of campus.
Marquis is not the only one who believes consensual relations may not address a larger problem that exists at KU.
"Assuming the charges against Tonkovich are true," said Don Marquis, Council member and professor of philosophy, "what he did amounted to rape, and a consensual relations policy isn't going to address anything like that."
Now that the University is close to enacting such a policy, some people question whether a consensual relations policy will be the best medicine for the illness Tonkovich seemed to bring to light.
Joe Zeller, Special Task Force for Consensual Relations member and professor of ceramics, said that during the task force's discussion it was clear that it could not impose a ban on consensual relations.
"The committee makes the assumption that students are naive, innocent, little victims," he said.
T. P. Srinivasan, head of the University Senate Executive Committee and professor of mathematics, said a consensual relations policy was necessary to monitor the conduct of faculty members involved in a relationship with a student they grade or evaluate. He said a relationship between a student and a faculty member was acceptable as long as the faculty member did not have the student in class.
However, Marquis said integrity should guide faculty members involved in relationships, not a policy.
"I think it is an intrusion on privacy of both students and faculty, and it creates problems for faculty and student," he said. "If problems develop, you have a situation of sexual harassment, and we have procedures already that cover that. It's real simple."
Other members of the consensual relations task force said they thought the enforcement of a ban on relationships would be difficult.
"Everyone agreed that we shouldn't try to enforce any kind of ban," Jeff Bottenberg, graduate senator and task force member. "We said these relationships weren't wise, but there should be no penalties for this behavior."
Duplication of policies is what Sandra Wick, assistant director of the honors program and task force member, said the University was engaging in by developing a consensual relations policy. She was head of the Task Force on Sexual Harassment that recommended against a ban on consensual relations.
"It is absurd that you are prohibiting behavior that is extremely private," she said. "Any ban would be practically unenforceable, plus any violations could be prosecuted under the existing policy of sexual harassment."
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