An Accident Waiting to Happen

Teaching assistants are students who happen to teach. And students may end up having sexual relationships with other students, whether influenced by peers, parties, or other temptations, even when they hadn't planned to do so. Usually, consensual student-to-student sexual relationships would not implicate a college or university sexual misconduct policy. But when one of the students happens to also be a teaching assistant, the risk of a policy violation and misconduct charge becomes real. If that's you, you may wonder whether your school is going to fire you as a teaching assistant or, worse, expel you from school.

Typical Prohibitions

The vast majority of colleges and universities prohibit professors from having sexual relationships with students under any circumstances. Many colleges and universities extend some similar form of prohibition to teaching assistants. Michigan State University, for instance, maintains a Consensual Amorous or Sexual Relationship Policy that expressly prohibits teaching assistants, along with faculty members and other instructors, from engaging in amorous or sexual relationships with undergraduate students.

What the Policies Generally Permit

College and university policies banning teaching assistants from having sexual relationships with students must have some limit to them, though. After all, students are students. A school might recruit few teaching assistants if they had to give up all intimate relationships for the duration of their service. And if that's your intuition, then depending on your school's specific policy, your intuition may well be correct. Many schools that prohibit teaching assistants from having sex with a student limit the prohibition to students whom the teaching assistant is right then serving. Michigan State University's Consensual Amorous or Sexual Relationship Policy is once again a good example. Consider, too, Stanford University's Consensual Sexual or Romantic Relationships In the Workplace and Educational Setting Policy, providing as to teaching assistants:

"If such a relationship exists between a student teacher and a student in a setting for which the student teacher is serving in this capacity, s/he shall not exercise any evaluative or teaching function for that student. Furthermore, the student teacher must recuse himself or herself and notify his or her supervisor so that alternative evaluative, oversight or teaching arrangements can be put in place. This obligation to recuse and notify exists for past as well as for current relationships."

Prior Intimate Relationships

A teaching assistant may still wonder about prior intimate relationships before becoming a teaching assistant. If a student enrolls in the teaching assistant's course when the teaching assistant had a prior intimate relationship with that student, college and university policies may well require the teaching assistant to disclose the relationship so that the assistant or student can withdraw. Once again, Michigan State University's Consensual Amorous or Sexual Relationship Policy provides the example:

When such amorous or sexual relationships predate the assumption of educational responsibility for the undergraduate student, the graduate teaching assistant shall immediately disclose the amorous or sexual relationship to the relevant unit administrator, who shall promptly arrange other oversight for the student.

Retain a Premier National College Misconduct Attorney

Your school's policy may provide different rules. Know the rules when you become a teaching assistant before facing misconduct charges. But if you are a college or university teaching assistant already facing misconduct charges for having had a sexual relationship with a student, retain premier national college misconduct attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's college misconduct team to defend you. Attorney Lento has helped hundreds of college and university employees and students successfully defend and defeat charges of sexual or other misconduct. Call 888-535-3686 or go online now for a premier attorney's help.