No Room for Romance

When Peter T. Wilson ’99 moved into his freshman dorm, his proctor, who had just graduated, was dating a then-student from the senior class.

Nine years later and now in his fifth year as the Eliot House resident tutor for architecture, drama and BGLT issues, Wilson says he still sees romantic relationships between resident tutors and students, though the rules have definitely become stricter.

Cracking down on romantic relationships has not succeeded in clarifying what may be the root of the problem: the ill-defined and often divergent roles, rights and responsibilities of resident tutors.

“Sometimes you’re an aproned housewife with warm cookies, sometimes you’re a boring spout of Harvard-specific procedural information, and sometimes you’re a roaming night watchman,” says Samuel T. Moulton ’01, a psychology tutor in Dunster House.

While House Masters and resident tutors disagree on the nature of student-tutor relationships, one thing is clear—romance is out of the question.

Last March, Lauren E. Brown, a Quincy House resident tutor, left the House after allegedly engaging in a romantic relationship with a Quincy student. House Master Robert P. Kirshner ’70 spoke to his resident tutors last year about the case, and College administrators investigated other examples of inappropriate student-tutor contact.

But the ramifications of more ambiguous scenarios remain unclear. Nearly eight months after the highly publicized Quincy House affair, the administration has not refined its definition of the boundaries of appropriate relationships between resident tutors and students.

The question that remains for many students and administrators is just how much fun tutors and students are allowed to have together, and where to draw the line between productive mentorship and inappropriate behavior.

What is a Resident Tutor, Anyway?

Resident tutors offer a variety of services—everything from advising on course selection to hosting study breaks—and different visions abound on just what a tutor’s proper role is.

Associate Dean of the College Thomas A. Dingman ’67 said a resident tutor should serve three roles: as an adult figure in the entryway, as a scholar with whom to share ideas and experience, and as a community member. He said that as tutors carry out these responsibilities, he expects “people will find parameters.”

Moulton says tutors are “given the freedom to define our own approach,” but it is a circumscribed freedom.

“There’s actually a 50-page Resident Tutor Handbook,” he says. “It reads like a car manual, and has catchy acronyms to help tutors remember how to empathize with students.

“If you need a mnemonic in order to empathize, you shouldn’t be a tutor in the first place,” he adds.

The handbook is clear on the line that cannot be crossed: “Any amorous relationship with any undergraduate student so compromises appropriate exercise of Resident Tutor responsibilities that its existence will be grounds for immediate termination as a Resident Tutor.”

House Masters and tutors agree across the board that amorous relationships between students and tutors are strictly forbidden. Kirkland House Master Tom C. Conley notes that the policy is one of the basic premises in the contract for every tutor hired.

“In these situations an affective relation is usually a relation of power, a relation that can be upsetting and destructive,” he says.

But there is less of a consensus on the ideal balance between adviser and friend.

The Bedroom Door

Some tutors feel that student-tutor relationships are a matter of black and white. Fotini Christia, a public policy tutor and Quincy’s Tutor Selection Committee chair, said that relationships between tutors and students must be strictly professional.

“You can’t be friends with students because you have to keep some distance,” Christia says. “Your role as a tutor is undermined if you’re friends.”

But most tutors agree that some gray areas are inevitable, and the close age difference between students and tutors—many of whom are recent Harvard graduates who may have been classmates with students—can sometimes be a factor in blurring the lines between what is and is not appropriate.

“The age proximity opens the doors for many meaningful, rewarding tutor-student relationships,” Moulton says. “As long as it’s not the bedroom door, everyone’s fine.”

“Hang out with, yes,” he says. “Make out with, no.”

The door swings the other way, too. Eric D. Bennett ’97, a resident tutor in English in Pforzheimer House, says the tutor-student relationship can be what complicates a friendship.

“Definitely friendship is an important part of the tutor-student dynamic, although there is enough of an inherent hierarchy in the system that it’s an adulterated kind of friendship,” he says.

Bennett says there’s a tremendous burden on the committees that select tutors because, among other things, they must judge how well the applicant will keep the correct distance from students. He and many other tutors say a good rule is to act equally towards all students—“do nothing with one student that you wouldn’t feel comfortable or happy doing with another,” he says, advisees and non-advisees alike.

Keeping a distance can be difficult, as many events organized by students and tutors, such as House Stein Clubs and happy hours, offer alcohol to students and tutors together. Off-campus, the same socializing with alcohol involved could violate tutor guidelines.

Peter Wilson says it’s difficult to discern what the limits are, especially if student-tutor interactions take place outside the House.

“Once it becomes a ‘date,’ regardless of sexual intimacy, it’s not kosher,” he says.

Getting Up to Speed

Though the issue of questionable relationships between students and Harvard staff members is typically viewed through the lens of the tutor-student relationship, it is far from the only context in which the problem arises.

Decades ago, it was not uncommon for faculty and students to engage in relationships. In fact, many resulted in marriage.

Warburg Professor of Economics emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith met his wife Catherine, a 1936 graduate of Radcliffe, when she was his student.

“It’s a big generational thing,” Wilson says. “Many older members of the faculty are married to their former students.”

Changing times have caused other universities to reevaluate policies regarding sexual harassment and the appropriateness of student-faculty relationships.

In April 2003, the University of California (UC) Berkeley proposed a ban on student-professor relationships in the wake of a sex scandal surrounding a student at Berkeley’s law school and the school’s then-dean. Berkeley, like many other schools, had an “unwritten rule” that students and faculty should not get involved, according to Gayle Binion, chair of UC’s Academic Senate and a political science professor at UC Santa Barbara.

After a William & Mary professor published an article in GQ magazine about an affair with his student, officials at the Virginia College banned all dating between professors and undergraduates; and following a harassment case against an assistant math professor in November 1997, Yale University also passed a ban.

Schools such as the University of Iowa and Duke University also changed their policies in response to specific incidents.

Some bans prohibit faculty from dating students they supervise or are likely to supervise; others ban any and all student-professor relationships. Punishments range from letters of reprimand to termination.

In Harvard’s publication, “Sexual Harassment: Guidelines in the Faculty of Arts and Science,” the policy on student-faculty relationships is the former—the ban regards only students a teacher is teaching.

According to the guidelines, “Amorous relationships that might be appropriate in other circumstances always have inherent dangers when they occur between any teacher or officer of the University for whom he or she has a professional responsibility (i.e. as teacher, adviser, evaluator, supervisor). [...] Officers and other members of the teaching staff should be aware that any romantic involvement with their students makes them liable for formal action against them.”

The policy as stated in the main faculty handbook, “Information for Faculty Offering Instruction in Arts and Sciences, 2004-2005,” remains unofficial. The book states that “sexual advances towards or liaisons with one’s students are inappropriate, and violate University policy,” but declares the above should be read “not as a codification of official institutional policy but as a ‘discussion document’ to be used as a point of reference.”

By the Book

According to Bates, there is an orientation at the beginning of every year informing new and returning tutors of the guidelines by which they are expected to behave. Bennett says that when news broke last spring about the Lauren Brown case, the policy was widely reiterated to tutors.

“At no point, before or after, did the policy seem unclear,” Bennett says.

Still, not all Harvard resident tutors follow the rules.

Wilson says he had a friend who applied to be a proctor four years ago, and although the Freshman Dean’s Office “loved him,” his girlfriend was a junior at the time and so he was turned down.

Wilson also says a tutor in his House is currently dating a former student of his, although the relationship didn’t begin until well after the student graduated.

While most tutors and officials cite termination of tutor responsibilities as the obvious reason not to break the rules, others see breaching the limits of an appropriate relationship as detrimental to doing the job itself.

“It seems like a phenomenally terrible idea, crossing those boundaries, if for no other reason than that I don’t think the job would be very fun anymore,” Bennett says.

Some have reasons extending beyond the call of duty. “I must admit that it drastically drains one’s eligible dating pool and feels a bit doctrinaire, but there are certainly many situations where it could undermine your effectiveness as a resident tutor,” Moulton says. “The way I view it, a night of fun isn’t worth a year of rent.”

—Staff writer Bari M. Schwartz can be reached at bschwart@fas.harvard.edu.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the reporting of this story.