Announcements
Posted: Wednesday, October 6, 2010Buffalo State College Policy on Consensual Sexual and Amorous Relations
Students should be free to develop relationships that supplement formal classroom instruction, and employees should be free to develop friendships and engage in social contact with supervisors and fellow employees. In most cases, social interaction among supervisors and employees, between fellow employees, and among faculty and staff members and students will benefit the entire academic community by promoting the interchange of ideas, building mutual trust and respect, facilitating communication, and reducing misunderstandings.
However, when a person in a position of power and authority abuses or appears to abuse that position, mutual trust and respect are lost and the academic environment suffers. Buffalo State College faculty, staff, and supervisors exercise power and authority over Buffalo State College students and employees over whom they have current or potential evaluative, supervisory, instructional, or other professional responsibility. This inherent power imbalance makes consent within any sexual or amorous relationship between a supervisor and employee or between a faculty or staff member and student suspect, and may impede the real or perceived freedom of the student or employee to thereafter terminate or otherwise alter the relationship. The relationship may create real or apparent impropriety, loss of objectivity, and a conflict of interest in any evaluative, supervisory, instructional, or other professional role that the faculty or staff member may have, or may develop in relation to the student or employee, and may expose the individual faculty or staff member, as well as Buffalo State College, to possible legal charges and liability.
Therefore, to avoid the breakdown of mutual trust and respect, which may result within the academic community from such sexual or amorous relationships,
It is the policy of Buffalo State College that:
-Commencement, upon either person's initiative of a sexual or amorous relationship between a Buffalo State College faculty or staff member and a student with respect to whom such faculty or staff member has current professional responsibility shall be prohibited. Any Buffalo State College faculty or staff member who nevertheless engages in a sexual or amorous relationship shall be required to remove him or herself from any evaluation of the student and from any activity or decision that may or may appear to reward, penalize, or otherwise affect the student or student employee, and to otherwise take appropriate action to minimize any potential preferential or adverse consequences to the student, or to other members of the college community from any such sexual or amorous relationship. It shall also be the responsibility of the administrative head of the faculty or staff member's academic or administrative unit, if he or she is aware or made aware of the relationship, to ensure that the foregoing steps are taken.-In addition to being required to take the foregoing steps, any faculty or staff member who engages in a sexual or amorous relationship with a student or student employee shall be subject to but not limited to counseling, reprimand, probation, and suspension.
