Professors banned from relationships with students

UNIVERSITY College London (UCL) has become the first Russell Group university to ban relationships between professors and their students.

Lecturers are banned from having romantic or sexual relationships with students for whom they have “direct responsibility”, which could include involvement in academic studies or personal welfare.

UCL says that while staff and students socialising on a “friendship basis” is a positive part of university life, the policy is aimed at preventing “abuses of power and sexual misconduct”.

Academics are allowed to be in relationships with students whom they do not directly supervise, but they must declare it. If they fail to do so within a month, they will face disciplinary action, the policy says.

Staff should “maintain an appropriate physical and emotional distance from students”, the policy says.

They should also try to “avoid creating special friendships with students, as this may be seen as grooming”.

In 2001, the law was changed to make it illegal for teachers to engage in sexual activity with pupils at their school aged under 18. However, there are no such laws to prevent university lecturers from having consensual sexual relationships.

Dr Anna Bull of the 1752 Group, which campaigns against sexual misconduct by university staff, said that the UCL’S new policy is “the most stringent in the UK”.

She told The Daily Telegraph: “We think students are put at risk by the power imbalance in the relationship. It is similar to patients and their doctors and that is why it is not allowed.”