Students at the University of Cambridge have been told to stop flirting with staff under a new policy that will ban sexual relationships with professors.
The university has published a new set of rules due to come into force on July 1, which includes a warning against behaviour “that could be interpreted as flirtatious” towards members of staff.
Under the new code, university staff should report such behaviour or any actions that could be perceived as a student “making advances towards a personal, particularly intimate relationship” with them to the head of department or HR team.
Records of flirtatious behaviour by students will be kept “if appropriate” following discussions with the university’s Office of Student Conduct, Complaints and Appeals (OSCCA), Cambridge has warned.
Measures may also be put in place “to separate and protect” students and staff in such incidents and to “minimise the possibility of conflicts of interest, concerns or complaints over academic integrity or professional behaviour”.
Month-long amnesty for staff
The new rules form part of Cambridge’s updated relationships policy, which will prohibit all sexual relationships between staff and students from next month.
Staff will also be “strongly discouraged” from forming close personal friendships with students over whom they have any academic or professional responsibilities.
University employees will be granted a one-month amnesty until Aug 1 to admit any current or past liaisons with students, or close friendships with pupils, after which they could face the sack.
It will replace the university’s existing relationships policy, which says student-staff relationships should “be avoided”, but does not ban them outright.
The policy will prohibit Cambridge staff from “entering into an intimate relationship with any student for whom they have any direct or indirect academic responsibilities, or other direct professional responsibilities”.
The guidance will apply to all employees of the university, including professors, tutors, visiting academics, and postgraduate students who teach as part of their degree.
Students ‘may feel pressured’
Cambridge said the policy was designed to protect staff and students from conflict of interest allegations, and to ensure safeguards are in place to prevent sexual misconduct.
It added that this could apply even within “seemingly consensual relationships between students and relevant staff members”.
The university said this might include a student feeling pressured to enter a relationship, go “further than they might otherwise wish”, or not feel able to end such a relationship, on the basis that doing so may harm their academic performance.
The change brings Cambridge into line with the University of Oxford and other leading institutions including University College London (UCL), Nottingham and Exeter, which have already banned sexual relationships between staff and students.
Universities UK (UUK), the lobby group for the sector, urged universities in 2022 to update their relationships policies in a bid to “change the culture of higher education”.
UUK, which represents 140 universities across the UK, said it was concerned over reports of sexual misconduct by staff and that it took such cases “extremely seriously”.
The Office for Students, the universities regulator, has also called for a clampdown on relationships between staff and students amid concerns that power imbalances can often be exploited. The body is consulting on a range of proposals, from a “relationships register” logging student-staff liaisons to an outright ban.
Universities are not required to publish data on sexual assault or misconduct, meaning the scale of potential abuses of power by staff is unclear. A National Union of Students survey in 2018 found that around 80 per cent of students were uncomfortable with staff having romantic or sexual relationships with pupils.
Risk of a ‘power imbalance’
Cambridge’s updated policy goes beyond Oxford’s, introduced last year, which urges staff to report flirtatious “messages or other behaviours” by students, but does not say that a record of such actions should be kept.
Older staff at Cambridge who have “close personal relationships” with students have also been warned that they may be at a heightened risk of being accused of a power imbalance.
The updated policy says that the risks of such accusations “are likely to be heightened where there is a significant age difference between the staff member and the student” or if the student is vulnerable.
Non-compliance with the new policy will be treated as a disciplinary matter, which could result in staff members being dismissed in the most serious cases.
A university spokesman said: “The new policy on staff and student relationships follows an extensive consultation across the university involving staff and student representatives, departments and colleges.
“It also takes into consideration the views of the regulator, the Office for Students, and Universities UK.”
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