Last summer, the Regents of the University of California voted to ban "romantic" and "sexual" relationships between faculty and students. The new policy forbids faculty from becoming involved with students for whom they have direct responsibility and for whom they might "reasonably expect" to have responsibility in the future. The ban is the result of a nearly year-long campaign to put a policy of this kind in place. The campaign itself was initiated last fall by former Boalt law student Jennifer Reisch, who anonymously accused Boalt dean John Dwyer of sexual harassment, and whose lawyer subsequently told the media that what she and Reisch wanted to see was a tightening up of policies on faculty-student relationships at the university.

I've been saying for months now that the policy is not only intrusive, but unworkable. I've also been saying that it will produce the sort of sexually charged environment it is ostensibly aimed at eliminating. Now the UC faculty are starting to say pretty much what I've been saying all along. A September 30 New York Times piece reports that faculty on the Berkeley campus are beginning to question and challenge the policy.

The new policy prohibits faculty members from entering into consensual relationships with any student for whom they have, or "reasonably expect" in the future to have, academic responsibility. That includes students the faculty members are teaching or supervising or evaluating in any way. Faculty members who violate the policy are subject to disciplinary action ranging from a reprimand to dismissal, penalties typical of the policies in effect at other institutions as well.

While the University of California's new policy was approved by an overwhelming majority of the academic assembly, it continues to stir debate here. Professor Gallagher is one of more than 60 faculty members, mostly from the humanities and including many from women's studies, who have objected to the new policy as too vague and too sweeping.

They say it is impossible to know with certainty which students they may "reasonably expect" to have academic responsibility over.

Professor Gallagher wonders whether her own romance would have been against the rules. She has been married for 30 years to Martin Jay, a professor of European intellectual history. They met on campus in 1970, when she was a graduate student of English ó not his student ó and he was an assistant professor in the history department. But since her speciality is British literature and history, Professor Gallagher wonders if someone could have said that her future husband might have "reasonably expected" to have had academic responsibility for her at some point.

In a letter to the administration, the Berkeley faculty members argued that the policy goes too far. They said it would be more realistic to assume that there would be faculty and students who entered into relationships, and to allow faculty members who did so to recuse themselves from evaluating or supervising the students.

The letter makes it quite clear that what Berkeley and the other eight UC campuses now have on the books is not a policy that will raise the UC system to a new ethical level by creating clear and reasonable guidelines, but a policy that uses vague wording and imprecise reasoning to create an atmosphere of confusion, paranoia, and incipient threat. Anything goes under the new policy; an unacceptable relationship between a faculty member and a student can be just about anything a punitively minded administrator--or unscrupulous accuser--wants it to be. A cynic would say that was precisely the point.

Barry Dank, a professor of sociology at Cal State Long Beach who edits the journal Sexuality and Culture, who has been immersed in these issues for years, and who happens to be married to a former student, will be discussing the UC policy tonight on CNN, between 8 and 9 p.m. EST.

UPDATE: Dank's CNN appearance has been bumped to make more room for coverage of the California recall election. If they reschedule his appearance, I'll post the date and time.

UPDATE UPDATE: There's more at Invisible Adjunct, Crooked Timber, and Amitai Etzioni.