Beyond the Classroom: Are Lecturer-Student Relationships okay?

The ‘teacher and student’ trope has become uncomfortably popular recently, from films such as Miller’s Girl, starring A-Lister Jenna Ortega, to romance books such as The Love Hypothesis. Both media entail a female student entering a relationship with a male teacher, romanticising what it is to break that unspoken rule and fall in love with a teacher. While relationships between students and lecturers at university are technically legal, how moral is it? Is it right to be silently accepted and encouraged in the media, or should it be reinforced as something much more shameful?

Okay, so everyone’s probably had a crush on a teacher before. But how far should you take it? There’s a difference between thinking that your lecturer is attractive versus actually speaking to them, never mind meeting outside of lectures. There is a definite grey line with university, where some lecturers are not that much older than the students.

Outside of university, perhaps it would be considered acceptable. However, a lecturer dating one of their students can lead to increasingly problematic scenarios, such as doing favours for better grades on exams or essays. While real-life relationships are probably not as dramatic as every schoolgirl porno makes it seem, it still creates a bias that shouldn’t be there in the first place. In a classroom, it seems unfair to have one student prioritised and praised more than another because of a relationship that should be happening outside school hours.

So it is better to date a lecturer if they teach a different class? On the Newcastle University webpage, they state that “we do not accept close, personal or intimate relationships between colleagues and students where there is direct supervision.” There’s certainly less mention of lecturers who you have less contact with- and perhaps if you connected with them outside of University, it might be easier to navigate.

There’s certainly less of a power imbalance if your school work has nothing to do with them, and yet it still feels somewhat immoral. What are the chances that they might be teaching you in the next academic year? What if they meet your friends and have to teach them instead? Going out to dinner on Valentine’s Day doesn’t seem quite as fun if students are stopping by the table to ask if the lecturer’s marked their essays yet. While it might not seem like much of an age difference sometimes, lecturers are in a different position in life: they’re there to work, not to flirt with students.

So should teachers and students be able to date? While it depends on the situation and the age difference, the idea of earning favour for essays or exams is extremely unethical. While the idea of dating someone out of bounds can be considered attractive, I’d argue that your mountain of student debt is your first priority. Getting kicked out of university for a lecturer seems like a massive waste of money- and they can’t teach you anything either if they’re unemployed.