Don't date your students

I'm working this week, again, on my slides for an upcoming lab TA training workshop I am helping to teach here. And I'm putting in something about the concept of the balance of power in a university science lab class or discussion section.

So I headed to the Google to find an image for power balance, and these "buy one and you will magically exercise better" bracelets were the main image that came up. Apparently the fine folks in their advertising department have had to retract some statements that have no scientific basis of fact. Oops.

This idea of talking about power differences, that students are graded by the TA, came up for me when I asked my colleagues if they ever mention, as was done at every session of TA training in Arizona, "and don't date your students." It is in MIT TA handbooks, it is all over American academic life. My colleagues found my inquiry amusing and I'm guessing it got filed away in that "those crazy, litigation-hungry Americans who don't know the subtlety of human interactions" file. After all, they figure this is not an issue for a workshop for TA's, adults that they are.

But I think it is. And not just the dating part, but the whole, messy, very subtle power issue. Yes, both TAs and students are adults, of a very similar age, in fact, and I think that this is part of the issue. It is hard to notice (unless someone sits you down and asks you to consider it, with examples from your own past), that although nothing about you has changed, you suddenly hold power over your students. You grade them. Period. That's it.

And I think that fact goes unnoticed and unexplored in too many academic situations. For those becoming TAs, or professors, they don't usually feel any different the day their power takes effect, compared with the previous day, and the comraderie of academia sets up some interesting situations. We all joke with each other, we are supposed to be suspicious of absolutes and 100% results, we lightheartedly throw around insults. And among peer, that is fine. But as soon as that crossed downward across a power difference, it isn't so fine anymore.

The fact that academic science also has a huge case of impostor syndrome, means that high-ranking individuals routinely say things like "and as anyone can see" or "I'm sure you all learned this in kindergarden" in a class or talk setting. But the people sitting in the audience see, not a peer, equally unsure of her or himself intellectually, but a professor who thinks that the previous 5 whiteboards crammed with equations were child's play. Problem.

There were two cases for me, one in the upstream and one in the downstream power differential, that really surprised me. They underlined how very subtle these issues can be. First, as an undergrad, woman in physics, I was in the minority in my physics labs. And one of my TA's, a semester later, asked me out. I was still in my "don't hurt anyone's feelings" phase of life, and although I didn't want to go out, I agreed. We went to Olive Garden, I realized as soon as we sat down to dinner how worried I was about the good night kiss expectation, and in the end I shook his hand really quickly in my dorm lobby and that was the extent of the date. But I also felt weird being asked. We weren't equals in my eyes, I had looked up to him as an instructor, and it made me question all of our interactions as student and TA the previous semester.

Then there was the time I was dating a musician. I thought he was very quick-witted, and intelligent. I used to get annoyed by things he said and call him a dork. So, I wasn't even calling him an idiot or moron. Maybe I already knew, unconsciously, that
that was off the table. But it turned out, even the name "dork" made him feel stupid. Because I was a graduate student in astronomy, he gave me the power to judge his intrinsic intelligence. I couldn't believe how seriously it made him feel dumb. I was the controller of his self-esteem as far as smarts went.

This second case made me much more aware of how our categories in life, and I'm sure the reporting structures, and evaluation structures, color our actions and words. They can give them meanings we don't. I imagine that most academics feel insecure enough about their ultimate intelligence that they would refuse to believe they can make someone feel dumb.

Tough. You have the power (and the higher salary, my friends), and with that comes both a higher responsibility, and the loss of your buddy-buddy days with everyone in academia. You can't be your students' pal. I'm sorry. And, sorry, but you have to watch what you say or do, more than they do. Sexual advances, jokes about intelligence, etc., all mean something different to any listener who you have grading, employment or other power over. I know you're disappointed that you didn't feel any more confident or smart, coming out of your successful thesis defense, or tenure hearing, but your role changed.