Let's settle a discussion buried in another thread.
Faculty members befriending and socializing with grad students: GOOD for ethical, NO GOOD for unethical.
Befriending and socializing with grad students
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I honestly prefer to be more standoffish with my grad students because I feel it prepares them better later for potential department politics. No guarantees that they'll land in some highly collegial department. Have to learn some survival skills for the jungle.
The difference is down the road, some senior academic might be willing to torpedo a tenure case over something petty, but while I might make my students sweat I won't ever actually destroy careers. You gotta design the playground so when the kids fall off the swing they learn it hurts, but they don't actually break bones.
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I honestly prefer to be more standoffish with my grad students because I feel it prepares them better later for potential department politics. No guarantees that they'll land in some highly collegial department. Have to learn some survival skills for the jungle.
The difference is down the road, some senior academic might be willing to torpedo a tenure case over something petty, but while I might make my students sweat I won't ever actually destroy careers. You gotta design the playground so when the kids fall off the swing they learn it hurts, but they don't actually break bones.ok boomer
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I honestly prefer to be more standoffish with my grad students because I feel it prepares them better later for potential department politics.
That's a perfectly valid and well-reasoned personal choice. But it seems outrageous to me for as pies like OP to pathologize other people's friendship choices. Normal, well-adjusted people occasionally make friends with people they work with. It's entirely human and good.
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I agree. And while I agree it would be better to err on the side of being more standoffish than overly friendly, I think being cold to "teach the kids a lesson" is kind of myopic.
OP here, mobile -- just to clarify, I am firmly in the "it's ethical" camp. Good discussions happening here though. Thanks all.
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the title IX era has complicated this a bit.
at my campus and in my department, there is a contingent of ideologically minded faculty that will construe sustained, friendly interactions between male professor and female grad student- and especially if those interactions occur off campus- as sexually coercive or exploitive. there is a chill in the air. interactions between female professors and male grad students, however, are not similarly subject to this same kind of scrutiny, nor are female-female interactions, even if both professor are mentee are homosexual.
this is perhaps unfortunate, but in the current climate i would suggest erring on the side of professional and detached interaction styles general, but especially if the pairing is male professor-female graduate student.
i don't see any problem if friendships develop naturally and organically over a period of years and its natural if you're co-authoring a lot with those mentors. but there are a lot of unstable/misguided/ideological types in the social sciences and the humanities and some of those types are certainly in my department, both grad students and profs.
so quite simply, i'd say: proceed with caution
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I think it's fine to be friendly and occasionally socialize with students (e.g., happy hour in a public place once or twice a semester), but they should never feel like they have to attend non-work activities or do you personal favors to be treated fairly and equally. I think you should maintain some level of boundaries until they are no longer students.
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the title IX era has complicated this a bit.
at my campus and in my department, there is a contingent of ideologically minded faculty that will construe sustained, friendly interactions between male professor and female grad student- and especially if those interactions occur off campus- as sexually coercive or exploitive. there is a chill in the air. interactions between female professors and male grad students, however, are not similarly subject to this same kind of scrutiny, nor are female-female interactions, even if both professor are mentee are homosexual.
this is perhaps unfortunate, but in the current climate i would suggest erring on the side of professional and detached interaction styles general, but especially if the pairing is male professor-female graduate student.
i don't see any problem if friendships develop naturally and organically over a period of years and its natural if you're co-authoring a lot with those mentors. but there are a lot of unstable/misguided/ideological types in the social sciences and the humanities and some of those types are certainly in my department, both grad students and profs.
so quite simply, i'd say: proceed with cautionAs noted in the other thread, this development can only work to the detriment of the female students.
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I think it's fine to be friendly and occasionally socialize with students (e.g., happy hour in a public place once or twice a semester), but they should never feel like they have to attend non-work activities or do you personal favors to be treated fairly and equally. I think you should maintain some level of boundaries until they are no longer students.
This is the main problem I have with it. It really disadvantages students who don't socialize smoothly with faculty. "No s**t," I hear you saying, "and that's part of getting a job, too."
But there are systematic, socially determined reasons that students from certain backgrounds might not click as naturally with current faculty (who, of course, tend to be from certain social backgrounds). Leveling the playing field within a PhD program would at least begin to counterbalance the bias against "fit" (i.e., socially reproduced inequality) that certain students will face later in their careers. Whereas rewarding students who faculty enjoy socializing with would tend to reproduce social inequality.
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This is the main problem I have with it. It really disadvantages students who don't socialize smoothly with faculty.
I agree. Students with kids or other obligations, students who don't drink, students who don't care about sports, etc. regularly lose out on socialization opportunities. I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think anyone should have to avoid all friendly interactions with students because of it. Even if you entirely avoided non-work socialization with students, you would still have students you like more than others who you spend more time chatting with at work.