In some ways it’s a silly question.
Because in some ways, of course they’re students – they were elected by them, can be removed by them, they can vote in the elections, they sit as students on all the big committees, and those decals around campus with their faces on are designed to signal that the union is led by students.
But in some ways, of course they’re staff. They’re paid, have to pay income tax, have a bunch of work duties, a job description, a contract (or at least a document that looks a lot like one) and can be removed for misconduct without that having to go to a council or a popular vote.
Notwithstanding the odd skirmish – usually involving people who come from a democratic tradition or an HR/management tradition not being able to hold both concepts in their head at a given moment – the two statuses all sound fine most of the time. After all, there’s plenty of students who are staff as well, and some of them lead and manage others as well.
Enter – at least in England – the Office for Students (OfS) expectations surrounding staff-student relationships. It’s written up in pretty much the most complex way imaginable, but the TL;DR is nice and simple – staff shouldn’t be in a relationship with students they have responsibility for because of the potential for abuse of power.
There’s a lively debate about whether that should go further – FWIW I tend to think that (mainly but not exclusively) women who tend to be the subject of sexual harassment in pretty much every corner of their lives ought to be able to expect campus to be one of the few places in the world where they’re not constantly being hit on by creepy men.
I also suspect that students – not unreasonably – would think that if they made a complaint about someone not in a supervisory relationship with them, that it would “get round” – and that that is one of the reasons that most campuses seem to have a #MeToo Google Sheet as long as your arm.
I’d also add – as a treat for the “what about” gang that pile into my mentions whenever the issue comes up – that of course you don’t break up a pre-existing “close, intimate or personal” relationship if the supervisory or pastoral thing kicks in. My own view is that the key thing to ban is the initiation of “close, intimate or personal” relationships – stop those creepy men hitting on students – and just register and risk assess the edge cases as necessary.
And yes there’s complexity for PGRs, and whether you actually employ sports coaches, and how far the “jurisdiction” extends beyond the lecture theatre or even campus, and so on and so on.
What about the SU
What might any of that have to do with SUs? One of the crucial new duties on providers is to soup up their training for new students, especially on the standards expected (of all concerned) and how they might raise an issue.
As such, it’s obviously not viable for the slide that either says “relationships between staff and students are banned” or that says “relationships between staff and students where there is a supervisory or pastoral responsibility are banned” to have a little asterisk on it that says “unless we’re talking about SU staff”.
That’s partly because plenty of students won’t know the difference, partly because you wouldn’t want there to be a pocket of campus with lower safety standards, and partly because Condition E6 basically sets up an expectation that the provider will take responsibility over the whole of the student experience.
The obvious question that comes up – and unless I’m missing something, is still lacking a coherent answer – is the staff on the ward, in the law firm, or in the school where a student might be on placement. Are they subject to the same rules? Who does the student complain to? And so on.
But it ought to be straightforward in the SU. A wide ban might upset some junior staff, and with either the narrow or wide versions, you might end up having a debate about student staff, especially if some student staff supervise others. But a couple of meetings to think that through, and it should work out fine.
Then you come to sabbs. I’ve had people make the “they’re staff” argument to me with some passion, and the odd upsetting and largely covered-up anecdote – that the potential for abuse of power from the BNOC sabb to students is strong. Sabbs might not be in a direct “supervisory relationship” with students, but you can see how a student might think they’re a David going up against a celebrity Goliath given we literally pick sabbs via a popularity contest.
Are we really saying that the sports sabb can sleep with the student activities manager, but would be sacked if they hooked up with the social secretary of Korfball?
I’ve also had people make the “they’re students” argument to me with some passion, and the odd upsetting and largely covered-up anecdote – this time on the basis of the potential for abuse of power from sabb to SU staff.
Are we really saying that the education sabb can sleep with recently recruited course reps, but would be sacked if they hooked up with the helpdesk coordinator they see every day?
Of course, there’s also the potential for a different type of abuse of power this time – from SU staff to sabb. Some of that is conflict of interest and perceptions of confidentiality stuff – but some of it is classic abuse of power in different directions. Again there are a number of unpleasant stories about “general managers” (ie CEOs) back in the day.
So on one level, if you opt for the second “they’re students” option above, the problem is that all of the boilerplate policies being touted around pretty much always assume that the abuse can only ever be staff to student. It’s nowhere near as straightforward for sabbs.
But more broadly, the point about binaries is that where there’s a 1, there’s always a zero. And so if we think of this little puzzle as being less about what sabbs are, and more about what they’re not once you choose, the complexity actually becomes helpful.
If that then that
If we say, for the purposes of a staff-student relationship policy, that sabbs are staff, we’re saying they’re not students. But they likely live with students. They hang out with students (at least the good ones). They may still be an actual student. They may be going back to being a student.
And we’re also saying that there should be no worries in that binary about them hooking up with SU staff or university staff – because if they’re not students, then they’re in the basket of “consenting adults” who can hit on eachother. In some cases, that’s a major problem.
If, alternatively, we say that for the purposes of a staff-student relationship policy, that sabbs are students, we’re saying they’re not staff. But they likely work with staff all day long. They hang out with staff in the office, the meeting room and at the Christmas party. They have hours and TOIl and holiday and may well be about to be an SU career staff member next.
And we’re also saying that there should be no worries in that binary about them hooking up with students – because if they’re not staff, then they’re in the other basket of “consenting adults” who can hit on eachother. In some cases, that’s a major problem.
Notwithstanding the need to work out what standards should or do apply in partner organisations, how students might complain about partner organisations, and how a university enforces standards in autonomous organisations, you can’t really be in a position where neither of the binaries on offer pass the Clapham Omnibus test.
And so I suspect that the whole point isn’t that sabbs are both staff and students. It’s that, at least for this policy, they’re neither.
Whoa there
No, I’m not about to suggest that that means that they can start up a relationship with neither staff nor students, and that the only people they can (or should) start a relationship with is other sabbs. There are a lots of anecdotes about that as well – some mildly amusing, some much more upsetting, and none would leave you thinking that a category of their own is a good idea.
Nor am I about to suggest that a vow of no relationships at all is enforceable or wise. I have no idea how most sabbs find the time to eat or sleep let alone sustain a relationship with someone, but that doesn’t mean that situation is healthy, and nor should it mean that a vow of celibacy is added to the by-laws.
Where do paid part-time officers stand? What about club and society Presidents? Well.
What I am saying is that throughout higher education policy, we so often have copied something down from another sector, another SU or another university and then spend hours CTRL+Fing to “personalise it”, and then endlessly debate edge cases like that campus, that school, that mature student and so on. Ultimately what matters isn’t fitting the role to the boilerplate – it’s, at least in this case, that abuse of power is wrong.
Abuse of power can be deliberate. It can be entirely unintended, and so scenarios where having more power can disempower someone else are ones that ought to be discussed and understood. And the perception of abuse of power matters as well, given that SUs are supposed to have high-profile student leaders.
Student leaders at their best set the tone, set the norms, set the agenda – and can challenge the university, the student body and the wider world to be better. So it’s ten times more important that even if there’s no actual abuse of power – intended or unintended – that sabbs take extra steps to avoid a perception of one.
Where that leaves us is that sabbs should be told that the rule is they shouldn’t abuse their power, they should be conscious of when a power imbalance may result in an unintended abuse of power, and they should take active steps to avoid a perception of one. That’s great advice, and a great rule to apply to lots of the role, let alone over close personal relationships.
Is it easy to nip around if you’re determined to? Maybe. Is it hard to explain to staff (both SU and university)? Probably. Does it stop you banning harassment and sexual misconduct? No – you can apply those behavioural tests to both staff and students. On balance, is that focus on the principle rather than the binary better than one of the simplistic options on offer above? I think so.
If nothing else, it suggests the need to discuss it properly when people start – so the concepts can be explored, so people can set the norms together as a group, so you’re confident that the principle, not the “letter of the law”, has been understood. That’s how you change culture – not by amending the wording in a policy or by making people tick their way through a white-labelled mini-MOOC.
And so if the university’s planned approach to E6 is about to be “we’ll buy one of those online modules off the shelf to tick the box”, rather than the more time-consuming but impactful options of peer-delivered training, even if you still don’t know what to do about sabbs, you should know what to say next in the working group at its last meeting ahead of August 1st.
