Professors Dating Students--Constitutionally Protected

Dinesh D'Souza notes that UCLA psychologist Paul Abramson makes this argument:

Do professors have a constitutional right to date students? Professor Paul Abramson thinks so. Abramson is a 57 year old psychologist at the University of California at Los Angeles. His university, like many others, bans romance between professors and students. Abrahamson is about to publish a book Romance in the Ivory Tower that faults such policies as moralistic and outdated.

"For me this is not an issue of who's sleeping with whom," Abramson said in an interview in the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. "It's an issue about where the power to make the choice resides." According to Abramson, the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. constitution protects what he calls "the right to romance." Intrigued, I picked up my copy of the U.S. Constitution and perused it. No such right. I tried reading the document standing on my head. Still nothing. I squeezed lemon juice and held the paper up to the light. Gee, the right to romance didn't appear anywhere.

Abramson points out that the Ninth Amendment reserves all rights not earlier specified in the document to the people. So do I have a Ninth Amendment right to take drugs? To travel without a passport? To conduct my own foreign policy? How is the right to romance different from these? Abramson goes into high lyrical gear. "We make choices over things that are exceedingly intimate: who to love, what to believe in, the character of our writing and speech. These are part of the fundamental nature of who we are." Abramson aruges that sexuality, like speech and religion, is constitutive of our identity. Yes, but speech and religion are specifically protected in the First Amendment. If the founders agreed with Abramson, why didn't they remember to add, "Congress shall make no law restricting the right to romance?"

I admit, that a "constitutional" protection in the 9th Amendment is a bit of stretch. I fully support a school's decision to put such prohibitions into employment contracts and hold professors responsible for such bevavior, even to the point of making it a termination worthy offense. But such prohibitions are a matter of contract law, not constitutional law.

I am enough of a romantic and a realist to know that sometimes, the heart can make decisions our head may not normally think are wise. With the plethora of non-traditional (read older) students on campus, an attraction between such a student and a professor is not unrealistic. Dating in such situations or dating between graduate students and professors, though should be kept very, very, very discreet and the burden for discretion must be placed on the professor more than the student.Dating between professors and undergraduate students should be strongly discouraged, even contractually prohibited. Dating between a professor and his or her current students is and should be prohibited.

D'Souza makes an brutal riposte to Abramson:

If professors had a constitutional "right to romance," then a student's refusal to sleep with them would constitute a violation of their rights. The whole concept is a legal absurdity. Professor Abramson is certainly entitled to cruise the bars of Los Angeles looking for love if he wants to. I just think should leave his copy of the Constitution behind.

Perhaps Professor Abramsom should consult the professors at the UCLA law school for a little 9th Amendment tutorial as well.