Policy Purpose
USC’s Mission Statement declares that our first priority as faculty and staff is the education of our students. The purpose of this policy is to safeguard the environment for students by avoiding intimate relationships between students and faculty or staff, without unduly infringing on the personal freedom and private lives of our students, faculty, and staff.
Under longstanding policy all faculty and staff are prohibited from having an intimate, romantic, or sexual relationship, even a consensual one, with any person that the faculty or staff member teaches, supervises, or evaluates, including any student, resident, or fellow of the university or an affiliated institution as well as any visiting student, resident, or fellow. Under longstanding policy, faculty and student intimate relationships that do not have a supervisorial or evaluative element have been strongly discouraged.
The purpose of this policy is to go beyond discouragement and prohibit intimate relationships between undergraduate students and faculty or staff, even if consensual, except in certain exceptional circumstances.
The basis for the prohibition is that the educational experience of undergraduate students typically extends broadly across the university, and for that reason intimate relationships between faculty members or staff and undergraduate students presents a general risk of real and perceived conflicts of interest, perceptions of favoritism, and adverse consequences for students and academic programs.
Limited factors that may result in a policy exception are outlined in Section 5.3.
Please view policy to access additional details.