Released to the public on November 13, a new report from the University of Illinois recommends that faculty be banned from having any consensual relationships with undergraduates, and proposes  new restrictions on faculty relationships with graduate students. The report was drafted by the Campus Task Force on Consensual Relationship Policy, which was chaired by Professor Jamelle Sharpe. 

In a conversation with the News-Gazette, Sharpe said the report attempts to balance individuals’ right to make decisions about relationships with the university’s responsibility to protect safety on campus.

“We’re dealing with a community of adults. They are free to choose the people with whom they associate, the people with whom they have relationships of various kinds, including intimate relationships,” Sharpe said.

The task force wanted to make sure that any recommendations regulating that ability “was necessary to protect the broader institutional mission of the university,” he said.

Read the full article at news-gazette.com.