Prohibiting Romance

PAW reports that faculty members have voted overwhelmingly to prohibit members of their ranks from engaging in romantic relationships with graduate students, regardless of the circumstances (On the Campus, April 24). So a junior faculty member in the School of Engineering may not date a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in the English department — even though they have no academic contact and there is no potential for abuse of power. 

This leads me to think that perhaps Princeton needs a law school after all — or some department that sees the importance of narrowly tailoring rules to perceived abuses when matters of personal liberty are at stake. Or perhaps those who seek to regulate love should simply reflect on the idea that romance is not all about looking for “potential sexual partners,” as one quoted proponent of this proposal seems to think, but rather, as a more perceptive observer of the human condition put it, finding that person who is “the last dream of my soul.”