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<p>It is ethically wrong if the professor has any direct influence over the student’s academic success due to authority.</p>
<p>Does gender matter? I’m thinking a parallel to the high school teacher sex scandals, where the men get thrown in prison and the women get to pose for Playboy.</p>
<p>In my opinion, it’s probably a lot worse for a professor to date a grad student or postdoc in their department than to date an undergrad, at least in terms of the power relationship. Realistically, a prof can’t influence a grade in someone else’s class. Maybe, for department-wide awards it could come up. Still, I agree it is career suicide. It just looks bad.</p>
<p>As for a postdoc dating an undergrad, there is no real problem there except for the age thing and if they do research in the same group. Still, the stakes for an undergrad aren’t as high in a research group. The undergrad isn’t really trapped in a research group like a grad student is, so someone in a superior position is less likely to take advantage of the relationship simply because they can’t. </p>
<p>I knew a postdoc and grad student from the same research group that were dating, and they knew each other from her undergrad days (where the guy was either a postdoc or a grad student). It seemed to work, but then they were both reasonable people. I haven’t personally dated anyone from work as that can cause problems even if you are on equal level, but unfortunately, if you are spending a huge amount of time at work as is typical in academic careers, that is who you tend to end up meeting.</p>
<p>Generally I think postdocs do not have authority over grad students. We used to joke that postdocs were just glorified grad students.</p>
<p>Oh, and umpteen years ago when H was a TA as a grad student, it was made very, very clear that they were not allowed to date undergrads that they taught.</p>
<p>I dated a professor in another department while I was a grad student. After we’d been together a little while, the university came out with a new formal policy that our relationship violated. Fortunately, the professor ignored the policy. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary a few months ago.</p>
<p>This is very interesting. D was asked out by 2 of her TA’s after the semester ended. She thought it was just coincidence, now I’m thinking not so much.</p>