Oct-Nov 2011

Policing relationships on campus

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In This Issue

Illustration of a couple about to kiss superimposed on a stop sign

Policing Professors

Rebecca Coulter

The nature of the current push to police the lives of professors and students provides a salutary lesson about unintended consequences.

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Chalboard with a heart and arrow drawn with chalk

Hot for Teacher: Rethinking Education’s Sexual Harassment Policies

Michelle Miller

Sexual harassment policies assume that teachers have power and students don’t, argues Michelle Miller. Such policies risk outlawing consensual relationships that are “delicious, frightening, unruly” and just might reflect the excitement, even eroticism, of learning.

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The bare feet of a couple who are in bed together

Collective Bargaining and Campus Bedrooms

Aniko Varpalotai and Mike Dawes

University administration proposals dealing with personal relationships have had more to do with control over, and performance management of, faculty members than with concerns about equity and harassment.

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Illustration of two heads thinking about love and law

Sexual harassment cases on campus: How have labour arbitrators ruled?

Cynthia Petersen

Labour arbitrators recognize there’s an important social component to academic life, within limits. Labour-side lawyer Cynthia Petersen reviews Canadian arbitral jurisprudence and how arbitrators have decided in thorny cases involving sexual harassment.

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proof

False allegations of sexual harassment: Misunderstandings and realities

Catherine Burr

Since sexual harassment can be in the eye of the beholder, only evidence that meets civil standards of proof, argues a university complaints investigator, can fairly decide what happened.

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Living Publicly on Campus: Social Media and Its Discontents

Martin Hand

There’s little point in adopting a reactionary approach to the pervasive use of social media on campus. Members of the university community are deciding how social media works on campus, and they will work through the problems as they arise.

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Woman with mouth covered by red tape

A Political Pedagogy, or In Lieu of Dismantling the University

Tyrell Haberkorn

How does the ongoing constriction of academic freedom reverberate in the classroom? If academics cannot take a stand without risking formal or subtle censure, and so choose not to risk, how can we ask students to?

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Editorial Matters – Reflections

Mark Rosenfeld

With this issue, my editorship of Academic Matters comes to a close. Endings also herald new directions as the editorship passes to […]

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