The Lafayette College faculty voted on Tuesday to formally prohibit romantic or sexual relationships between Lafayette students and faculty members, broadening a sexual assault policy that was added to the faculty handbook in 1997. The revision is expected to go before the Board of Trustees for final approval in May.
The revision — which passed 94 to 34, with five abstentions, according to Clerk of the Faculty Joshua Smith — places a blanket ban on all intimate relationships between students and faculty members, though it also ensures that the spouses or domestic partners of faculty members are still able to enroll at the college.
“I feel like this is a healthy step and long overdue,” said religious studies department head Brett Hendrickson, who helped develop the revision. “I think it’s really beneficial for maintaining appropriate boundaries for education.”
The revision eliminates the large exceptions present in the current iteration of the policy, which allows for consensual romantic or sexual relationships between students and college employees, provided that the employee does not in any way evaluate the work or performance of the student as an instructor, advisor, coach or any other supervisory role.
“With the power differential, we really don’t want that grey area,” said biology professor Laurie Caslake, who chairs the faculty committee that formally proposed the revision.
The change has been in the works since 2023, when Director of Religious & Spiritual Life Alex Hendrickson said she came upon the current policy and fell “down a rabbit hole” of researching the policies of Lafayette’s peer schools.
At least 18 of Lafayette’s 24 chosen comparison schools have blanket policies forbidding romantic or sexual faculty and student relationships, while almost all of them strongly warn against such relations.
“I feel it puts us in line with best practices of our peer institutions,” Alex Hendrickson said of the revision. “I think that having clear guidelines and boundaries is a good thing in any kind of institutional setting.”
After compiling her findings, her husband, Brett Hendrickson, brought the proposed revision to the Advocacy and Coordination Council, which serves as the primary interface between the faculty and the president and provost. The revision then spent over a year moving through institutional red tape.
“It took a while,” Caslake said, citing staffing changes in the college’s Title IX coordinator and general counsel positions.
Title IX coordinator Karen Salvemini did not respond to request for comment in time for publication.
The language of the revision was amended on the floor of the Tuesday faculty meeting, expanding the provision allowing faculty spouses to enroll at the college to cover domestic partners as well, according to Caslake.
Isabella Gaglione ’25 contributed reporting.
Selin Sinan Uz ‘02 • May 3, 2025 at 8:29 pm
It is evident that the 34 faculty members who opposed the policy lack the minimal requirement of moral judgment. Therefore, they should not be allowed to teach!
Concerned Student • May 2, 2025 at 10:37 am
I would like to know the names of the 39 professors who opposed the policy to avoid taking their courses. I would’ve thought this would be a unanimous decision easily.
Paul Young • May 2, 2025 at 6:01 pm
Concerned Student – I was about to say just the same.
These anonymous faculty votes do give one pause.
Should not the students be allowed to know which faculty members have voted in favor of having sexual relationships with the students?
Paul Young, Pard son, brother, and dad