Chapter 4: Let’s Get Intimate: On How to Ethically Date Faculty and Colleagues

Gather a group of people similar in age and worldview, ask them to work closely together for several hours a day discussing and researching similar issues, encourage them to socialize outside of work, send them off to conferences, and throw in a few alcoholic beverages here or there and it should not be surprising that intimacy results. While I am describing academic life and the fact that many cohort relationships begin and end in graduate school, the phenomenon of workplace romance is a reality of everyday organizational life in all types of organizations – small, medium, large, for-profit, nonprofit, educational, political, or religious. Wherever there are people with a sexual appetite or desire to find the elusive – and some may say socially constructed – concept of “love,” they will be hooking up (in either socially acceptable or illicit ways). A recent poll by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), for example, reports that “one out of four (24%) employees reported they have been or are currently in a workplace romance at their organization” (Workplace Romance, 2013). An extensive survey conducted by Vault.com found the number of people reporting to have dated a colleague is 59% (Adams, 2013). This higher statistic seems more accurate given that 43% of responding HR professionals in the SHRM survey said they were aware of current workplace romances in their organizations.