ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the legal and regulatory evolution of the issue and assesses the problems that confront higher education as it approaches a new century. It challenges institutions to move beyond "cookie cutter" approaches to policy making and to confront harassment through analyses of their unique student and organizational characteristics and cultures. The book attempts to define the most familiar myths about consensual relationships and argues that bans are the only safe course in dealing with them. It contends that the sexual harassment issue has exposed higher education's excesses and contradictions and that its handling of the problem will be scrutinized carefully by an increasingly skeptical public. Anecdotal evidence, case law, and research prove indisputably that students suffer when professors engage them in intimate relationships and when they employ self-indulgent teaching methods that offend or intimidate.
