Educational etiquette

Princeton prides itself on being an "undergraduate friendly" university. Every year, students from all over the world choose to come to Princeton at least in part because they believe that they will have more personal contact with their professors than they would at other top schools. But when it comes to student-professor relationships, how personal is too personal?

Most Princeton students agree that getting to know professors outside of the classroom is a perfectly appropriate and quintessentially collegiate experience. Furthermore, those students who have connected with professors on a more personal level rave that it is one of the most rewarding aspects of their college careers and lament that not enough Princeton students take advantage of such opportunities. From casual emails to having dinner at a professor's house, there are very few situations Princeton students feel are off-limits in professor-student interactions.

Consider, for example, how Luke Cohler '08 spent last Saturday night. After running into his Brazilian history professor and his wife in the library last week and conversing in Portuguese for a few minutes, Luke was invited to a birthday party being thrown for his professor's wife. So, Luke and another friend arrived at his professor's doorstep Saturday night, ready to party. No other undergraduates were present at the party, but that didn't keep them from having a great time. Though Luke admits that the invitation was fairly out of the blue, since he did not have a longstanding relationship with the professor, he called the evening a "refreshing change" from his typical interactions with professors. He enjoyed socializing with the various professors present — including one of his former preceptors — and getting a sense of Princeton from their perspective.

Or, take it from Tim Nunan '08, a member of the "Infatuated with our Professors" facebook.com group, who considers himself close to about 10 professors on campus and believes he could "sustain good lunch conversations" with 15 to 20 others. Tim recognized the benefits of close interactions with professors as early as freshman year after taking HUM 216-219: Humanities Sequence. Initially, he made an effort to stay in contact with his professors as a way of continuing classroom discussions and ensuring a spot in the professor's precept, but he has recently come to value his relationships for how they will impact his post-Princeton life as well. Nunan said, "As I've transitioned into junior year, it's become especially clear that spending time with professors is not only useful in terms of becoming a well-educated person and getting to know the interesting characters we've tenured on this campus, but also in having more legitimate recommendations when one turns to apply to graduate school and the like." Moreover, Nunan believes that knowing his professors personally has allowed them to give him more honest feedback when critiquing his essays and applications.

So what exactly is appropriate, and what is not? Once they start building a relationship with a professor outside of class, most students view themselves as being on a quasi peer level with their professors. As Dasha Koroleva '07 put it, "we are all adults, and I believe that professors can be friends with students." Of course, a certain level of respect and distance in both age and experience is always present, but many students say they feel perfectly comfortable engaging socially with certain professors just as they would with other friends. Having coffee and exchanging emails are among the most common ways that students keep in contact with current or past professors. In reference to her friendship with economics professor Laura Chioda, Koroleva said that during their class, knowing Professor Chioda was just a quick email away at any hour of the day "meant the world to me."

Students also cite going to a professor's house at the end of the term with the rest of their class for dinner or socializing as a common way of engaging with professors outside of the classroom.

Prospect Avenue has even become a spot for professor sightings — during meals, that is. Outside of the "Take Your Professor to Lunch" initiative, students can take their professors to lunch at their club for free. A few clubs on the Street have even incorporated professor-student interaction into their club ethos. For instance, the Ivy Club's "Ivy Roundtable Council" is responsible for inviting a professor to come to dinner at the club each week. This provides an opportunity for students to regularly engage in conversation with professors in a more relaxed setting.

While the majority of students believe that cultivating personal relationships with professors can be extremely rewarding, there are certainly exceptions. The most common of these is when students seem to be "brown-nosing." As it turns out, the difference between a student who comes across as engaged and conscientious and one who comes across as a suck-up has less to do with the way a student initiates contact with a professor and more to do with the professor's perception of the student's genuine interest in the class. In other words, students should demonstrate their commitment to the professor's class before attempting to seek a relationship with the professor outside of class.

Friendship is fine, but virtually all students consider dating a professor to be crossing the line. "Boundaries should exist in terms of physical contact" Koroleva said. Some feel, however, that while it would be very unusual, a student dating a young professor would be acceptable as long as the student was not currently in that professor's class.

Students are much more receptive to undergraduates dating graduate students, even though some graduate students are preceptors, making them effectively assistant professors. The fact that graduate students are also students at Princeton makes them more like peers and, therefore, more realistic dating prospects.

Not all students, however, are so sure. One Saturday night earlier this year, Abby Poats '09 had a bit of a scare. She was at one of the clubs on the Street when she thought she caught sight of one of her preceptors. Poats said in an email, "I promptly began running my mouth to a couple of nearby friends — something along the lines of 'oh my God, this is so bizarre, my preceptor is right there! We need to leave ... can we please leave? What do I say if he sees me ... oh my God, I think he just saw me!' "

As it turned out, he was not her preceptor, but a student who happened to be a little older and more mature looking than everyone else in the club. Nevertheless, Poats' reaction reflects an instinctive aversion towards socializing with preceptors, and certainly professors, that is shared by other college students. "I don't know if this is indicative of my immaturity or my comfort level, but I definitely was caught off guard to see someone who I thought was a preceptor mixing it up with the undergrads at the Street," Poats added.

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Much of the repulsion that students like Poats feel towards such informal interaction with preceptors and professors may be due to the very nature of social life at Princeton. Overall, the Princeton social scene is very hostile towards anyone who is not an undergraduate. With virtually no bars in Princeton Township, and the eating clubs entirely student run and student occupied, there is no natural way for students to bump into preceptors or professors in a relaxed atmosphere.

While Princeton students have mixed feelings about seeing professors or preceptors out late at night in situations that may or may not involve alcohol, they are certainly open to engaging in earnest, intellectual conversations with them. In fact, some students find it "uniquely and classically" Princeton to do so. Lucas Barron '08, creator of the Facebook group "Infatuated with our Professors," recalls when he attended one of Princeton's prominent professor's lectures with a friend from Harvard: "[My friend] became incensed at the questions from students in the audience. He said something to the effect of: 'This just speaks to the arrogance the American education system instills in its students — thinking they deserve the attention of these distinguished people.'" But Barron saw things differently. "I grinned," he said. "He's just jealous because Harvard professors don't talk to their undergrads."