What is your universities policy on staff/student relationships?

I’m not entirely sure, but I think it may be allowed to a degree. I know that Teaching Assistants can date students because they are merely students who take on an authoritative role in the classroom. For professors, I think it’s fine if the student isn’t in class at the time. There might not even be that stipulation., but most people will avoid relationships until after the student is out of class because otherwise a conflict of interest emerges. If the student does well, people blame it on the relationship. If he or she does poorly, the relationship suffers…etc. As a whole, I think it’s more a matter of the people involved thinking logically about the relationship rather than the university forbidding someone to do something.

It’s definitely completely off limits (being completely unethical and all). For one thing there’s a huge power difference (whether or not the professor is currently teaching the student, at the end of the day his or her colleagues are teaching the student), and it is way too easy for someone to use that power to coerce a student into a relationship. I think it’s unethical. There are boundaries for a reason and things can go wrong quickly even when you start out by believing you have control over the situation or you’re going to handle the situation in a mature and rational way.