Too close for comfort: Why student-teacher boundaries matter

Recently, something quite unpleasant and least expected from a teacher occurred in a classroom in Nelamangala. An assistant professor at a medical college proposed to a female student in front of the entire class, brought chocolates to distribute, and became angry when she refused.

The now-infamous audio clip in which a lecturer offers leaked papers to a student, calling her ‘darling’, is yet another event that calls into question how boundaries are enforced. The teacher-student relationship, if not maintained professionally, could be catastrophic.

The classroom is, at its core, a place built on trust that the person in front of the room is there to teach, not to exploit. When that trust is broken, the institution has a moral obligation to respond more quickly and decisively. 

The UGC’s 2015 Regulations, built on the POSH Act, 2013, provide a clear framework for institutions. They mandate an Internal Complaints Committee, a body every higher educational institution must constitute with at least four members, not fewer than half of whom must be women, and which must include at least one student representative and one external member from an NGO or legal background. Mind you, this is not a suggestion; it is a statutory requirement.

The ICC is empowered to conduct time-bound inquiries, recommend interim relief, such as transferring the respondent out of the complainant’s department or restricting campus access, and impose penalties under service rules if guilt is established. Institutions that fail to constitute an ICC or obstruct its functioning can face suspension of grants and even derecognition by the UGC.

Beyond the ICC, the regulations also mandate a formal written Code of Conduct for all faculty, explicitly prohibiting unwelcome physical contact, verbal propositions, sexually coloured remarks, and any conduct that creates a hostile learning environment. Institutions are required to prominently display ICC contact details on notice boards, in student handbooks, and on institutional websites so that students know where to go and whom to contact.

Additionally, annual gender sensitisation programmes are mandatory for both teaching and non-teaching staff, and institutions must file annual compliance reports with the UGC through the SAKSHAM portal, which functions as a gender audit mechanism. On paper, this is a genuinely robust framework.

However, ICCs exist only on paper in many colleges, constituted to satisfy a checklist rather than to function. Gender sensitisation workshops are often treated as bureaucratic rituals: a PowerPoint, a register, and a signature. When incidents do occur, most institutions frequently choose silence over process. The fear of reputational damage turns institutional leadership into quiet accomplices. Students, meanwhile, navigate a power structure that is inherently stacked against them because teachers control grades, attendance, and letters of recommendation. Reporting, then, is not simply a matter of courage; it is a calculation of survival.

The remedies

Against this backdrop, what is required to make the system more meaningful?

First, ICC meetings must become auditable, mandatory, and regular, not called only when an incident demands it. Their composition must include genuine student representatives, not handpicked ones. External members, as the regulation already requires, must be independent members of civil society, not associates of management.

Second, the UGC’s SAKSHAM portal offers a centralised grievance redressal mechanism, but its requirement for identifiable registration and reliance on formal institutional channels undermine its utility as a low-threshold, student-driven reporting system. An independent, anonymised mechanism, structurally decoupled from institutional mediation, would likely lower barriers to disclosure and meaningfully increase students’ willingness to come forward. Third, the consequences for institutions that suppress complaints must be swift and public. If a college buries an ICC complaint, it should face immediate financial and accreditation consequences. Public disclosure of non-compliant institutions, similar to how NAAC grades are published, would create the kind of reputational pressure that institutions currently weaponise against complainants.

Fourth, faculty induction must be redesigned. Professional ethics cannot be a single slide in an orientation deck. Every faculty appointment should involve a formal, assessed module on professional conduct, power dynamics, and the specific legal framework governing teacher-student relationships. Renewal of contracts could be linked to periodic reassessment.

In the Nelamangala case, students, not administrators, forced accountability. In the audio clip case, the student went before the ICC, and finally, the college filed a police complaint. A system that depends on students being brave enough to go public before anything happens is already a failure.

Structural empowerment requires genuine proactive measures. It means, for example, elected student representatives on the ICC who cannot be removed by college management have protected tenure and whose participation is not ceremonial. It can also be a peer support network, trained and recognised by the institution, and if needed, the student representative on the ICC has the right to call a special sitting independently.

These do not require new legislation; the UGC regulations already provide the skeleton. The institutional will to put muscle on those bones is what is needed.

(The author is a former professor and dean of a Bengaluru-based university)