An Appeal to the Seniors: Leave the Frosh Alone

If you don’t know yet, Caltech’s sex discrimination policy includes a specific clause (Article 15.5) prohibiting any relationship between employees—meaning faculty, postdocs, and staff—and undergraduate students. It also advises caution and professionalism in any relationship where a power imbalance exists (Article 15.9). The policy further acknowledges that when power differentials exist, consent cannot defend the individual with greater power (Article 13.3).

However, after five years as a graduate student and from many stories I’ve heard, I can say these policies don’t go far enough. They leave a wide grey zone where inappropriate dynamics thrive—between senior and first-year members, even within the same category of students. There should be explicit protections for any first-year student, undergraduate or graduate, from romantic pursuit by more senior members, whether those are senior undergrads, graduate students, or employees. Until such rules exist, here is my moral appeal to the community.

You know what it feels like to be that new. The challenges of the unknown are everywhere in your work and life. You have to figure out how to get groceries in the vast sprawl of Los Angeles and how to enroll in classes through the obscure REGIS system, when the term begins just two days after your dazzling orientation week. It’s all fresh and exciting, yet nerve-wracking and anxiogenic at the same time. For this year’s new graduate students, another challenge awaits: research funding is limited, and only a few rotation spots are available for you and your peers. Your first year might be your last at Caltech if you don’t find a lab. All of this is an enormous amount of stress.

In this situation, your clueless and equally stressed-out peers might be good vents, but not immediate solutions to your problems. A chill senior student, on the other hand, is like an angel coming to the rescue. They have saved enough for a car and a Costco membership, and they buy you a hot dog when you forget to eat. They know which professors are grumpy and warn you that participation matters, even if it’s not on the syllabus. They might give you a quick answer about whether a lab has space for your rotation, long before the busy PI replies to your email after their two-month vacation. They know literally where everything is—when you run out of pipette tips, they hand you exactly what you need from a drawer you don’t yet dare to open.

All of this feels like timely help, like a torch passed down through generations. And these seniors have a soothing power. When you’re up late studying for midterms, worried to death that you’ll fail, they calm you down with reassurance and an ice cream from Afters. When you’ve spent 15 hours per day for a week preparing for quals and your friends are also too busy to hang out, they invite you to paint on their porch. When you’re desperate for a breath of fresh air but have no way to reach the mountains, they take you on a joyride in their (second-hand) BMW coupe up Highway 2 to a hidden overlook of the Night City. And from there, things can so easily go further.

It’s easy to recognize power when it’s spelled out in someone’s title or prefix. But for a frosh, experience itself is a serious power differential. Seniors carry a kind of calmness and knowledge that make them magnetic. You find yourself comforted by that power, and before long, you may start to succumb to it. The imbalance deepens when they’re in your lab, with even a small influence over your projects or reputation.

It will take years — until you reach their age and stage—to realize that you could have done just as well as they did, maybe even better. What has appealed to you—the composure and seasoning—is just a natural product of time, and you will have it too. You have tried all the flavors in the new gelato shop in Old Town Pas. You are so familiar with every turnout on Highway 2 that you don’t have to yield to sports cars. But by then, the damage is long done, and there is no way to remedy yourself. Unlike the explicitly prohibited relationships (Article 15.5), the one between you and your senior looks, on paper, like just another office romance gone awry. If you dare to talk about it, people may call you bitter—after all, they had your consent, didn’t they?

This is where it becomes truly damaging—you start to believe it’s your fault. Every step is your own choice, so the blame falls squarely on you. Your professional confidence begins to crack under the weight of that power differential. And if you dare to speak about it publicly, your story becomes gossip material for the department, met with little sympathy, because it isn’t “Title IX–worthy.” How do you move on and seek mentorship again after that? How can this school still claim to be a safe environment for scholarship and mentorship? How do you even look at orientations, when those with experience may well treat the new as potential partners instead of protégés?

It’s even sadder that society often praises such romance, admiring the supposed benefits it brings to the junior party. I recently realized I’m now the same age as Wendi Deng, 28, when she married Murdoch, then 66. She was celebrated across global media for her “boldness” and for “climbing the ladder.” While that voice is less dominant now, young people, especially women, still keep hearing that life could be easier if they wielded their youth as a leverage. On the other hand, when powerful people show off their younger spouses like badges of success, people nod to that and admit it as meritocracy. And it hurts those who made it too—even those who are now tenured professors with their own labs. People still whisper about how they “had three marriages during their studenthood” and wonder if they are ever up for their jobs.

We need to recognize that this is wrong—not just the relationships already covered by school policies that protect undergraduates from employees, but also those that happen between students, including graduate students. This starts with everyday life and how we talk about it. Teasing your grad friend about mentoring a good-looking undergraduate as a “potential romance” should never be considered harmless fun. It’s as serious as implying they’re a predator. In both dynamics, consent simply doesn’t count. And if your friend is in a relationship with such power dynamics, watch out for them.

I’m not saying all such relationships are evil or should be outright banned. I’ve seen genuine, healthy couples come out of these situations. But they should always be handled with care. MIT has an unofficial “November Rule” advising against dating between freshmen and upperclassmen during the first few months of the term. Here at Caltech, our honor code states that “no member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech Community.” To practice this code requires active self reflection, and that should come from the party with higher power. So if you’re a senior undergrad, grad student, or anyone who’s been at Caltech for a while, and you find yourself hanging out with someone new, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are you interacting with the younger person in a safe environment? Can someone else supervise your interactions?

2. What specific traits do you find attractive in this person? Do you enjoy their company because of their admiration for you, their curiosity, or their receptiveness to most of your ideas? If so, be careful—those may simply be traits of youth.

3. Are you drawn to youthful traits? If so, that’s natural, but try to look for them outside someone who can fall prey to your power.

4. Are you isolating the younger person from their friends or peers? This includes claiming them to be special while denouncing their peers as “adorably annoying.”

5. Are you sharing your ideas in a way that encourages their independent thinking? Do you allow them to form their own opinions about Caltech and life, rather than unduly influencing them with your own – potentially jaded – perspective?

6. Would you feel comfortable if your actions were known to the broader Caltech community? Think about the consequences as if you were spending another four years here, rather than on the premise that you or they are leaving in a few months.

7. Could you wait until the power differential no longer exists before pursuing anything romantic—for example, after they have chosen a major, joined a lab, or otherwise achieved greater independence?

I truly believe that trust within the Caltech community isn’t about rules on paper alone; it’s about respect of boundaries in a scholarly manner. Therefore, I welcome any thoughtful arguments or perspectives on this opinion — let’s discuss how we can make mentorship, learning, and community safer for everyone.