buoyantforce

@Dan Romik: When posting the question, I had no preconceived notion other than "I hope to get some balanced views." Besides the fact that many of the responses were student-centric (largely ignoring concerns about academic integrity and faculty work environment), they were skewed toward consideration of only one of the many students in the situation. So yes, disappointing but not for the reasons you suggest.

@Trunk your standpoint ("it is not to be sneezed at") is quite helpful and in fact precisely what I was looking for when posting. Although I find many of the other responses disappointing, I do have in mind the vastly differing contexts and work environments experienced by faculty all over the world.

My university is a medium-sized private institution in the USA. There is a wide selection of majors for students to choose from. The chair role is that of absolute boss, unfortunately. Finding another instructor in the same department would accomplish nothing, as all instructors are in the same position relative to this student and the same boss.

@Cris, by that reasoning we could just get rid of the ethical codes for all professions. (After all, no one could possibly become an engineer and ever become corrupt or develop a conflict of interest!) More to the point, however, for every serious, dedicated, ethical university administrator I've known, there has been an equally bad one. People accept positions for all sorts of reasons, including power.

The difference is that part of the chosen answer was that the faculty member should not be evaluated by the chair in question. The other answers were of the form "just do things ethically yourself and wait until something goes wrong." Anonymous Physicist wisely built in a safeguard against one important thing going wrong.

I'm content with the answer I chose, which acknowledges the difficulties and risks inherent in the situation. To me, most of the rest of the discussion either hedges too much or sounds like rationalization based on pure expediency.

Realizing that awkwardness, discomfort, and swirling questions are built into a situation is not "looking for trouble." The trouble is already there. It bothers you that someone would acknowledge it. Why?

Having at least a perceived conflict of interest built into the situation is, to me, enough to characterize the situation as problematic. The resulting uncertainty, awkwardness, and discomfort are already "something bad happening." It is not necessary to have, e.g., a conflict over grades actually occur here (although that could easily happen and without prior warning, clearly).

There are two possible situations: (1) the chair's offspring must take one course from an instructor who reports to the chair (your hypothetical); (2) the offspring's major is offered by the chair's department, and in every major course the offspring takes his father will be the boss of the instructor (my situation).

Yes I can see that you find it problematic. I don't disagree; but I do find other aspects of it more problematic, which is why I posted.

"Attending an institution" does not imply majoring in a particular field.

After experiencing this, I believe that either (1) this student should be in someone else's department at the same institution, or (2) extraordinary safeguards should be in place. Rather, the situation is a simple fait accompli. I also find the assertion "this happens all the time" to be unlikely; in that case there should be many solid web references and a lack of any extensive discussion on a thread like this one.

I'm not going that far, no. But I can tell you that it's a terrible situation. Other students in the class certainly perceive a potential conflict of interest and they have not found "Move along folks, nothing to see here!" statements convincing. Neither have I.

Couldn't the student by taught by "someone" in a program other than that where his father is the boss of every faculty member?

I'm confident that many cases of nepotism have occurred through history where "nothing bad happened." Perhaps a given corporation was riddled with nepotism and by the economic "bottom line" metric everything was splendid. This does not make nepotism a good idea.

No, my question makes clear that my concern is about the coming fall semester. And no, not all the answers agree with your position that the situation is proper just because nothing terrible has happened yet.

There is no institutional policy on my situation. It is a mere fait accompli. I was not consulted as to whether I view the situation as acceptable. Despite stated concerns, there has been no attempt at mitigation: only denial that even an apparent or potential conflict exists. It has been treated by the administration as a matter of pure expediency.

However, I can see that our views are not reconcilable and I'm happy that you and others have apparently been in this situation multiple times with no negative effects.

On what basis have you asserted that "there are procedures which exist to mitigate the problem"? Because they exist at your workplace?

The point (in my view) would be to build adequate safeguards into such situations in order to prevent anything from going wrong. The fact that no one drove or fell off a given bridge does not mean that safety rails shouldn't be there. Your argument has consistently been that "nothing is wrong since nobody fell off the side of that particular bridge yet." I believe the situation itself is unwise and concerning, and I've certainly felt pressures that I never before experienced as a faculty member.

I will repeat my previous answer: the issue is about a coming semester, although concerns were stated about the impropriety of the same situation over the past two semesters. By your reasoning, ALL concerns over power differentials should simply be dismissed since "nothing bad has happened yet."

I don't buy the analogies just attempted. Much closer analogies are available -- to situations where "the power dynamic" and "power differentials" are brought in as key elements. These things certainly exist "a priori" in my situation.

My belief, as someone in the situation, is that there is at least a perceived conflict of interest on the part of this administrator who admitted his son into the program where he is the boss of every faculty member. The son should either be in a different major at the same university, or in the same major at a different university. I'm comfortable asserting "perceived conflict of interest" because I'm perceiving one. I also believe that perceived conflicts of interest are just as bad as "real ones" in cases where there is insufficient information to demarcate between the two types.