Senior Cambridge academics are messaging undergraduates as young as 18 on dating app Tinder, it was claimed yesterday.
The app has twelve profiles that claim to represent men working for the university.
According to reports, one don was a former vice-master of college while the other who reached out to two undergraduates is a visiting fellow and professor.
Varsity student newspaper from Cambridge University exposed the troubling online behavior.
According to the university, it believes there is a lot of evidence that Cambridge professors are trying to establish relationships with students through profiles.
It was reported yesterday that senior Cambridge academics were messaging undergrads on Tinder dating app Tinder as young as 18.
A Tinder profile of Sam states that he’s an “Entrepreneur Professor at Cambridge” and a “Designer at Cambridge”.
He says, “I am the man your mother warned about.”
Staff members may also declare explicit sexual preferences. They were able to clearly see their student status as well as their age in the profiles of the undergraduates that they “matched” with.
An anonymous student from Cambridge said that she has been in touch with staff and was told: “These men seem powerful and influential to me as a young woman,” which is something they clearly use on dating apps. There is already a power imbalance – and they are exploiting it.’
When creating profiles on the dating app, users must indicate their preferred age group. Professors may hide their ages on Tinder, which means they have to pay for a premium subscription.
Both parties need to ‘like’ each other’s profile in order to’match’. This is visible only if the person falls within their desired age range. Once they match, the parties can send messages to each other and unmatch if necessary.
Varsity emphasizes that, although some accounts were impersonating employees, the profiles they examined passed photo verification procedures to prevent ‘catfishing.
Students are being approached by a dozen profiles of men purporting to be university employees.
Ben Dalitz from the Cambridge Student Union said that Varsity was wrong to have academic staff interact with undergrads using dating apps.
He added: “We want to see reforms to student complaint procedures so that cases are treated promptly and seriously with real consequences for staff who abuse power or position. Staff who experience misconduct are supported and not silenced.
As long as there is no “professional connection”, Cambridge policy doesn’t explicitly prohibit relationships between staff and students. Cambridge was not available for comment.