Bella and MC's relationship began when she was still just the librarian.
I dated a staff member of my college back when I attended. She was a janitor. And yeah, there’s usually no staff handbook rule against it; if Bella were
only the school librarian it wouldn’t be an issue.
But she was never
only a librarian. She’s advising Sage on her senior thesis. She teaches a class on college research skills—a class the MC would ordinarily have to take, although he pointed out to her he could opt out if their relationship was a conflict of interest… back when they didn’t yet have a relationship, and were only just giving each other sexy naked handjobs, which might
still get her fired.
For two semesters at that school I became a faculty adviser: I was in charge of the lab’s grades, so I counted as faculty. And even though I was still taking graduate classes, I was forbidden from dating the students. Wasn’t an issue because I had a pre-existing relationship with a fellow grad student who wasn’t in that lab, but they took it damned seriously: A professor (whom I lived with at the time) had been fired the year before for fucking multiple students, and they weren’t going through
that again.
I don’t blame them. Schools lose accreditation over that predatory-professor shit. And if you lose that you lose federal funding—and your students can’t get student loans to attend your school, and if your school has no endowments it can’t afford to stay open. It’s a
huge deal.
