> > And not too long ago a professor dating a student that he/she didn't have power over was not that uncommon.
> There are a lot of things that are not uncommon, but are still totally inappropriate.
Sorry! I was responding late at night, and, even though I quoted it, I totally missed tanderson92 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14680337) 's caveat "that he/she didn't have power over", which, of course, totally changes the ethics.
(It still doesn't seem persuasive to me to argue the ethics of a behaviour in terms of what used to be common, since it is still true that a lot of awful things used to be, and still are, common; but my comment was mostly based on a misinterpretation.)