Married Palo Alto politician confesses to ‘steamy’ affair with female student while she was Stanford dean

A married California politician has admitted to having a year-long affair with a student 13 years ago, when she was dean at Stanford University.

Julie Lythcott-Haims, who serves on the Palo Alto City Council, confessed to her relationship with Olivia Swanson Haas, which came at a time when she was being recognized for her contributions to higher education.

Her book How to Raise an Adult became a New York Times bestseller in 2015, and she was praised for her “deep compassion” for young people.

“A relationship with a student was inappropriate thirteen years ago and would still be inappropriate today,” the politician said in a statement on Friday.

Haas first shared details about the affair in a post on the LGBT online magazine on Thursday Autostraddle titled “I Had an Affair with My Dean,” but she did not mention Lythcott-Haims by name.

Haas revealed that at age 22 she had an affair with a married dean of her university.

“My first and only queer relationship remained a secret, but not for the usual reasons,” she wrote.

‘My first and only queer relationship was kept a secret because when I was 22 and in my final year of college, I had an affair with a well-known dean at my university, a married woman twice my age.’

Haas described the dean as a “celebrity at school — charismatic, adored” and said she “craved the attention of powerful people.”

Haas spoke about the “tremendous amount of stress” she felt during the relationship and said her “huge” secret was kept from her friends and family.

“We didn’t break any rules – she checked university policy – ​​but it was clear that what we did put her job at risk, so I didn’t tell anyone,” she added.

She alleged that the dean’s husband, whom Haas described as a “pale, benevolent shadow” and “a background figure” in their affair, knew about the relationship but accepted it, joking, “Don’t buy her a car.”

“At the time I didn’t understand how anyone could be happy that their partner had other sexual partners, but I barely had any contact with him and found I could usually put him out of my mind,” she added.

Lythcott-Haims and Haas’ relationship ended when the student told her parents, who were “shocked.”

“Suddenly, words like manipulated and abuse of power were used and shame began to calcify in the parts of me that had desired her — immense embarrassment — as I began to see my great love story through a very different lens,” she wrote.

Her mother informed the school about the dean’s behavior through an anonymous tip, which led to her departure.

Haas says Lythcott-Haims emailed her a few years ago saying she was ashamed of what she had done.

“I apologized to Ms. Haas in private years ago,” the councilor said in a statement.

‘Now I want to publicly apologize to her for my actions and their impact on her.

“I also apologize to my former colleagues and students who had the right to expect more from me. And to the members of my extended family for whom the public disclosure of this matter may be difficult.”

Stanford officials did not change campus policy regarding staff-student relations until 2013, a year after Lythcott-Haims left the university.

The policy ‘Consensual Sexual or Romantic Relationships in the Workplace and in Education’ has been amended. Employees are no longer allowed to have relationships with students because of their ‘broad influence or authority over students and their experience’.

But a university spokesman said relationships with students had always been strongly discouraged until now.

DailyMail.com has contacted Lythcott-Haims, Haas and Stanford for comment.