Palo Alto City Council member and former Stanford Dean Julie Lythcott-Haims ’89 stepped down from several council committees last Thursday following backlash against an affair she had with a student more than a decade ago. 

Lythcott-Haims served as the dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford from 2002 to 2012. She left the position to pursue a master of fine arts and went on to publish bestselling books on parenting and adulthood. Earlier this year, she ran in the open primary for the congressional seat for California District 16, which covers Stanford and Silicon Valley.

On July 10, Olivia Swanson Haas ’11 published an essay on Autostraddle, an LGBTQ-focused news and entertainment site, detailing her year-long relationship with an unnamed college dean while she was a student. The next day, Lythcott-Haims confirmed to Palo Alto Online that she was the dean Haas described. 

“I apologized privately to Ms. Haas years ago,” Lythcott-Haims wrote in the statement, which she later also published on her Substack blog. “Now I want to publicly apologize to her for my actions and their impact on her.” 

In the post, Lythcott-Haims wrote that being in a relationship with a student was “inappropriate when it happened 13 years ago, and it would be inappropriate now.” She added that she has since focused on “doing the work necessary to repair where repair is possible.” 

Haas wrote in her essay that she does not wish Lythcott-Haims harm, and that the former dean supported Haas’ choice to tell her version of the story. 

Several Palo Alto City Council members expressed disappointment upon learning about Lythcott-Haims’ past actions. Council member Vicki Veenker said that she was “shocked and deeply saddened by the revelations about Julie.” An editor of the Palo Alto Daily Post wrote that Lythcott-Haims should resign from the city council.

Lythcott-Haims decided to step down from the City-Stanford and City-School District committees and the Youth Mental Health Task Force after speaking with Veenker and Palo Alto Mayor Greer Stone, she wrote in a statement to The Daily. 

“My priority is to serve the city’s best interests and I am concerned that recent disclosures about my past may hinder my ability to effectively represent the city on those committees,” Lythcott-Haims wrote.

Haas’ essay also mentioned that the dean left the University to pursue an MFA, when the affair was the real cause for her departure. 

After Lythcott-Haims left in 2012, the University adopted a new policy prohibiting sexual or romantic relationships between staff members — “including deans” — and students whom they have “influence or authority over.” Such relationships had previously been “strongly discouraged” by the University, but not formally prohibited. 

The Daily has reached out to the University for further information on the change in policy.