One mentor, one student, and rules that assume the student is someone's child.

What every thread is held to

Seven rules, in the order they matter. They apply to a professor and to a student alike, and the platform refuses a message that breaks them before it is sent.

01

Who this covers

Most conversations here are one professor and one student. Every student gives a date of birth when they set their account up, and that is what decides whether these rules apply; it is stored where only the student and an administrator can read it, and it is never shown on a profile. Students under 13 may not use Schollective at all. Students aged 13 to 17 may use it only with the consent of a parent or guardian, which is asked for during account setup and kept on file with the guardian's name, their email address, and the wording they agreed to. A student who gave no date of birth is treated as a minor if their education level says high school, so the fallback is always the cautious one.

02

All contact happens here

Every message between a mentor and a student stays on Schollective, where it is retained and reviewable. Mentors may not ask a student — or agree to a student's request — to move a conversation to a phone number, a personal email address, a messaging app or a private meeting. Institutional email addresses and institutional video-conferencing links are the exception: those are how research groups legitimately work. Asking a student to delete messages, or to keep anything from a parent or guardian, is a prohibited act on its own.

03

What is never acceptable

In any thread with a student, no one may request, send or discuss sexual content; request photographs of the student; ask whether the student is alone; propose meeting privately or without telling anyone; or offer gifts, money, travel, paid work or anything else of value in exchange for a student's time outside the programme. Academic discussion of sex, health, violence or abuse — the biology of reproduction, a literature seminar, a law problem, a research question about consent — is normal and is not restricted.

04

One student, one mentor, and the group option

One-to-one is the most requested format and the hardest to supervise, so a thread is visible to an administrator when a safety report is made about it. Students can also invite classmates they have added as friends onto the same request, which turns a private pair into a group with a record of who joined, left or was removed. A student who would rather not be alone with a mentor should use that, or ask a parent, guardian or teacher to sit in.

05

How a concern is handled

Report a concern from the thread itself — every mentorship thread has a Report a concern button — or by emailing safety@schollective.com. A report is a record that outlives the account it is about, and one made from a thread also copies that thread's messages into the report, so deleting an account afterwards does not remove the evidence. An administrator reads every report and can suspend or remove an account. If a young person is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first — this platform cannot help in an emergency.

06

If you are a mentor

You are the one who will be held to this. Verify nothing outside an institutional address or a departmental page; keep office hours and meetings observable (a group call, a lab forum, a shared document, a cc'd colleague); do not add a student on social media; do not travel with a student or meet them alone off campus; and end a mentorship on the platform if it ever feels boundary-adjacent rather than continuing quietly. Professors who break these rules lose their verified status and their account, and the platform will answer a school's or a parent's request for a record.

07

If you are a student

You are allowed to decline anything: a meeting, a topic, a request for your number, a message that feels wrong. You do not have to be polite about it. Tell a parent, guardian or teacher, and report it to safety@schollective.com — you will not get in trouble for reporting, even if you are not sure.

Who this covers, and where the rest of it lives

Every student gives a date of birth when they set their account up. It is stored where only the student and an administrator can read it, it is never shown on a profile, and what it decides is which of the rules above apply. Students under 13 may not use Schollective at all; students from 13 to 17 may use it only with a parent or guardian's consent, which is recorded when the account is set up. A student who has given no date of birth is treated as a minor if their education level says high school, so the fallback is always the cautious one.

This policy is part of the Terms of Service. How we handle the data these rules depend on — including how a parent or guardian asks what is held about their child — is in the Privacy Policy.