Are female students 'a perk of the job'?
A vice-chancellor is encouraging lecturers to enjoy gazing at, even fantasising about, attractive female students
Terence Kealey: 'Look but don't touch'. Photograph: Martin Argles
We've had a week of sex scandals in schools. Now Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, seems intent on stirring things up on the academic front.
Female students, he declares, are a perk of the job for male university lecturers – though they should look, not touch.
In an article for the Times Higher Education magazine on lust, part of a feature on the seven deadly sins of universities, Kealey wrote: "Normal girls – more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos – will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do?
"Enjoy her! She's a perk."
Flashing a few literary allusions, he continued: "She doesn't yet know that you are only Casaubon to her Dorothea, Howard Kirk to her Felicity Phee, and she will flaunt you her curves. Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife."
Displaying a more surprising familiarity with the etiquette at lapdancing clubs, Kealey added: "As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch."
The magazine's academic readers were outraged, including otototototoi who wrote: "I'm amazed that Terence K has a position in any university, and I'll be damn sure never to apply for a job at Buckingham. Why did the THE print this awful, ugly nonsense?"
Kealey, who has been vice-chancellor at Buckingham, the country's only independent university, for eight years, said it was a myth that an affair between student and lecturer was an abuse of power, saying accountability has meant that "the days are gone when a scholar could trade sex for upgrades".
But he added that some female students still fantasised about their lecturers.
Kealey's comments were attacked by Olivia Bailey, women's officer at the National Union of Students.
She told the Telegraph: "I am appalled that a university vice-chancellor should display such an astounding lack of respect for women.
"Regardless of whether this was an attempt at humour, it is completely unacceptable for someone in Terence Kealey's position to compare a lecture theatre to a lapdancing club, and I expect that many women studying at Buckingham University will be feeling extremely angry and insulted at these comments."
Should Kealey be allowed to have his fun? Or has he badly misjudged how students and staff feel about this issue?
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