What do you think about this???

1. 73

   FranyaBlueposted 14 years ago

   This is an article written by the vice chancellor of my university. He got a lot of bad press for writing it.
   
   But what do you think of it?
   Is it funny? offensive? or what?
   
   
   Clark Kerr, the president of the University of California from 1958 to 1967, used to describe his job as providing sex for the students, car parking for the faculty and football for the alumni. But what happens when the natural order is disrupted by faculty members who, on parking their cars, head for the students' bedrooms?
   
   The great academic novel of the 19th century was George Eliot's Middlemarch. The great academic novel of the 20th century was Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man. Both books chronicle lust between male scholars and female acolytes, and I expect that the great academic novel of the 21st century will describe more of the same. So, why do universities pullulate with transgressive intercourse?
   
   When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he is famously said to have replied, "because that's where the money is". Equally, the universities are where the male scholars and the female acolytes are. Separate the acolytes from the scholars by prohibiting intimacy between staff and students (thus confirming that sex between them is indeed transgressive - the best sex being transgressive, as any married person will soulfully confirm) and the consequences are inevitable.
   
   The fault lies with the females. The myth is that an affair between a student and her academic lover represents an abuse of his power. What power? Thanks to the accountability imposed by the Quality Assurance Agency and other intrusive bodies, the days are gone when a scholar could trade sex for upgrades. I know of two girls who, in 1982, got firsts in biochemistry from a south-coast university in exchange for favours to a professor, but I know of no later scandals.
   
   But girls fantasise. This was encapsulated by Beverly in Tom Wolfe's novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, who forces herself on to JoJo, the campus sports star, with the explanation that "all girls want sex with heroes". On an English campus, academics can be heroes.
   
   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. 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.
   
   Yup, I'm afraid so. As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch. Be warned by the fates of too many of the protagonists in Middlemarch, The History Man and I Am Charlotte Simmons. And in any case, you should have learnt by now that all cats are grey in the dark.
   
   So, sow your oats while you are young but enjoy the views - and only the views - when you are older.

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2. 0

   Lecieposted 14 years ago

   i find it offensive. it's like he's placing all of the blame on the females. when it's most usually the male making the comment: why not study at my house. i can help you on your paper. after all i'm the professor. the female goes expecting homework help. instead the male is in a bathrobe and sipping red wine while romance music plays soft and sweet in the background. at first she attepts to tell him that she can come back another time and that she really just wanted help on her paper. but he is the smartest man she's ever met. so when he tells her he wants her and only her she falls into his arms.
   once he's had her he never even talks to her again. then she sees him inviting another young and pretty face to his home for homework help. what choice does she have but to sneak in and poison the red wine she knows he'll be sipping when the other female arrives....lol

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   1. 73

      FranyaBlueposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      LOL I like your reply....it's a story in itself.
      
      My sister in law is actually married to one of her teachers at Uni!

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