Furor Over Comments on Female Students

Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, is under fire by student groups for his contribution to a collection in The Times Higher on "The Seven Deadly Sins of the Academy." Kealey's contribution was on lust, and he wrote about female students. "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," Kealey wrote. "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.... So, sow your oats while you are young but enjoy the views -- and only the views -- when you are older." The BBC noted the outrage of student leaders but Kealey -- in a new comment in the Times Higher -- suggested that his critics need a sense of humor and perspective. "Because transgressional sex is inappropriate, the piece uses inappropriate and transgressional language to underscore the point -- a conventional literary device," he wrote.