So this is not cool. It’s a little better in context, where Kealey is writing on the sin of “lust” as one of the seven deadly sins of the academy, and it’s meant to be lighthearted. But it really should go without saying that female students are not “perks” and it’s entirely possible that the curvy young woman asking for help on an essay just wants help on an essay, and good advice would not say “look, but don’t touch”, but “be a professional.”
The problem here is not the common claim that Kealey was brave enough to voice that “look, don’t touch” ethic that all professors have towards their female students but are terrified to mention because of the fear of PC police. It flirts with establishing the idea that female students should expect to be ogled, and as long as one goes home and tackles the wife* afterwards in lieu of taking up with the student, there’s no harm done.
*All professors are married men.**
**One wonders what the wife thinks about thoughts of undergrads spicing up their sex life.
The Edge of the American West 
15 comments
September 24, 2009 at 12:08 pm
ydue
It’s worth noting that Buckingham University is the only private university in the UK, with a list of academics that is fast becoming a Who’s Who of UK-based bastards. They’re always coming out with this sort of attention-seeking garbage. Wingnut welfare for all!
September 24, 2009 at 12:22 pm
kathy a.
so, my advice to my daughter about meeting her professors and asking them for help was really misguided. my assumption was that asking for help from a professor WAS TO HELP THE STUDENT ACHIEVE ACADEMIC SUCCESS, ON THE MERITS.
there is no rung of hell deep and firey enough to satisfy me.
September 24, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Vance
What gets me is the bland assumption that the (male) professor is incapable of any mode of interaction with women other than “looking” in this sense or touching. If this was intended as a joke, he doesn’t play it up enough.
September 24, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Vance
Mary Beard takes it as satire, and I agree that it was probably intended that way; but I don’t think she shows or even argues that it works as satire.
September 24, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Transplanted Lawyer
Of course you’ve heard the one about the attractive student stepping in to the professor’s office hours and closing the door behind her.
“Professor,” she says, “I’d do anything to get a good grade in your class. Anything.” She leans forward just enough to be suggestive.
The professor arches his eyebrows and smiles back at her. “Anything, you say?”
“Oh, yes, Professor.”
“Would you… study?”
September 24, 2009 at 2:50 pm
bitchphd
Yeah, if I were a student at his university, I’d be feeling extremely uncomfortable right now.
Also if I were a professor there, come to think of it.
September 24, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Sam C
I think Mary Beard is right: both that this was intended as satire, and that it’s crap satire. Kealey is certainly guilty of assuming that everyone would share his… transgressive? good ol’ boy?… sense of humour, but not, I think, guilty of actually having the thoughts he expresses/lampoons.
September 25, 2009 at 12:47 am
dave
a) he was trying to be funny;
b) he’s a reactionary fossil;
c) he’s no good at being funny either;
d) why is anyone surprised that there are plenty of people out there grabbing ther ‘PC gone mad’ line to stick up for him? It is evident, and has been for some time, that the ‘progress’ that might have made such comments genuinely unconscionable to all has ceased, and the West as a whole is sagging towards a vile cultural stalemate, where everything that seems decent, sensible and true to one half of the population is repellent, immoral and false to the other.
e) or maybe I’m just depressed because my students arrive on Monday, and I know dam’ well none of them will flirt with me…
September 25, 2009 at 6:18 am
politicalfootball
In other news, that whole education thing in California? It’s over:
The shine is off of it. It’s really a question of being crowded out by other priorities.
September 25, 2009 at 10:33 am
kathy a.
okay, i can buy that it probably was meant as satire, but it doesn’t get a passing grade.
there is so much one could do with “lust” that would not involve describing the curves of female students as perks. is there an academic alive who has not lusted after superior office space, perhaps something with windows, temperature control, and/or functioning equipment? how come you are driving a car that routinely loses parts in transit, and some of your students don’t get particularly upset when they smash the BMW their parents gave them? why is it that student late-nighters involve parties, yours involve large stacks of grading with a dash of plagerism, and they look just fine the morning after?
September 26, 2009 at 10:26 am
roger
There’s a lot of sociological material in jokes. Which is an insight as old as, say, sociology. This particular material is rich – for instance, take the premise that talking professor to professor is talking man to man. Which is a premise sternly denied when, outside of the jokeosphere, some uppity lady academic sues on the grounds of discrimination or sexual harrassment. Then the whole “aren ‘t we boys cute” routine – a joke! – is dropped, and we find seriously, oh so seriously, that departments are run strictly on merit. Heavens.
I am amused that the looking at the curves part of the article has been singled out as the most offensive part, rather than the retread of the old girls go to college to find boys to marry theme from the fifties – revamped to girls being more interested in abs then labs. One gets a feeling that this is the very spirit of Thatcher U.
September 26, 2009 at 10:45 am
URK
mmm… temperature control.
The heat in our office building, a beautiful old hotel that I quite like aesthetically, turns on and off seasonally, so during the fall there are weeks where it’s unbearably hot inside as the old radiator heaters in the corners stubbornly fill the rooms with heat we don’t need. doing something about that, and the horror-movie sound effect howls form the wind whipping around the upper floors on gusty days, would be quite perky indeed.
September 26, 2009 at 10:47 am
URK
Of course since I have no funding this semester I don’t have an office there now, so, according to addition-by-subtraction, I do have a perk!
September 26, 2009 at 10:52 am
dana
I believe that he was trying to be funny, but I don’t think it counts as even attempted satire.
September 26, 2009 at 12:06 pm
kathy a.
i think “curves” is a kind of shorthand for the ’50’s theme; or at least, the two ideas are related. why else would women be there, but to catch a husband? what better catch than a man who is already employed in a respectable job?
if women were in fact running the universe now, and taken seriously for their intellects even during their early studies, and never being hit on by drunken frat boys or lecherous older men, both on power trips — well, then one could start joking about this shit.