We are delighted to confirm that our university is to appoint its very first Professor of Female Representation.
In a statement announcing the new position, our thrusting Director of Corporate Affairs, Jamie Targett, explained that the successful applicant would not be attached to an academic department but would contribute “an essential female presence to a variety of institutional settings”.
Targett instanced the critical role to be played by the new professor on university committees. “At the moment,” he said, “the shortage of female professors means that those women who do occupy this elevated position are, as was recently pointed out by Ingrid Robeyns of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, required to serve on a large number of committees in order that such committees may appear gender-sensitive. Our new appointee’s presence on every university committee will do something to lessen that gender- balancing load for other women.”
Targett also confirmed that the new Professor of Female Representation would be required to sit in the front row of the platform party on degree days, appear on the cover of the prospectus, organise the rag week Cake Bake competition, and take responsibility for the flower arrangements in the university chapel.
“All in all,” Targett concluded, “we’re very much looking for a woman’s woman.”
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Crusticks up the creek?
Academics across the campus have been shocked to learn that Crusticks, the university’s long-standing, short-staffed, inadequately stocked bookshop, may be in danger of closure.
Bendiks Podnieks, the Crusticks manager for the past 32 years, issued the warning after reading comments made by Christopher Higgins, head of Durham University, at the annual conference of the Academic, Professional and Specialist Group of the Booksellers Association.
Mr Podnieks said he very much agreed with Professor Higgins’ view that the sustainability of a university bookshop depended on working closely together with the university.
This might be best effected, claimed Mr Podnieks, if “some of those bleeding absent-minded lecturers could get their essential book lists into the bookshop on time rather than five weeks into the bleeding course”. He was also of the opinion that relations might be further enhanced if “some of those so-called intellectuals could spend as much bleeding time actually buying my books as they do moving their own into prominent positions on the shelves”.
Campus dons were largely supportive. Professor Lapping, of our Department of Media and Cultural Studies, told The Poppletonian that he would certainly go out of his way to support the university bookshop if only he could remember where it actually was.
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Thought for the week
(contributed by Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development)
In the interests of ecumenicalism, we will not use the epithet “Good” to describe this Friday’s special interfaith seminar. Please also note that seminar attendees will be served complimentary tea and hot-religious-symbol buns. All welcome.