Kerrigan’s comment, and the reaction it got back at UMass, suggests that the lively political-correctness landscape of the late ’80s has become a mortar-scarred moonscape. Kerrigan’s colleague Margo Culley calls him “the Rush Limbaugh of the English department.” Arlene Avakian, associate professor Of women’s studies, also cast Kerrigan’s remarks less as cupidity than as provocation. “This is part of the anti-P.C. backlash,” she said. “This is why he felt he could say these things.” Students indulged in comfortable hyperbole. One offered that Kerrigan’s calling an 18-year-old virgin unnatural was “the most immoral thing I’ve ever heard.” Kerrigan himself seemed to regret the cost to his reputation more than to others’ feelings. As the uproar died down, he grumbled, “I’m sorry I’ve spent so much of my academic capital as an unappointed spokesman on this issue that I don’t particularly care about.”
Nonetheless, the chancellor’s office and the Faculty senate were left with a mess to deal with. Chancellor David Scott assembled a task force to devise guidelines on campus relationships, Ironically, the group will likely adopt a policy that Kerrigan claims is his own: prohibit what Scott terms “asymmetrical” relationships -between professors and students they are currently teaching. At the senate, a fortnight ago, Kerrigan’s fellows formally disassociated themselves from his remarks without censuring him. This pleased rules chairman Frank Hugus, a professor of German studies. “It’s one thing to say we don’t agree,” says Hugus, “but it’s another to tell a professor to keep his mouth shut.”
