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Running
the gauntlet (D C Robinson,
quality management and enhancement unit) -
Despite ‘no smoking’ signs being
posted prominently at approximately ten-metre
intervals, why is it that every time I approach
the LC Miall and Worsley buildings from the
direction of Chancellor’s Court I have
to run a gauntlet of people smoking along
the walkways? A similar situation applies
when entering healthcare studies in the Baines
Wing.
It is bad enough that non-smokers should have
their well-being threatened in this disgusting
and anti-social way, but it is surely unforgivable
that the ban on smoking should fail to be
enforced in areas of the University devoted
primarily to health. I trust that the medical
school, the schools of healthcare studies
and biology, the occupational health service
and security and support services will have
something to say concerning this matter.
Steven
Exley, head of security & support services,
replies: The writer is correct; at the begining
of the academic year new students seem to
be ‘testing the boundaries’. Security
and portering staff are enforcing ‘no
smoking’ rules as part of their job,
and we will consider targetting the areas
mentioned, although we would hope that all
staff would challenge inconsiderate behaviour,
rather than thinking it is some else’s
problem. If, when asked, individuals refuse
to stop smoking, we can take the matter through
disciplinary channels.
All change since '59
(Pat Bradley, postgraduate medical and dental
education) – I wonder how many staff
at the University started before I did, in
1959? I have not stayed all this time, but
have left, and returned to different departments.
I began as secretary to the Professor of Civil
Engineering, Professor “Concrete”
Evans, a very lively small Welsh gentleman.
We were in small rooms at the top of the building
opposite the Students Union. Then we moved
into the state-of-the-art building at the
top of Woodhouse Lane, with our own laboratories,
with Sidney Groves in charge! We had a “Grand
Opening” evening, everyone wearing Dinner
jackets and long evening dresses, and caviar
etc. The lift was the first of its’
kind, whereby one pressed the button for the
floor you wanted to travel to, from the outside,
then stepped in and off it went. I remember
ushering in the elderly mother of the Professor
of Electrical Engineering, pressing the button
and then the doors closed and off she went
– on her own! I then had to run up three
floors to see if she was alright!
We
had amazing Dances in the Union – the
Agricultural Ball, the Dentists Ball, the
Medics Ball, and each one had at least five
full bands of different sorts.
One
of my friends was Gill Rennie – and
I think she stayed in the Bursar’s office
for a long time afterwards.
I
came back around 1980 to the School of Education,
with Miss Trewick in charge, and that is in
the same building it has always been.
I
do so admire the way the University has bought
up the property in Woodhouse Lane. When I
was 16, I used to come to dancing classes
at Miss Cooke-Yarborough’s Dancing School,
and that is now a Department near the Post
Office. I now find myself in the old “Pudd
School” where many of my friends took
Domestic Science Courses, while I was attending
the North of England Secretarial College.
In
1991, I joined the Department for Postgraduate
Medical and Dental Education in Harrogate,
working as PA for the Dean, Mr David Wilson.
We stayed there in lovely surroundings for
about four years, and then we moved to Seacroft
Hospital in a converted Children’s Ward,
where the then Dean, Dr Rosemary Macdonald,
used a Sluice Room for her Office. For two
years, this lovely old building was being
renovated, and in February 1997, we moved
into Willow Terrace Road, to very modern and
comfortable surroundings.
Having
worked for two years for the present Dean,
Dr Bill Burr, the time has come for me to
retire and learn to cook, and so I am leaving
at Christmas. But I have thoroughly enjoyed
my jobs here; the University is a wonderful
employer.
Aristotle saw it first
(Roger Brock, classics) I was interested in
the University press release on mating behaviour
in chickens [see story on page 9], as by a
curious coincidence I have a note forthcoming
in the Classical Quarterly alerting classicists
to the fact that Aristotle correctly reported
sperm competition and the principle of last
male precedence in chickens. In his Generation
of Animals, Aristotle reports that if, after
impregnation by a first male, a second male
copulates with a hen while the eggs are forming,
the whole brood will take after the second
cock. This has actually been alluded to in
biological literature, though (again oddly)
only ever at second hand, via the Italian
Renaissance polymath Ulisse Aldrovandi, who
devoted a whole book of his Ornithologiae
to chickens and refers to Aristotle's observations;
there's an English translation of that book
of Aldrovandi, but no-one seems to have gone
back to Aristotle before. In the process,
I find myself citing one of Dr. Pizzari's
collaborators, Tim Birkhead: it's a small(ish)
world.
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