Las May's cartoon in last Wednesday's Gleaner humorously insinuated that the University of the West Indies was about to erect a 'rampin shop' because I'd invited Vybz Kartel to give a lecture on his life and art.
And there was Wilmot Perkins, prophet of doom and gloom, ominously declaring, "See't ... proof that UWI is an intellectual ghetto!" Of course, opening up the university to popular culture is the very opposite of enclosing the institution in the narrow confines of a ghetto. But that subtlety appears to have been lost in the broad humour.
Erecting an academic rampin shop might seem like a complete contradiction in terms. The life of the intellect is often presumed to be purely cerebral. And rampin, as in Spice and Kartel's shop, is definitely a lower order, hands-on sport: "Every man grab a gyal ... and every gyal grab a man."
But the best of universities really are rampin shops in which passionate, creative energy flows freely. That 'eureka' moment of insight when a difficult mathematical problem is solved, or a dense passage of prose suddenly releases its meaning, is practically orgasmic.
In fact, we often use sexy images to talk about academic concepts.