Ahem.

While that article was quite on target for most academics, I'd like to take this opportunity to exempt myself from the ill-dressed collegiate club. As we speak (and this is no different from normal), I am wearing a pressed white Oxford shirt with Brooks Brothers red-patterned bow tie, pressed brown pants, brown Bass leather shoes (sufficiently buffed), and a dark green/brown wool-tweedish Canadian sports coat. And just to make sure I do not err in my color selections, I always check with my wife first. She has a rather good eye.

I do not say this to brag or gloat, although I could, but to suggest instead that in some dark corners of higher ed, some of us aim to dress as George Saintsbury not as the checkout boy as Sainsbury's. Remember, I went to undergrad in Vermont, so I know what what fashion-challenged professors look like. Burlington is their lair.

And, yes, I do advocate the recovery of academic robes as classroom wear, not to cover-up but to distinguish. (I sigh wistfully every time I see Anthony Hopkins as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands) The last thing colleges need is to become more casual. Any more casual and campuses will become nudist colonies. To be casual on campus today is to be orthodox; to be rather more formal and "put-together" is quite radical. A bowtie can cause a riot.

Now, where's my pipe?