KEY POINTS:
A "banal" article about a Massey University student who is also a beauty queen has drawn the ire of the association representing university staff.
The Association of University Staff national president has lashed out at the article, which appeared on the institution's website, calling it "one of the most banal news features emanating from a university this year".
Associate Professor Maureen Montgomery said the article read "like the formulaic sort of thing that aspiring beauty queens are expected to say when interviewed on the catwalk".
In the article, science graduate Rhonda Grant, 22, is interviewed after finishing third in the Miss Universe New Zealand beauty contest last month.
The interview is one of a number of features profiling different students of the university.
Ms Grant, who works as a nutritionist, promoting healthy diets and lifestyles to schools, and is continuing with post-graduate study extramurally, says she loved the social side of studying at Massey.
As well as her science degree, Ms Grant also studied Te Reo, kapa haka and Maori development. She said studying Maori opened up job opportunities.
Prof Montgomery said an earlier version of the story on the website was illustrated with a photograph of Ms Grant in a bikini, kneeling in the surf.
The photograph had been replaced with a head and shoulders shot of the student.
"... the photograph had been removed, which at least suggests that the university administration admits that it was inappropriate for its website," Prof Montgomery said.
The news feature was a celebration "neither of the student's scholastic achievement nor, one should hope, of Massey University's ability to train beauty-pageant contestants".
Prof Montgomery said university students, particularly arts students, were taught to critique such images in terms of their representational function.
"Massey University has provided an excellent example of how the desperation to market universities as 'attractive' places to gain knowledge and transferable skills intersects with the use of the sexualised female body as a site of desire."
- NZPA
