The sweet smell of success: Dutch student wins court case against university that had expelled him (for having smelly feet...)

Universities used to be very exclusive places, where only the offspring of noble and/or very wealthy families were welcome - if they were male, of course. Which all served to maintain the status quo and show the rabble (and all females) what their proper place in society was.

Things have changed quite a lot since those happy, early days - or centuries - and now all manner of people, regardless of their social background or sex, can study whatever they like.

That doesn’t change the fact that, in their secret hearts, universities would still love to be more selective. So, they muat be quite envious of all those state high schools that now regularly refuse to teach children who wear too much jewelry, or religious symbols around their necks, or chastity rings, or veils & hijabs, or punk hairdoes, or offensive T-shirts, or…

Well, sometimes, you have to wonder how many children are still welcome to attend high school. Twelve in the UK perhaps? Four in France? 2.4 in Holland and Belgium combined…?

Anyway, this selection process must have made many universities green with righteous envy and it’s no wonder that one of them, the Dutch Erasmus University in Rotterdam, tried to play this exclusion game as well - and while it didn’t work out as well as the university might have wished for, it did manage to come up with a quite original reason to ban a certain type of student:

A philosophy student with smelly feet has won the right to attend lectures at a Dutch university after a 10-year legal battle. Teunis Tenbrook was thrown out from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam after complaints from professors and other students that it was impossible to study with the smell from his feet. But now, after a lengthy legal battle, a court has ruled that having smelly feet is no excuse to ban a student from a university. The judge said: “Our considered opinion is that the professors and other students will just have to hold their noses and bear it.”

Which would have been a problem with most other studies but I guess both professors and students should have less difficulties than most with being philosophical about this ruling.