Niall Scott, University of St Andrews

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Dear Steve

Thank you for your FoI Request re “Masturbation Notice”.

The notice to which you refer is not an official university notice. It was

a student prank, and regrettably not even an original prank. The notice

appears to be a copycat issue of a similar text which appeared recently at

Durham and Lancaster universities and a number of universities in the

States. A quick check on Google should give you more information about

these incidents should you require it.

A strong clue that the notice is fake is the line “Please go home and

masturbate if you are bored.” As a matter of policy, the University would

never encourage students to go home during term time.

I understand that two copies of the notice were attached, with chewing

gum, to doors of the male toilets in the University of St Andrews Main

Library on or about the afternoon of Sunday November 13^th 2011. The

notices were removed by Library staff shortly afterwards.

Far from having a policy on masturbation or outlawing the practice, as the

bogus notice alleged, the University encourages the study of it,

academically at least. Among the titles in the University Library is

“Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation” by Thomas Walter

Laqueur, pub Zone Books, New York, 2003.

[1]http://resourcelists.st-andrews.ac.uk/it...

Available from the short loan section, and as of 3 p.m. this afternoon,

one copy still available to borrow.

I trust this answers your request, but if you require any further

information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards

Niall

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Niall Scott

Director of Corporate Communications

University of St Andrews

St Katharine's West

The Scores

St Andrews

Fife KY169AL

Scotland

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