The Religion Department at Rhodes College is the issue. The suit is by a professor who didn’t get tenure. It seems that one of her colleagues (the department chair?) was much too interested in her, etc. This reads like a "steamy sex novel" according to the story. What pricked my interest are these lines from the story: "In a sort of X-rated update of William Buckley1s 1951 conservative classic God and Man at Yale, Walsh says the religion department at Rhodes, which has historic ties to the Presbyterian church, is a hotbed of liberalism, atheism, and feminism with a dash of lesbianism for good measure." (via Critical Mass)
In a post about sex couldn’t you have said provoked rather than "What pricked my interest.."
You are right. Next time it will be provoked in such a context. I do like the word though, it is Old English in origin and since there are so few of them, I get attached.