Fundraiser For "White Male" Illness Dropped 241
gubachwa writes "The student association at Carleton University in Canada recently voted that Cystic Fibrosis was a charity unworthy of receiving money raised during orientation week fund-raising activities. The reason behind the decision, as given in the motion on which the student association voted, is that Cystic Fibrosis 'has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men.'" I'm speechless.
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Did they repeal their racist and sexist attitude or is that still okay?
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I'll just nitpick, and say that it's impossible to violate Godwin's law, as it's not a law in the legal sense, but in the scientific sense.
All Godwin's law says is this: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
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It's not a scientific law either. It cannot be falsified, since it would require an infinitely long thread which does not mention Nazis as a comparison.
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Actually, from Wikipedia... (no, I did not edit the article before going to post this.)
A scientific law is a statement that describes the behavior of some particular thing or set of things within the natural world, with an adequately thorough history of successful scientific replication.
The term "scientific law" is traditionally associated with the natural sciences and hence the term is used interchangeably with the term physical laws. The biological sciences also have scientific laws, such as Mendelian inheritance and the Hardy-Weinberg principle found in genetics. The social sciences also contain scientific laws [1].
Arguably, Godwin's Law is a law of the social sciences.
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Well, you violated Godwin and you're wrong. Germans in the 1930s put Hilter in power, you really cant stereotype or generalise about things like that. The situation in Germany then is different to the situation in the USA now and I don't think you can really compare any of the political or social trends groups found in Germany then with the USA today.
Also, you've done the classic communism = Russia mistake. The Stalinists in Russia claimed they were socialist but then again, politicians in the USA claim the
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When will people realize that any kind of hatred, racism, sexism, or divisiveness can only perpetuate the evil of immoral discrimination. Affirmative action, racialism (black, white, and otherwise), white privilege, and the like are all scourges that must be eliminated for a just future.
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The bilious tone of your post seems to betray a racist motivation of your own for "justice" against the "scourge" of positive discrimination.
For the record, I agree that everyone should be judged on their own merits irrespective of any circumstantial and irrelevant personal attributes, and that positive discrimination is not a constructive solution to negative discrimination, rather that solution is pertinent discrimination, ie, selecting a candidate based on attributes they exhibit that are relevant to th
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Cystic fibrosis only affects people who have cystic fibrosis, which is a tiny minority of the population (a much smaller minority than white men). So if they must choose a charity that represents the entire student body, it's clearly not suitable, since most of the students do not have CF and never will.
If that is their criterion, the only choice open to them is just to give the money back to the students. Any other use would be favouring one minority or another.
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How about herpes then?
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The point isn't to benefit the students directly. The point is to benefit the communities to which they belong.
An example: Slashdot decides to have a fund raising event. They want to benefit the nerd community, so they decide to give to research into Asperger's Syndrome -- not because every Slashdotter has Asperger's, but because it's quite common in the nerd community.
This is sort of what they were aiming for.
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The point isn't to benefit either the students OR their communities. Otherwise it would be called "investment", not "charity". "Charity" means helping people AGAINST your own intrest.
If they're mere investment bankers, a sort of insurance salesmen, then they should call themselves such.
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I have to wonder, if we applied the same logic to government funding, would it then be ok to deny aids research funding because it primarily effects blacks and queers? Breast cancer seems to mostely effect women, is it still bad to not want to support research in that?
I follow the logic you put forth in their defense, I'm just wondering why it wasn't universally applied. In 2007, the students held their annual charity ball to support Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind / Hopewell Eating Disorders Centre. In 2
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They could give the money to a charity which helps people with the Common Cold. ;)
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CF also affects the family/friends/loved ones/caregivers of those with CF.
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I don't give intimate medical details to everyone I meet, but of the people I do tell that I have CF (disclaimer: dammit, I'm a white male), a surprisingly high proportion of them have a niece or cousin or know a friend's child with CF.
I only have a mild form of
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I don't see the logic at all. Regardless of whether CF only effects white men or not, CF only effects people with CF. I.e., they're alienating the entire student population which doesn't have CF (which I'm guessing would be quite a lot).
If they were truly looking for "diversity", they would only fund research into disease which every student has. But they're not interested in "diversity". They're interesting in "diversity" only with respect to race and sex. I.e., they're racists and sexists.
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Have you noticed how tolerant "diversity" advocates are of different viewpoints ? They're about as interested in helping others as the muslim terrorists. They merely want power, to push their view on society. Their cause is long dead.
America beats Europe by ten miles when it comes to being less racist. And compared to muslims, well they're still massacring blacks for being black in Sudan, and massacring their own for not having the correct "religious" (political in reality, there is not a single religious t
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America beats Europe by ten miles when it comes to being less racist
Sorry... WHAT?!
Citation most definitely needed if you're going to claim that... perhaps compared to some European countries, and POSSIBLY compared to Europe "on average" if you selectively pick which countries you're including, but in my experience most European countries I've visited or lived in have far less in the way of racial problems than the parts of the US I've visited (or Australia, where I lived before I moved here)
Note: Perhaps
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Cystic Fibrosis affects women, it's just that women tend to die faster than men who have it. Thus, more men appear to have it.
Someone must have looked up a bunch of statistics, and drew their own conclusions without actually putting them into context.
Yay for critical thinking.
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It's appropriate and entertaining that in calling Carleton a pit of mediocrity, you misspelled the name of the institution :)
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No one here is suggesting that CF only affects men. The argument is about whether or not the university's decision was racist/sexist based on the information that they had. The information that they had was, of course, completely inaccurate, which is why they have now reversed their decision.
I'm sorry for your loss.
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There's no excuse for racism, and/or sexism. Try again.
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Not sure why you got modded down as a troll.
Because on Slashdot, a mod of "troll" means "I disagree with you", and as you can tell by the responses, many disagree with me.
I don't normally complain about Slashdot moderation -- maybe because my karma has been capped at "Excellent" for years and I mostly get positive mods -- but this is pretty clearly an example of an abuse of the moderation system. People can disagree if they want, but there is no way that post was a troll.
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Translation: They were being unintentional racists.
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No, they were being intentional racists; ones that thought their 'higher' moral position justified it. They were also stunningly hypocritical in making a stand against perceived racism in medical funding my making a racist decision of their own.
Those of us in the US should expect at least 4 years of this sort of doublespeak.
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Translation: They were being unintentional racists.
Almost. Actually they intended to be racist, but due to some unfortunate misinformation, they were simply buffoons.
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So if I claim it's wrong to fund sickle cell research because it only affects black people that's OK? Somehow it sounds like I could get tarred and feathered if I actually said that!
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That makes sense, sickle cell carriers have a resistance to malaria.
Definition of Racism (Score:5, Insightful)
...but it wasn't racist. They weren't discriminating against white men, they were being extremist everything-must-be-inclusive-of-everybody PC.
This is racism. They are making their decision based on race. What they were trying to do, who they were discriminating for or against matters not. Their decision was based on no other criteria than race and that is the textbook definition of racism.
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Which is what, exactly? It's supposed to be here, along with news for nerds, but I've nver seen it.
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Woah... some of the numbers on that chart are pretty concerning... the median income for full time employed people over 25 who dropped out of high school is $25k. That's DISTURBINGLY low...
My question: Is it because it's really only those that are destined because of other factors to do poorly in life that drop out, or is having a piece of paper THAT important to getting a job in the US?
Just for reference, I'm a "high school drop out" in that I left high school before I finished because I was sick of it an
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Which is the least they can do. Seriously though -- they were "misinformed" that the disease that only affects white males but that doesn't excuse the fact that a disease is still a disease and they were being racist douchebags by locking it out in the first place.
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and given that their students are not all white men
Well duh. What's wrong with supporting CF and Sickle Cell Anemia?
The rank idiocy in academia makes me glad I'm long graduated college...
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I'm sorry, but do the students not belong to the community called "Canada", to which CF sufferers also belong?
But this isn't about "communities" is it? No, it is "race" and "sex" counting. It is the most obscene consequence of multi-culti racism and sexism. Dividing the citizenry into camps defined by their race and sex, whose merit is contingent upon race and sex. It is racism and sexism, by definition.
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Exactly. The true definition of eliminating racism is when we can't really tell that there are any races. Not through having everybody inter-racial in heritage (which will likely happen anyways), but through people not caring beyond how we see hair color today (blonde jokes aside).
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That would make things like headscarves for women racist. Actually since they're meant as a mark of separation, a mark that they want nothing to do with infidel men, they kinda are, aren't they ?
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Not to mention another larger community called "humanity". You know, the same root with "humane" and "humanism".
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The word "community" in the above statement is nothing but doublespeak for "race" and "gender". Try to substitute it, read aloud what you've just wrote, and be ashamed.
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Maybe they were misinformed, but so what? The fact that they would vote based on that criteria, affecting only "white men", is just as disgusting as voting against a fundraiser for sickle-cell anemia because a great proportion of those suffering from it are black.
Some of the politics universities are associated with is downright disgusting. University students, I've seen, are often anti-freedom of speech (for political correctness) in the LEFT-WING direction because "people just shouldn't say that" and yes, rightly or wrongly there is a huge stigma against being conservative in any sense--I don't mean against gays or whatever, I mean small-government, fiscal conservatives, not the Republican "conservative". Throw in some of the weirdo racial ideas where "race is just a social construct it doesn't really exist we shouldn't judge based on race!" along with the "affirmative action is necessary to protect racial groups that I just said didn't really exist!" in the next breath and it's hard not to roll your eyes or become disgusted.
Then there was my black studies class I took to see if it was everything I thought it would be. Oh was it ever! The text book was written by ex-felon Maulana Karenga, Black Panther and inventor of Kwanzaa; the book was full of Afrocentrism, anti-capitalist bullshit, had whooping factual errors (even claimed that blacks were the first to the Americas leaving behind the Olmec statues!) and went so far as to capitalize "Black" and kept "white" lowercase. The premise of the class was really attacking everything that was "European-American" and exalting everything "African", of course everything "bad" like capitalism, competition, the patriarchy, empirical science was associated with the "European-American worldview" and everything "good" like "holism, caring and sharing, matrilineal descent, and intuition" were part of the "African worldview". Do note that the same type of distinction is made by loony feminists as well.
University racial politics are really disgusting and I think a lot of it stems from stupid, naive kids entering college without the ability to think critically; they mean well but are easily led.
Those are my observations, YMMV.
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Very true, but made entirely more amusing by your user name.
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As a faculty member, I must say that... ... I totally agree.
Some members of our faculty recently read a book on "white privilege" which cited documented falsehoods to justify the author's position.
What's worse is the rise (far more in the social sciences) of "critical" research methodologies. With these, the "researcher" doesn't control for their own bias, but admits to researching in support of their stated biases (usually the empowerment of the disenfranchised).
I told one colleague that when you begin research knowing the answers (rather than the questions), you're a lobbyist, not a researcher. That wasn't well received.
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Wow, so college is still about arguing stupid unimportant points.
Man you'd think after 20 years they would have changed by now.
Grow up kid, you aren't a victim in this life and you can choose to ignore stuff you don't like.
Re:Update (Score:5, Informative)
The real star of this debacle is Donnie Northrup, the 4th year science student who authored the original motion. He made some interesting comments [canada.com] to a reporter of the Ottawa Citizen. Essentially, he regrets that we misunderstood the intent of his motion, and that he should have worded the motion more carefully. He claimed that he slipped up because he had a lot of homework due at the time. And to make himself look like a bigger ass than he's already made himself out to be, he adds that "writing is not something he's focusing his degree on."
So yeah, the decision is being revisited, but the idiots who made it are still idiots, and bringing attention to this stupidity is still worthwhile.
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Not good enough.
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What the students did is disgusting but NO ONE should be brought before some sort of sham court like the one you describe. Even if they had did this they didn't hurt anything, they just refused help based on bigoted criteria.
Already reversing that decision (Score:2, Informative)
They've already realized what a huge mess they've made and are working at rectifying the situation. Thanks for keeping up on the latest news on the issue.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/11/26/ot-081126-shinerama.html [www.cbc.ca]
Re:Already reversing that decision (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the negative publicity has motivated them to back-peddle in no way excuses the original decision.
But thanks for the update.
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I think you put far more effort [answers.com] in to that post [worldofstock.com] than the content of your message warranted [warrantweb.net].
what's sadder here? (Score:4, Interesting)
That they did it, or that anyone cares?
Shouldn't we stop fund raising for prostate cancer because it only affects men!
Discrimination? Someone needs their head adjusted. Maybe raising funds for condition xxx isn't a good idea, but that's a ridiculous reason to stop.
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What's sad is male-oriented products, e.g. razor blades, with packaging touting their contribution to womyn's diseases like breast cancer. When is Gillette going to give a piece of my razor-blade money to fighting prostate cancer?
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Many women use razor blades too. They have a hell of a lot more surface area to shave.
They get better quality/longer lasting blades, too :-(
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They have a hell of a lot more surface area to shave
Speak for yourself. I have to shave ALL THE WAY up my legs, as well as my face.
Re:what's sadder here? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's sad is male-oriented products, e.g. razor blades, with packaging touting their contribution to womyn's diseases like breast cancer.
My wife handles most of our shopping. They need to convince her which brand to buy, even if I'm the ultimate user.
Re:what's sadder here? (Score:4, Funny)
My wife handles most of our shopping. They need to convince her which brand to buy, even if I'm the ultimate user.
Ever wondered why she buys the brand that supports research that will let her live much longer than you? It's a subtle message: buy your own damn razor blades or die.
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So boycott Gillette by growing a moustache for Movember [movember.com] which raises money to fight prostate cancer.
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What's sad is people relying on their razor blade purchases to donate to charity
and complaining when it's the wrong one.
Jeez, it's not like most medical research is funded by Gillette anyway, it's just marketing.
If you really care about prostate cancer research, go and donate to that. If you for some reason
want razor blades without contributing to breast cancer research, buy some different
ones. And a backbone. You are not being discriminated.
Re:what's sadder here? (Score:5, Funny)
"
Shouldn't we stop fund raising for prostate cancer because it only affects men!
"
No. We should stop fund raising for it because it kills people. Let's, instead, start fundraising for its cure.
Never could figure out why people keep trying to raise money for cancer.
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Well, cancer needs a better marketing team and a better lawyer.
The whole thing is just a side-effect of bit-errors in human DNA.
These may have been caused by radiation, inbreeding,
sunbathing, chemical imbalance or a dozen other reasons.
BTW, did you know that 1 in 200 cases of breast cancer occurs inside a MAN?
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well if you want to look at it strictly from a capitalist point of view, it's costing them a small amount of money to mange their donations. They're also earning a miniscule amount off the interest on your buck until they donate it. There may also be tax writeoffs for them. And then there's the factor of a tiny improvement in market appeal.
In exchange for that assorted mess you get a very convenient way to donate a dollar of your money to a cause you support.
There's also a lot more numbers to crunch to d
Awwwwww... (Score:5, Funny)
Now it's all serious, you jerks.
And thanks to the severity of my condition (whitus maleus) I'm going to die, soon. Way to ruin a dying man's fun.
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It's CUSA - business as usual (Score:4, Informative)
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and CUSA, whose mandate is to get Carleton into the mainstream press for being stupid at least once every two years
I most venomously object to this underestimation of CUSA... the mandate is to be as stupid as possible as often as possible!
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It sounds to me like CUSA is pretty spot-on if they're highlighting the stupidity of the Marxist student body.
Re:It's CUSA - business as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how much money CUSA cost the university in Alumni giving every year. Every Carleton grad I know refuses to give based solely on CUSA; and the fact I can see the main campus from my office window I can tell you I know quite a few grads.
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So, where does CUSA support come from? I can understand the freshman class being wild-eyed and stupid, but I would expect some maturity to set in by the time their senior year starts to roll around. If they are still wild-eyed and stupid during the senior year, I can only blame that on the faculty. Somebody didn't do their job.
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No. But in Soviet Russia, Sarah Palin knows you.
As bad a decision as it gets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As bad a decision as it gets (Score:5, Insightful)
Preferably in the presence of his parents, so they can be devastated for a second time.
And beat the living shit out of that bastard too. Just claim he fell town a flight of stairs. Twice.
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Ambrose Bierce said, "There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy."
I think dragging those idiots up and down the stairs a few times would qualify you for a Nobel Peace Prize, since it would improve the world so much, especially if they didn't survive.
After all, the generation that fought and WW II understood perfectly well that sometimes the best way to bring about peace is to kill the evildoers and make such an example of them that people are afraid to screw with y
Sad and Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Diseases that affect minorities tend to receive, not just less, but disproportionately less funding than better known, "white" diseases, just because they get crowded out of the awareness space that correlates directly to fundraising dollars. CUSA could have accomplished the same intent of switching to an under-fundraised disease without the absurd act of saying "we don't want to help white males". They could have said "we want to help fight this disease that's been overlooked until now because it's mainly minorities that suffer from it." Their heart was in the right place, from all the stories I've read. They were just shockingly tone-deaf in their do-goodism.
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They could have said "we want to help fight this disease that's been overlooked until now because it's mainly minorities that suffer from it."
Like AIDS. No one ever does anything about AIDS.
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I don't know if he meant minorities in the literal sense or in the "disadvantaged, underrepresented in power hierarchies" sense (which includes women). If so, I don't think anybody can argue that breast cancer doesn't receive a disproportionately large amount of attention. Maybe just because people like talking about breasts -- you certainly wouldn't buy products with a "prostate cancer" ribbon on them... but go to the grocery story during breast cancer awareness month and you're swamped with little pink ri
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Breast cancer is a huge success from an awareness and fundraising perspective, so much so that it gets accused of stealing money from other diseases (like prostate cancer) with higher incidence rates.
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I don't know about the US, but in the UK a man diagnosed with prostate cancer has only one-quarter [timesonline.co.uk] of the cash spent on research into his disease compared to the amount devoted to a womanâ(TM)s breast cancer, despite that the two diseases kill about the same number of people. There is also a national breast cancer screening system to catch it early, but no such scheme for prostate cancer. I don't begrudge the funding for breast cancer research, or wish to cut anything, it's a terrible disease - but I w
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It's not just that the diseases that afflict the majority get proportionately higher funding. It's that they get disproportionately higher funding because awareness of those diseases, both from ad campaigns and from personal experience, crowds out awareness of minority diseases to the point of starving the latter for any attention at all (and thus, for fundraising dollars).
Human rights complaint. (Score:4, Insightful)
If I was a student at Carleton I would file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, if for nothing but the delicious irony.
As much as I hate human rights commissions, this is a perfect opportunity to throw some of the same destructive invective back at those so eager to label any and all things as racist and sexist.
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Hehe, I had the same thought.
Say what? (Score:2)
Slavery only affected African-Americans... So if we follow the 'logic' of this student association, there was no need to abolish that at all...
Einstein said.. there are two things that are infinite: the universe and stupidity.. and I'm not too sure about the first...
CF Patients (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't call me 'male' (Score:2)
CUSA is routinely insane (Score:3, Interesting)
The Carleton University Students Association being stupid is pretty much par for the course.
When I was at Carleton, one of the CUSA VPs was very outspoken when CUSA banned a political magazine which ran an ad featuring a fairly tasteful photo of a woman naked from the waist down (not a terribly sexy photo, and not a photo that showed anything exciting), claiming it was exploitative to use nudity to sell a product. When the next month's issue of said VPs favorite GLBT rag came out with an extremely graphic condom ad which if I recall correctly featured two naked men (which left nothing to the imagination), he said that THIS ad was obviously not exploitative, and was just trying to sell a product.
This is also the student organization which decided last year to ban anti-abortion clubs, which regardless of your thoughts on abortion still reeks of censorship.
I like to this of CUSA as kind of like a senile grandmother. She comes out whenever you have guests, says a bunch of politically incorrect nonsense, embarrasses everyone, and you just try to pretend she isn't there.
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The fact that it happened in the first place should be very worthy of note.
Re:Idle, annoying and out of date (Score:4, Insightful)
But hey lets bash for a while anyways as though we don't know that this is already out of date.
Who cares if it has been changed? The mere fact that this sort of assinine stupidity happened in the first place is news enough. Stupidity is defeated on a daily basis - that doesn't make it less stupid or less worthy of discussion.
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I think this is a rather good argument for removing any obligation to pay into these idiotic student societies.
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This decision is already being reviewed and will likely be tossed by the Carleton Student Council.
True but from the article the reason it is being tossed is because CF affects men and women equally as well as some non-white populations. Unless I missed the apology for the racist and sexist attitudes on display?
Re:Niggers (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Reverse psychology ??? (Score:5, Informative)
If only. This is just par for the course in the CUSA's attempt to PCifiy the campus.
Their last major controversy was a ban they put in place to prevent any pro-life groups (religous or otherwise) from receiving any of the standard student club funds or access to any meeting facilities on campus, regardless of the number of members or how long they existed on campus. And these weren't militant "storm abortion clinic" type groups, just simply groups that did not share the pro-abortion policies of the CUSA.
Some people just shouldn't be put in positions of power.
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I've never met someone who is pro-abortion. What do they look like?
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I've never met someone who is pro-abortion. What do they look like?
https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/dnc08splashnd