Fundraiser For "White Male" Illness Dropped

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.

Comments

Update

[thox_rendar]

This was a decision reached several days ago, and it has since been brought to the attention of the students that they were misinformed. They have already made a public apology for the negative press to the school and will repeal their decision at the next council meeting of the student association.

Re:Update

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

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.

Re:Update

[tomhudson]

It's the same thing with breast cancer. Most people think breast cancer is the #1 killer of women, but in fact, its' heart disease - 6x worse. The real war should be on ignorance, but this is Carlton U we're talking about here ...

Re:Update

[gubachwa]

Such an ignorantly worded motion should have never passed in the first place. It also took quite sometime for a real apology to be forthcoming, and it was not until after the Carleton president got involved. The initial reaction by CUSA to the backlash was that students and the rest of the country just "didn't get it". Brittany Smyth, the CUSA president, kept trying to explain away the decision as having nothing to do with the clause that said CF was a white male illness. You can hear her here, on CFRA (Ottawa) radio. After a couple of days of public outrage, and a petition to have her impeached, Brittany did finally issue a somewhat mediocre apology.

The real star of this debacle is Donnie Northrup, the 4th year science student who authored the original motion. He made some interesting comments 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.

Re:Update

[cvd6262]

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.

Already reversing that decision

[TheBishop613]

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

It's CUSA - business as usual

[CestusGW]

DUHN-DUHN In the Carleton university academic system, there are three groups: the faculty, who try their best to better the school's reputation, the students, who are some kind of horrible hybrid of communist and stupid, and CUSA, whose mandate is to get Carleton into the mainstream press for being stupid at least once every two years. To be clear here - the staff (including the President) of the school don't like CUSA, the students don't like CUSA (the Marxists can't figure out that strikes might hurt the student body), and I'm pretty certain CUSA members must harbour some level of self-loathing over themselves and their bad decisions. So please, don't confound Carleton the school with CUSA the body of idiocy.

Re:Niggers

[MaskedSlacker]

Cystic Fibrosis doesn't affect white men. It kills small children, usually before the age of 5.

Re:Reverse psychology ???

[Straif]

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.