Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
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.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
When I first saw the news topic I thought that some smarmy prankster had started a fundraiser to cure the disease of 'being a white male.' I was going to laugh.
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.
The fact that it happened in the first place should be very worthy of note.
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.
Too much repetition my too much repetition!
Anyone who decides to cut off funding to a specific disease's research based on political correctness should have to explain to a 7 year old boy dying from that disease why it's okay for him to die because of his group demographic. Preferably in the presence of his parents, so they can be devastated for a second time.
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.
Cystic Fibrosis doesn't affect white men. It kills small children, usually before the age of 5.
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.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
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.
I think this is a rather good argument for removing any obligation to pay into these idiotic student societies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...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.
I've had non-White and non-male patients with cystic fibrosis. Regardless, since when does charity goto the majority of any population? I gave money to a food bank yesterday even though I have no friends or acquaintances who are unable to provide their own food. And should we quit giving money for HIV research? I've never had a friend with HIV and it affects only an extremely small minority of people in the United States. Cystic fibrosis is a devastating disease that keeps kids in the hospital for inordinate amounts of time before they succumb to it in their 20s or 30s. Imagine living your whole life as a kid and teen knowing your life would be cut so short. CF is worthy of our research.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
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.