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Tasteless and offensive message from the Palo Verde Office
09/25/09
I have been forwarded a message that the Palo Verde Housing office sent out earlier today to all residents living in Palo Verde.
This message leaves me speechless. It is completely tasteless and offensive. Quite frankly, this smacks of Nazi-style tagging of people.
Are these people completely out of their mind??? What's next? Yellow stars???
As part of a precautionary measure to help prevent the spread of the flu, the Palo Verde Housing office will be delivering "Notice of Sick Anteater" door hangers to each apartment. In the event that you, your family member(s), or apartment mate(s) experience flu like symptoms, please place the door hanger on the front door of your apartment.
If you would like additional door hangers, please stop by the Palo Verde Housing office during normal business hours.
Flu Information and Updates are available at :
http://www.ehs.uci.edu/flu
I hope somebody gets fired over this.
2 comments
Ridiculous! Not the notice, but your comparison of it to Nazi tagging. The university has a legal responsibility to protect the public health and is empowered to enforce quarantines. A request to provide notice to visitors is not as much as they could do, and seems to me to be a reasonable response intermediate between failing their responsibility by doing nothing and more draconian measures like housing sick students separate from non-sick students. No one will get fired over this.
A notice of illness does not prevent people from entering an apartment but gives them information to let them make their own decisions. Personally, I care about the people who visit me and I think it’s my responsibility to give them notice if I’m contagious to let them.
Sorry, Steve, but I strongly disagree.
This has nothing to do with quarantines. And it doesn’t have anything to do with “protecting public health,” either.
It has everything to do with scare-mongering.
People have had “flu-like symptoms” for years, and have managed just fine without this ridiculous and tasteless tagging.
And what if sick people continue to go to classes, or shopping (everybody needs food, right?)
So, this tagging doesn’t help anything, it serves no purpose whatsoever, other than stigmatizing. And *that’s* what the Nazi-style tagging was. So, my comparison stands.
