Learning a Little Bit at a Time...

Students at Carleton University in Canada spoke loudly to their elected officials (no, not the ones who really run things -- I mean the student government that gets to play "lets pretend" with the change the administration finds in the couch cushions), who reversed last week's vote to stop funding a charity.

The Student Association stepped up in a very commendable way and undid their decision to support a charity other than the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. That decision came after a student representative moved to change the charity supported by Careleton's participation in Shinearama. That's a nationwide charity event held on more than 60 Canadian college and university campuses. The bill approved by the council pulled Carleton's funding from the CCFF because cystic fibrosis is a disease that affects only white males. Only a single student representative disagreed with that decision, wondering why in the world the race and gender of the people a disease affects makes its eradication or treatment more or less worthy of charitable contribution.

Of course, as about thirty seconds with even a reference resource as dubious as Wikipedia would show, CF affects women too, and its prevalence with the Caucasian gene pool means it also affects people in India, the Middle East and South America. Carleton's students told their student government they were being dumb, and so the student government reinstated their agreement with CCFF, pledged to donate at least $1,000 this year, and made a formal apology. For this, they get well-deserved credit. Generally, the only time elected officials apologize is when it's for something done a hundred years ago or by someone else. But these are just young folks -- they somehow had the idea that they did something wrong, so they should 'fess up and say so.

I hope they also learned that their major idiocy of picking and choosing charitable support based on who is most affected by whatever the charity is doing is an even bigger dumb move than failing to do their research about matters they didn't understand. Even if CF affected only white males, that would be no reason to pull charitable support.

The student rep who sponsored the original motion resigned, but he learned there are people even dumber than he is, since apparently he received death threats because of his bill. Another student rep who supported the bill said he was ashamed at what his actions had done to the reputation of a university he loved, so he resigned too. The student government president, who at the time of the original bill said the measure was approved because students wanted to rotate their support to some other charities, faces an impeachment petition with what its supporters claim are 1,000 signatures on it. She hasn't resigned yet.

So I guess she's learned faster than her fellow students how the grown-ups play the game...