Hey, there! Log in / Register
Harvard students outraged that construction workers on campus were asked to show them some respect
By adamg on Wed, 06/20/2012 - 8:28am
Oh, Harvard: The Crimson reports a construction company doing work on campus has taken down a sign asking workers to "show respect for Harvard" and refrain from swearing, drinking and drug use while on the job, after future 1%ers protested that the sign was just so patronizing and patriarchal.
Avinaash Subramaniam '14 said that he was "shocked" by the sign and that it held workers to a different standard than Harvard students.
"There are students who drink and smoke at Harvard and the final clubs blast music late at night," he said. "How is it any less wrong when Harvard students do drugs?"
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Why would you need a sign to tell workers
not to drink or use drugs on the job? Isn't that understood, whether you're working at Harvard or at Cleary Square?
If, as a manager, you really need to remind your supervisees not to work drunk or high, you've got a problem that a sign won't fix. And as far as the swearing, f#$% that!
Most likely the sign was just some kind of butt-kissing gesture on the part of the company managers, directed toward whomever handles contracts for Harvard and other administrators. A waste of cardboard, and yeah, pretty insulting to the workers. Glad it got taken down. Wait- does that make me a future 1 percenter? Goody! :)
Wait
So they're allowed to drink and use drugs on non-Harvard jobs?
If You...
...are working for Havahd, it's probably a requirement. Makes the day go by faster...
Stupid Sign but Common
Every large construction site I've been on has dozens of equally obvious and somewhat insulting signs. I think the construction managers like to put them up so that if a worker does something they don't like they can always say "You're not following the posted procedures" or something like that.
My guess is the most important part of the Harvard sign is the "don't enter other buildings" as Harvard most likely made that part of the contract.
Aircraft cockpit placard
It's like the joke about engineers putting a placard in the cockpit of an airplane, stating "DO NOT CRASH AIRCRAFT" - at which point any crash is, of course, not the engineers' fault, but the fault of the pilots who violated clearly placarded operating instructions.
Origin of the joke
After the NTSB investigated several crashes involving McDonnell Douglas aircraft that were attributed to a design flaw that resulted in accidental deployment of the ground spoilers in flight (this basically makes the plane go into a stall and fall from the sky), the FAA issued a directive to all operators of the aircraft requiring the posting of signs in the cockpit reading
DO NOT DEPLOY GROUND SPOILERS IN FLIGHT
In a subsequent Congressional hearing on airline safety, one Congressman stood up and stated that the placard was useless and equivalent to telling pilots "Do Not Crash This Plane".
As I understand it,
state and/or Federal labor laws require such signs be posted.
Funny...
Someone also must have taken down the sign at the Lampoon building that says "No loud music playing from the doorway. No drunken harassing of every girl that walks by on a nice day."
You know...that sign.
Someone should post those
Someone should post those signs all over Alston!
Allston
Sorry, but the real South End Signage Tzar knows how to spell.
I fail to see the problem
I fail to see the problem here. These lower class uneducated peons are damn lucky to have a job. The signs are just a friendly reminder to know their place. Mom and dad sent Josh and Any to Harvard expected them to be protected and shielded from the big, bad outside world, especially from mixing with the lower classes. Cambridge is well on it's way to disneyfication and yuppification, so this is just another step in that direction.
"Cambridge is well on it's
"Cambridge is well on it's way to disneyfication and yuppification"
I take it you haven't been through Central Square or East Cambridge lately? The sidewalks and buildings look nicer, but the same people are milling about.
Nah, that's not really true,
Nah, that's not really true, sorry. Have you been frequenting Cambridge for the past 20 years or so? Probably not is my guess. The people's republic is way more sterilized now, then earlier this decade and in the 90's. It just keeps on going that way too, which frankly sucks, but times change I suppose.
I dare you
To hang out at either of the bus stops in Central Sq. It may be cleaner now than it was, but Lord, it ain't yuppified.
(and FWIW, I have actually been hanging around Central Sq. for the last 20 years, and then some)
I'm the original poster and
I'm the original poster and actually, I'm frequently in Central Scare and the fine Portuguese neighborhood of East Cambridge.
Central is 'gritty' primarily because of the homeless shelters in the area and the #1 Dudley/Mass Ave bus.
East Cambridge is another story.
Agreed.
Harvard should require the scumbags to labor in tennis whites and boat shoes too. The way they dress now, they might as well be on a chain gang. Filthy ANIMALS!
what a boring worldview you
what a boring worldview you have.....
Huh. The heat must be having
Huh. The heat must be having an effect on everyone's sarcasm detectors.
There's this thing called a Student Code of Conduct
Avinaash Subramaniam, you aren't supposed to be doing drugs, cursing, or drinking underage/irresponsibly either. There's a student code of conduct that covers YOUR behaviors as well.
That Harvard students think that somehow the code applies to the construction workers and not them is arrogant and elitist. That Harvard and most universities fail to enforce their student code of conduct is another issue altogether.
As for the construction workers behaving like "guests," that's usually how it works. Aside from construction noise, construction workers are supposed to be unobtrusive to those functioning in the community they are working. So no, they should not be disrupting class with loud music and shouting or making students feel uncomfortable by leering.
There's also a set of liabilities with these rules. My high school did a major construction project my sophomore year, and the construction workers were told that they were not to speak to any of the students. The students were told that they were not to speak to any of the construction workers. The idea being, there were strange men in a setting full of sexually developed legal minors and no one wanted any misconduct or accusations of misconduct.
Here's the real issue in all this....
Anyone know if this guy is related to the famous violin player with the same surname?
Sign seen at a school construction site
I saw a much simpler and less legalistic sign at a school construction site:
"Act like these kids walking by the site are your own kids and your fellow workers' kids. Some of them are."