Big Girls should take the stairs NOT the elevator

When I was in school, a sign hung above the entrance to my flat that read "No Fat Chicks" when I moved in. They sold this sign along with others, for amusement purposes, at the bookstore ON CAMPUS. This is a simple matter of freedom of speech and I imagine the ACLU will be happy to appeal. Not only was his message mildly amusing, it wasn't bad advice (for anyone). Tact shouldn't be regulated.

Has anyone seen the Geico commercial where:
Wife steps in wearing a dress and says, "Honey, does this make me look fat?"
Without looking up from the paper hubby answers, "you betcha". Then the deep voiced narrator is heard saying, "In the time it takes to pull out the sleeper sofa, you could save up to 15% on your car insurance…"

Ps Could anything be sillier than the outcries of disgust at this being labeled PC gone nuts? It is. As Nimh pointed out, this brand of hyper-PC-BS knows no political boundary, but, at the same time, one can't help notice the ideological similarities among those most offended. :wink:

Nobody else thinks this is offensive? Since when do women go to college for the pleasure of the men?

The charge of the evils of Political Correctness is one thing, but this is, to me, nasty stuff coming from someone sharing your dorm. It seems to me that when a student moves into a dorm, there are agreements made about breaches of behavior. This apparently is one.

I don't agree with the extreme punishment supposedly meted out, but to blow this off as a cute prank which points out the error of this country's eating habits is equally absurd.

I notice that those who say it is a liberal-conservative based issue are also those who get all pissy when we start bashing the administration for our supposed unpatriotic behavior.

A2K is getting ugly here. And what's worse, being fat or being ugly?

Piffka says pretty much what I think of the matter.

It is nasty and offensive. I'm glad that others here feel this way--it's so easy to laugh at the extremes of PC and ignore that there is a basis for some level of decorum.

It's called civility...

The U Mi Review article does shed a slightly different light on the issue. As the author observes, " ... UNH officials... called [Garneau's] actions 'worse than harassment' and could be classified as 'discriminatory harassment' (which is apparently worse than 'regular' harassment) ... " and, referencing response to the incident from among both the campus and leagal communities, " ... The overwhelming support has apparently caused UNH to back off its previous ruling ...". The auhor's concluding statement, " ... When laws - on or off campus - are left open to such interpretation, the laws become tools of those who enforce them, subject to their personal beliefs, however absurd. While restricting certain forms of expression on a college campus can be justified, Universities must be careful not to allow these restrictions to apply in such an abstract manner", goes, I believe, directly to the point of the absurdity - and the injustice, ethical bankruptcy, and the intellectual dishonesty - of Political Correctness in all its forms and manifestations. The concept may be noble of conception, but is terminally flawed by the manner of its practice. In my view, what PC amounts to is a tyrany pressed by a shrill, strident, self-serving, short-sighted, self-impressed minority.

But then, that's just my take. I could be wrong.

Someone should get Mike Adams opinion on this matter.

So, Timber, if you had a daughter who was overweight and she was going to a state school, living on campus... you wouldn't have any problem with signs in every elevator telling her that she ought to take the stairs as she wasn't pretty?

You'd blow this off as... shrill and strident?

I think that the people who are really angry about this just haven't seen what goes on in colleges nowadays. Yes, it was in bad taste, and the answer is to rip down the f*cking sign. No biggie.

Not in this case. It's called ridiculousness. To elevate the importance of this joke-in-poor-taste to the level of academic dishonesty is completely absurd, unfair and the result of hyper-PC idiocy. That's what's being laughed at here. Lots of free speech is nasty and offensive... to some… would you have it any other way?

Bill, I belong to the ACLU, so I don't need to be reminded about the value of free speech.

Just for argument sake: If I'm at the family dinner table, is it OK to call my sister fat and tell her to eat less? Would my dad be out-of-line if he told me to shut up?

A college campus is, in some ways, a closed community. It's OK to have rules re not offending members of the community. Yes, the guy who posted the sign shouldn't be thrown out of school.

But braying about how idiotic the whole thing is misses the point entirely.

No kidding. People say ugly things all the time. It's called freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not limited by intelligence. So this guy is an ass...we all know that. Take the sign down and don't take it personally. It isn't like he posted a picture of a heavy girl and said "Hey, fatty, take the stairs!". He didn't slander anyone personally.

Piffka, I think you, and some other folks, are siezing on particulars and overlooking the core issue. Garneau's action certainly was insensitive and ill-advised, but it is what some made of his action that is the outrage. The fliers and their content aren't the deal here - the deal is the absurd response on the part of the relevant officialdom, and what that response says of a small, shrill, strident segment of society run amok in its will to impose its peculiar concept of values on society as a whole.

I haven't read all the links, but I'll bet they did that first. Possibly the signs were put up more than once. Then they looked around to find the perpetrator. He was probably a trouble-maker from before. As I said, I'd be very surprised if the school didn't have standard rules of conduct that students have agreed to follow if they live on campus in dorms that are state-supported.

would this conversation be different if the sign had read "Big people should take the stairs and not the elevator"?

Timber you seem to have missed the crucial point of the article.

"A look through the UNH student code of conduct and sexual harassment policies reveals confusing, vague guidelines…"

"The problem in this case is the UNH code of conduct is so vague, overzealous administrators can essentially punish students for any action they disagree with."

The policy seems to been written to give UNH administrators a free hand to discipline while presenting the image of working within guidelines. It this case the administrators were between a male who was acting like a bit of a jerk, and the potentially embarrassing clamor of outraged females (local broadcast news love these sorts of stories) It looks to me they figured this guy would get no support and solved THEIR problem by lowering the boom on him. I suspect the political correctness was a façade, the issue is authority without boundaries.

Obese passengers break seats on cruise liner
Report: Plus-size Americans collapse chairs on Queen Mary IIMSNBC
Updated: 2:27 p.m. ET Dec. 6, 2004Overweight American passengers have broken dozens of seats on the Queen Mary II, the world's biggest and most luxurious cruise liner, according to Britain's The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.


The French company that supplied chairs on the cruise liner told the newspaper it is repairing and replacing them as quickly as they collapse under plus-sized passengers.

A spokesman for the company Alstom Chantiers told the newspaper that some of the passengers, mostly those from the United States, were heavier than expected.

Many of the broken seats were in the bar and restaurant areas, according to the British paper.

There has been a rise in the number of obese and overweight people going on cruise holidays because of cramped seating on airplanes and trains, an obesity expert explained to the Telegraph.

The Queen Mary II, which set sail on her maiden voyage in January this year, is more than twice as long as the Washington Monument. It carries 2,620 passengers and 1,250 crew, and cost an estimated $800 million to build.

© 2004 MSNBC Interactive






Maybe someone should tell them to swim instead of float????

I understand what you're sayin', Acquiunk, but I disagree. I think the excerpts you cite referencing the UNH code and the latitude granted the administrators thereby, and your own observation " ... It looks to me they figured this guy would get no support and solved THEIR problem by lowering the boom on him ... " specifically are what PC is all about.

Joiehyo's quote from Faux News said:

"He has been evicted from the dorm, put on probation until May 2006, will be forced to participate in a sexual harassment program and write a 3,000-word paper on the program."

He wasn't kicked out of his school. What's the huge problem?

What is PC about anyhow?

If it's just a big liberal joke, is it OK to burn a cross on campus outside a black student's dorm room?

If not, what is the protocol for barring this form of expression? I'd like to hear from one of the anti-PC brigade...

The problem is that this isn't sexual harrassment. This is fact. Tasteless and crude perhaps but true none the less. Americans should be taking the stairs. This was in 2003. I am sure that the stats have changed some but I found it interesting none the less.



U.S. Obesity Rate Rising
Nearly four out of 10 adults in the USA will be obese within five years if people keep packing on pounds at the current rate - putting their health at risk, says one of the top obesity researchers.

Currently, about 31%, or about 59 million people, are obese, which is defined as roughly 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight. Almost 65% are either obese or overweight, 10 to 30 pounds over a healthy weight, which increases their chances of developing diabetes, heart disease, some types of cancer and a host of other health problems.
The medical costs associated with treating these diseases will strain the health care system and economy in the years to come, experts say.

Americans are gaining one to two pounds a year, says James Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. Hill predicts that, at the current rate, 39% of Americans will be obese by 2008.

He's one of several national weight-loss experts who offer possible solutions to the obesity epidemic in Friday's journal Science. This report comes on the heels of a landmark report in January that showed being obese shaves seven years off a person's life, and just being overweight shortens a person's life span by about three years.

To stop gaining weight, people need to either burn 100 calories more a day with physical activity or eat 100 calories less every day, Hill says. They could cut back a little on portions, skip one soda or walk one extra mile a day, which would take about 15 to 20 minutes, he says.

"This isn't going to cause you to lose a lot of weight, but it's going to keep you from gaining any more."

Source: www.intelihealth.com - Harvard Medical School. February, 2003