<p>We used lathes, drills and other shop equipment back in high-school for shop classes. Someone horsing around could be seriously injured or worse. We also had auto shop (which I didn’t take) where students could get injured if they weren’t careful. The student has to take reasonable care in a lab.</p>
<p>We had temperatures in the 80s this past Monday - it was the warmest day of the semester so far. A bunch of ladies in my daughter’s chemistry lab wore warmer-weather clothes and some wore sandals. The professor yelled at those students as the dress code was made abundantly clear at the beginning of the semester. This was at a community college where many of the students don’t pay the best of attention.</p>
<p>Students there get one warning - if they dress improperly a second time, then they are tossed out of the course with an F.</p>
<p>I don’t need more proof than that the student was a Yale Senior, which tells me she is smarter than 90% of the large overall peer group to begin with.</p>
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<p>If it has happended at community college, I wouldn’t have bothered about posting it because I would not be sure about the victim understanding of the environment. </p>
<p>But here we are talking about accomplished students who understands and so there must be something lacking on the part of either machine or the institute resulting in this horrible tragedy.</p>
<p>When I taught undergrad chemistry labs, kids who were not following the safety rules were kicked out of the lab. Anyone wearing shorts or sandals was sent to look for lab appropriate clothing. This was a CLASS. What was going on in research labs was a totally different story. My fellow TAs, the same TAs who were yelling at their undergrads to follow safety rules, wore shorts, sandals, ate in the lab, etc. while working on their research projects. I braided my long hair and packed it under the lab coat, never wore shorts or open-toe shoes in the lab, and I was laughed at for doing some of this.</p>
<p>Hey, BB - this time we agree! I would bet 20 years’ worth of American Chemical Society Dues that she was trained in proper lab safety when she started working in the lab. However, academic labs are notorious for lax follow-up, and people who actually obey the safety rules are frequently mocked. I sometimes wonder why more grad students aren’t hurt.</p>
<p>Chemistry labs are inherently unsafe (they contain chemicals!), although industrial research labs are light-years safer. I feel so bad for her family.</p>
<p>And by the way - the FIRST thing that every chemistry lab student is taught is proper lab attire - lab coats, glasses, gloves, and HAIR. Yet, how often do you walk into a lab where there are NO lab coats, NO gloves, and even NO glasses? Craziness!</p>
<p>Especially in universities, there is a lot of winking, nudging and rolling of eyes when you talk safety. In macho-lab cultures (and I’m not saying that Yale is this way), it’s considered “weak” to follow safety procedures. Unfortunately, this type of accident can be the result.</p>
<p>POIH- I get the distinct impression that you wouldn’t have bothered posting because you wouldn’t have valued the life of a community college student the way you do that of a Yale student. Your comments are becoming increasingly pathetic.</p>
<p>I work for a company that is an industry (and world) leader in safety. We have dangerous equipment at our facilities and if someone breaks a major safety rule (such as Lock Out Tag Out) they are terminated. End of story.</p>
<p>This is a tragic accident and we do NOT know all of the facts, but I suspect the student may not have followed essential safety procedures. It is NOT always possible to make every piece of equipment injury-proof and have it still be functional.</p>
<p>Bunsen, I don’t want to hijack this thread, but - SO true! Gloves? Glasses? And don’t get me started on the grief we used to get for wearing lab coats in grad school.</p>
<p>I was working in an industrial lab when Karen Wetterhahn, a prof at Dartmouth, died from a single exposure to a highly toxic mercury compound. (In that case, she did everything “right” (including wearing gloves) and she still died.) I wondered at the time what my old labmates would say about THAT.</p>
<p>There’s really no way to place blame here. It was an accident unless more facts reveal themselves. The student has to go through training before entering the lab. She probably went through training ten different times in ten different lab classes. This is not the fault of the university, or the fault of the “macho lab attitude” because in what situation would a girl ever be mocked for wearing her hair back?
The fact that there is no sign as a reason for the universities guilt is downright ridiculous (also where did it say there wasn’t a sign?).
It was a mistake made by the student, but that doesn’t make it her fault.
This is why it’s called a lab accident.Car accidents due to operator error are still accidents, aren’t they?</p>
<p>WOW . . . reason I read this thread because I was sure that POIH would twist this tragic event into an “anything but the Ivies is no good” event . . kinds of like going to a NASCAR race</p>
<p>and boy, was I NOT disappopinted!!!</p>
<p>POIH: " . . not enough precautions on the part of the machine manufacturer and on part of the institutes deploying the machines . . . I don’t need more proof than that the student was a Yale Senior, which tells me she is smarter than 90% of the large overall peer group to begin with."</p>
<p>Then . . .</p>
<p>“If it has happended at community college, I wouldn’t have bothered about posting it because I would not be sure about the victim understanding of the environment.” Folks, does this remind anyone else of Brave New World?</p>
<p>No shame: even a tragic death can be used to exhalt the HYPed schools.</p>
<p>POIH actually believes that Ivy League students (like his child, I’m guessing from his name) are so incredibly superior in every way to the rest of us slobs that they are never careless, thoughtless, or forgetful. What nonsense. For all we know the Yale student might have been suffering from a hangover or distracted by a fight with a boyfriend the night before. Ivy League students are just people. To assume that Yale must be at fault because all Yale students are perfect is just absurd. POIH’s often has an odd view of things, but this one takes the cake.</p>
<p>.“…because in what situation would a girl ever be mocked for wearing her hair back?”</p>
<p>Gina, I agree - it probably was an accident, but honestly, I have seen PLENTY of occasions where a girl in a lab would be (and HAS BEEN) mocked for wearing her hair back, especially if said hairstyle was seen as an attempt to “act safe.”</p>
<p>My guess - and that’s what it is, aren’t we all just guessing? - is that she was in a hurry, or tired, or distracted, and thought “I’ve done this a million times before, I know what I’m doing.” So she didn’t pull her hair back (just as people don’t put on gloves or glasses or coats). That’s what makes it an accident and that’s what makes it tragic.</p>
<p>Yes, I remember that! As I recall, she was wearing (doubled?) latex gloves, which would not protect against dimethylmercury. Unfortunately, this was not known at the time, and later tests had shown that this compound penetrated almost every type of gloves almost instantly. Luckily, most common lab chemicals do not penetrate gloves so quickly and are not so lethal, so wearing a proper type of gloves reduces exposure.</p>
<p>And I personally was mocked and ridiculed on many occasions for wearing my hair braided and in a bun or tucked under the lab coat.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the problem posters have with POIH but this goes beyond my imagination.
I’m a Dad and this could have been my DD in that lab. I can relate to absent mindedness of a stressed senior completing labs prior to graduating. </p>
<p>I don’t consider community colleges at the same level as HMSPY and so I would not have posted the article because community colleges might not have all the safeties in place to begin with.</p>
<p>But such a stupid accident at an institute like Yale is beyond my imagination. I never jumped on the wagon of a drinking death of Cornell student because colleges may state their inabilities to control individual actions outside collge campuses.</p>
<p>Institutes like HMSPY should be responsible for student safety in classes, dorms, labs and any where else on the campuses.
These institutes charges exorbitant amount to full paying students have large endownments and should be held responsible for all such incidents or accidents.</p>
<p>What a terrible accident and loss of life. My condolences to her family and friends. Such a tragedy…</p>
<p>How scary and miserable to die in such a way.</p>
<p>I really don’t want to assign blame, but this has me concerned about what was going on. I got the impression that she was in the lab late at night because of the reference to the 2:30 am call to police. I wonder if she was there alone. I don’t think it is a good idea in general to be working alone with equipment as described. (I don’t think I have ever seen a lathe, but it sounds scary.) I also wonder what the policies are in terms of working alone in the machine shop late at night. </p>
<p>One day at work a while back, my assistant’s tie got caught in a shredder. I was standing there and pulled the plug right away, and only the tie was damaged. I mention this because if you are not alone (and naturally panicked when something gets caught in machinery) maybe an accident can be avoided. Believe me when I say that even though it was a paper shredder and even though he was not hurt, the young man was shook up, really (and even though there was no way he could have been killed by it, he went around telling everyone that I “saved his life”.)</p>
<p>POIH, I cross posted with you, but as to doubting that community colleges might have safeties in place, what would give you that idea? Do you have evidence? So in your logic, if someone got caught in lathe in a community college, they got it coming to them because a) they are not as smart as a HYP student (like you know - “not”), and b) community colleges are inferior educational institutions and are unable to follow simple safety rules around machinery. SHEESH.</p>
<p>I don’t know about our local community college, because I have no connection there, but at a campus of our state university, I KNOW, that to work in a lab there is required safety training, and the OSHA people must sign off that you came. The professor sends your name to them, and gets back a sign off that you did the training. Of course our state university is farther down the US News list of top colleges, so I wanted to educate you lest you think all below HYP are troglodytes.</p>
<p>It remains a tragedy whether the student went to Yale University or whether it was an automotive tech school.</p>
<p>My kids had to complete a lab safety test for science class (whether chem, bio, physics, marine bio, environ or quantum physics, etc.) every year starting in middle school. S1’s HS had a working engineering shop and students had to be individually certified on each piece of equipment. POIH’s comment that he wasn’t sure CC students would know the rules is tasteless, at a minimum.</p>
<p>A dear friend of mine has taught at a CC for 17 years and she does extensive lab training, plus makes the students take a quiz and sign a three-page agreement. She has no desire to be sued.</p>