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<p>It would not matter. It would be too easy if organizations could escape liability for accidents by setting up strict safety policies but then -wink, wink- let some manager operate outside of those policies. Presumably, the shop manager is a Yale employee and the administration knew or could have known how the shop was run.</p>
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<p>POIH…I swore I wasn’t going to respond to you but this post has continued the unnecessary insulting comments about community colleges and the resources YOU think they have and don’t have. How would you KNOW this? </p>
<p>Please stop writing disparaging comments about community colleges.</p>
<p>I suggest that if you want to discuss safety standards that you start a SEPARATE thread…in the CAFE.</p>
<p>Or, he could start an entirely other site.</p>
<p>A few years ago, a table saw came on the market that uses an electrical signal to detect contact between the blade and human skin. Skin contact activates a brake that instantly stops the blade. The company (SawStop) is developing a wider line of woodworking tools equipped with similar safety features. </p>
<p>My son’s high school wood shop acquired such a saw soon after they came on the market. Parents rightly expect schools to use the best available safety equipment in their shops and labs. This will not eliminate the need for standard operating procedures, training, and supervision. Even with all that, there will still be some risk … although I would imagine the rate of college lab accidents is fairly low.</p>
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<p>I was only blaming Yale because it deserve to be blamed. A university of that standard loosing student in a lab accident is downright obnoxious.</p>
<p>But I’m baffled by derogatory comments on the thread towards the student who was not drinking alcohol or doing anyother illegal activity but trying to work on her project towards graduation. Poster have called her “irresponsible”, “drugged”, “drunk”, “fought with boy friend”, and now “criminal” by doing something behind the back of university.</p>
<p>Wow!</p>
<p>cellardweler, if your daughter is working on a research project, chances are she has worked alone in her lab late at night. Our young ladies did/do. Although a molecular biology lab does not have metal lathes or anything remotly resembling them, there is plenty of equipment (and quite often outdated equipment), that can malfunction and cause injuries (high voltage gel stands is one example). Whith no one around to administer CPR and call 911 results of an accident can be tragic. I’m not even talking about academic chemistry labs!
Many lab PI encourage round the clock work as it results in additional hours of generation of data for their publications. In industrial settings, work in a lab when no one around is generally prohibited (although some people do break the rules). Research professors jsut do not think about liability…</p>
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<p>It was reported in the NYT that supervisors are only present during daytime operating hours, not at night when the accident occurred. </p>
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<p>If the lab tech is a Yale employee, definitely. Here it has already been reported by other students that the facility was open at night without supervisors present. If other students knew, then the school knew or should have known. If by reasonable inquiry the school could have determined that the facility was open at night to students without supervisors, then lack of actual knowledge is not a defense.</p>
<p>Re post #156 – how would it be “illegal” for a private university to ask an adult student to sign a waiver of liability for access to an area to operate machinery, when it was never “illegal” for me to be asked to sign a waiver of liability to allow my 6 year old to participate in a school field trip?</p>
<p>There are risks associated with many things in life. It is very common practice for organizations and institutions to condition use or participation on a waiver. Such waivers are not illegal in general, though obviously they can’t be asserted to overcome situations of gross negligence or willful misconduct. But in general they are going to be effective against the ordinary risks associated with the situation for which a waiver is sought.</p>
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No, the students have the option of coming in and doing the work during the hours it is staffed by supervising personnel. They would be asked to sign the waiver if they wanted access outside those hours. It’s no different than when a swimming pool has posted hours as to when a lifeguard is on duty. Is it safer to have a lifeguard? Of course. Is it illegal for a pool owner to allow access when there is no guard, or to ask pool users who want after-hours access to waive liability based on any claims that there should have been a lifeguard? I don’t think so.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure what’s insulting about telling the truth that community colleges don’t have the resources of a university like Yale.</p>
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<p>This is also prohibited at my D’s university.</p>
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<p>I’m pretty sure that most posters on this thread would agree that the obnoxious one is not the Yale lab accident, that it is…(fill in the blank.)</p>
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<p>These are very different situations. This case is akin to an employer asking an employee to sign a waiver of liability to perform dangerous work at the employer’s facility using the employer’s equipment under the general direction of the employer. That is illegal. Unless we presume the student was some rogue researcher operating outside of faculty control which seems very far-fetched, her work was approved and directed by faculty. Therefore, the university cannot discharge its liability by contract. She was not on some optional bungee-jumping field trip!</p>
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<p>How do you know that community colleges don’t have excellent resources for staffing their student labs?</p>
<p>You don’t know.</p>
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<p>^This.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that the self appointed king of know-it-all has never set foot on a CC campus.</p>
<p>thumper1: I do know, the california budget is having tough time maintaining bare minimum support staff at community colleges.</p>
<p>GA2012MOM: I don’t need to step foot on a community college to know whether or not it has resources similar to UCs or Yale.</p>
<p>Because of the high level of risk and the relative likelihood of injury if safety standards are not met, machine shops - in my experience - tend to be held to a higher standard than labs and other facilities. This is also why Yale or any other university would never wave liability - the risk of injury is too great. </p>
<p>Typically, shops are not open or accessible during off hours and are supervised by professional staff with no exceptions. Ever. This is why it would be so alarming if Yale deviated from this standard.</p>
<p>Re post #172: There’s no evidence that the student was performing work at the college’s “direction”. We know from news reports that she was working on her senior research project – we don’t know whether the specific machining work she did was necessary, required, or specifically authorized for the project. Maybe she decided on her own that she needed to improve upon or construct new equipment. </p>
<p>Actually, we don’t even know if she was authorized to be in the shop at the time in any event. Maybe there are protocols in place about access that she ignored. When I was in college a classmate blew off his hand in a late night chemistry lab exploit – the kid never had permission to be in that lab. He had managed to steal or make an unauthorized copy of key to the building and went in without permission. </p>
<p>Maybe the kid had key card access to the building with a set of rules about hours & circumstances that she didn’t heed. So would you be arguing that Yale is at fault for not having a better type of lock on the door? (Let’s assume for purposes of argument that the door could be opened by the student’s regular swipe card, but that there were posted rules about time of access and/or which machinery was allowed to be used in off hours).</p>
<p>I actually feel that Yale probably carries insurance to cover all possible lab accidents, and most probably this student’s family will be compensated under the terms of that insurance policy – but they might have a hard time trying to go beyond the policy. (The policy itself might have a specific dollar amount for accidental death – if you look at typical accidental death & dismemberment policies, you can see that those amounts are often quite modest)</p>
<p>Before closing, am copying an excerpt from post #148 above:</p>
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