Monday, November 21, 2011

Health Benefits of Pepper Spray"

As the chancellor of UC Davis said that the police were sent because of health concerns for the students, I decided to look up the medical benefits of being sprayed in the face with pepper spray. According to Wikipedia:

"The US Army concluded in a 1993 Aberdeen Proving Ground study that pepper spray could cause "[m]utagenic effects, carcinogenic effects, sensitization, cardiovascular and pulmonary toxicity, neurotoxicity, as well as possible human fatalities. There is a risk in using this product on a large and varied population".[13] However, the pepper spray was widely approved in the US despite the reservations of the US military scientists after it passed FBI tests in 1991. As of 1999, it was in use by more than 2000 public safety agencies.[14]"

Now if I read that correctly some of the health benefits include death. I don't really see that as very beneficial. I mean even if you believe in assisted suicides for the terminally ill, those kids looked sicker after being sprayed then before. Obviously I am being sarcastic; but, they make it so easy. The truth was that the University didn't want the kids occupying the campus so why lie. I would have a lot more respect if the chancellor had said that the university did not want to be disrupted and that the officers had overreacted.

The chancellor's answers were just stupid and politically aimed and it failed. If the chancellor thought the officers were using pepper spray as some sort of vaccination against disease then maybe she would be willing to stand in the quad and prove that it is a good form of vaccination by being sprayed in the face herself. If she is so stupid that she believes that there are health benefits to being pepper sprayed then she does not deserve to run anything and should be removed.

The students were protesting the fact that their tuition had doubled in the last seven years. I went to a website that showed the salaries for people working for the university in 2007 or 2008 and it said that the head coach of the football team made over $2 million a year. It was amazing how many working for the university were making around a million.

The way the universities look at students anymore is purely business. The universities promote the kids taking out as much in loans as possible in order to pay the administration and faculties salaries. The UC system was theoretically created to educate Californians; but, out of staters and foreign students pay more so the Universities have been letting more in with fewer Californians being accepted even though our taxes pay for the system.

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