University research in the Age of Protest

[Frabjous]

If you are not careful, you can end up with a work free safe zone.

 

[Vanadium 50]

So, why not move it all off-campus?

 

[Frabjous]

So, why not move it all off-campus?

It would probably be cheaper to move the non-technical departments offsite.

 

[berkeman]

So, why not move it all off-campus?

Move what all off campus? The research labs' infrastructure and physical plant support? Yikes.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Universities are intended to be open places, and the locks on the doors are intended to (a) tell people "don't go in here" and (b) discourage casual theft. They are not intended to stop a determined group of students intent on breaking things. Lots of these things are dangerous, and breaking them doesn't help.

The university, I feel, has a responsibility to keep everyone safe: people working in nearby spaces, people walking from place to place, and even the students intent on smashing things.

Is President Meanypants really going to tell Mr. and Mrs. VanSnooty that he's sorry that their Boopsie is dead, but it's their urchin's own fault for busting up a lab and taking a deep whiff of the chemicals they released. This would be a PR and a legal disaster.

 

[Mayhem]

Where do you draw the line? Dimethyl mercury used to be relatively common as an NMR standard until a drop of it killed Karen Wettermann at Dartmouth. "Dangerous, sure, but we use only a little of it and take precautions" was the prevailing attitude. Now add some students intending to "send a message" or "raise awareness" by smashing the place up.

Giant dewars of LN2 are commonplace. A 500L dewar has enough to expel all the air in a 35 x 30 foot room. Double that, and the O2 levels are still low enough to cause unconsciousness and later death.

Hard to say. But if a teaspoon in someone's coffee could certainly kill them, I think the compound should be stored in a locked cabinet where only approved laboratory workers have access.

 

[Vanadium 50]

To add: not all of the student protestors are students. One of the Columbia arrestees was 63 years old. The MIT students blocking Mass Ave. used high school and junior high students. Suppose the lab is broken into by a mix of students and non-students. Including minors.

 

[Frabjous]

Universities are intended to be open places, and the locks on the doors are intended to (a) tell people "don't go in here" and (b) discourage casual theft. They are not intended to stop a determined group of students intent on breaking things. Lots of these things are dangerous, and breaking them doesn't help.

The university, I feel, has a responsibility to keep everyone safe: people working in nearby spaces, people walking from place to place, and even the students intent on smashing things.

Is President Meanypants really going to tell Mr. and Mrs. VanSnooty that he's sorry that their Boopsie is dead, but it's their urchin's own fault for busting up a lab and taking a deep whiff of the chemicals they released. This would be a PR and a legal disaster.

The fundamental problem is students who think that they will not be held accountable for their actions. If it is the universities responsibilty to keep everyone safe, they should not be admitting these students.

 

[BillTre]

But if a teaspoon in someone's coffee could certainly kill them, I think the compound should be stored in a locked cabinet where only approved laboratory workers have access.

Many things kept at home would probably exceed this threshold, like medicines, pesticides, paint and finishing products, and cleaning products.

 

[Andy Resnick]

So, why not move it all off-campus?

How does that solve your (invented) problem? The 'off-site' buildings/facilities/infrastructures are still owned and operated by the university, so all you are doing is moving the (invented) destruction to a different locale.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Stanford has SLAC, a couple miles away. Berkeley has LBNL, which is closer but up a monstrous hill. UChicago has Argonne and MIT has Bates, a short drive. These are more secure, and far less likely to be hazardous to uninvolved students.

As far as "invented", I would say the Stanford case was a near miss. How many other near misses do we need?

 

[Frabjous]

Stanford has SLAC, a couple miles away. Berkeley has LBNL, which is closer but up a monstrous hill. UChicago has Argonne and MIT has Bates, a short drive. These are more secure, and far less likely to be hazardous to uninvolved students.

As far as "invented", I would say the Stanford case was a near miss. How many other near misses do we need?

What is the value of a research university if all of the research is performed away from the university?

 

[berkeman]

What is the value of a research university if all of the research is performed away from the university?

It's all part of the same institution. I think some of V50's points have merit.

 

[berkeman]

BTW, There should be NFPA placards on any labs that have hazardous materials in them. Quizzing the protesters to make sure they know what the placards mean is another issue...

https://hmexassistant.com/products/nfpa-704-cas-number/

 

[Vanadium 50]

should be stored in a locked cabinet where only approved laboratory workers have access.

Or someone with a set of bolt cutters. $47.97 at Home Depot. Free deliver too!

 

[Frabjous]

It's all part of the same institution. I think some of V50's points have merit.

At JHU, protestors are calling for the University to lose APL.
LANL and LLNL while run by UC are no longer part of UC.

 

[Frabjous]

The problem is that students are taking over buildings. Ignoring the specialized threats, they are sealing entrances turning the buildings into fire hazards. Given the risk, should there be any buildings allowed on a campus at all?

 

[Vanadium 50]

NFPA placards

Berekely Lab has that exact NFPA sign on the way to the cafeteria. I think it's just coincidence. I think.

 

[Hornbein]

They might have had a cyclotron building, but the last cyclotron on campus, the 60 inch, was shut down in 1962.

I wonder what it was then. It was pretty big, in containment, and experiments were set up. It was so long ago I don't recall details.

 

[Hornbein]

Universities are intended to be open places,

So 20th century.

 

[Hornbein]

What is the value of a research university if all of the research is performed away from the university?

In the old days there was a lot more interaction between the various fields. Isaac Newton was a mystic. But that's way out of style. I guess the idea is that there's already no crossover, we want the business, uh, university to expand, we can't expand the central campus, so we have to start a new campus. The University of Tokyo has six campi.

 

[berkeman]

Berekely Lab has that exact NFPA sign on the way to the cafeteria. I think it's just coincidence. I think.

With those same numbers for Health, Flammability, Reactivity/Instability and Special/Cautions? Hopefully it's a joke, but even if it's a joke, the Fire Marshall should not allow it. That would stop me in my tracks if I were responding to an emergency call from whatever is behind that sign...

https://www.uline.com/Product/Detai...eMLLCPyD8Qtc13OJ1larMQUqtj4slbChoCnX4QAvD_BwE

 

[Hornbein]

I was a low wage student employee in a University of Michigan lab. They had a bottle of PCBs right next to the sink. It occurred to me that if this were poured down the drain it could cause an unthinkable amount of carcinogenic pollution. I refrained from doing so.

They also had big bottles of 100% alcohol. Occasionally I would mix that with coffee. I found out later that the reagent is distilled over the carcinogen benzene. Fifty years later still going strong, so it appears I got away with it.

 

[Vanadium 50]

With those same numbers for Health, Flammability, Reactivity/Instability and Special/Cautions?

Yup. 4-4-3-no water. To get from Building 70 (or maybe it's 70A) to the cafeteria, you go past the labs, through a loading dock, past the sign (which I think leads to a gas shed) and outside and up the stairs.

I don't know what they keep there, but as the labs nearby work with semiconductors, perhaps arsine.

 

[berkeman]

Yikes. I used to drive past a Cisco Foods distribution center in Newark California (near Fremont), and they had a similar placard outside of their main building. I kept thinking, "But they make food in there...!"

Unfortunately the Google Street View of their location is not high enough resolution to show the placard...

 

[Vanadium 50]

"But they make food in there...!"

Soylent Green?

I think this emphasizes my point. A lot of benign things use nasty chemicals or equipment. University security is intended to deter the curious student or casual thief, but not a large group of students intent on mischief.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Stanford has SLAC, a couple miles away. Berkeley has LBNL, which is closer but up a monstrous hill. UChicago has Argonne and MIT has Bates, a short drive. These are more secure, and far less likely to be hazardous to uninvolved students.

As far as "invented", I would say the Stanford case was a near miss. How many other near misses do we need?

So any inconvenience for students doing research (undergrads, doctoral, pre-doctoral) while also taking classes is ignored in your scenario?

What about the fact that you are banishing PIs and their staff to remote locations off campus, all in the name of satisfying a vague sense of 'safety'? Or is it ok to sentence a faculty member to deal with monstrous hills every day while they commute between class and lab?

[Edit]: And the cost- do you expect universities to pay for this on their own? Do you have any idea how much it would cost, or do you think I could just move my lab into an empty apartment somewhere?

You are completely focused on the wrong kind of hooligan- the randos breaking in are not the real danger.

 

[Vanadium 50]

You are completely focused on the wrong kind of hooligan-

A. What is the right kind of hooligan?
B. I don't subscribe to the philosophy that if you can't fix everything you can't fix anything.

 

[strangerep]

They also had big bottles of 100% alcohol. Occasionally I would mix that with coffee. I found out later that the reagent is distilled over the carcinogen benzene. Fifty years later still going strong, so it appears I got away with it.

Did you? Are you sure you haven't forgotten some stuff?

 

[Mayhem]

Or someone with a set of bolt cutters. $47.97 at Home Depot. Free deliver too!

Then break-in would be obvious and an investigation would begin immediately. Chemical cabinets are messy and many containers look similar despite containing different chemicals. But inventory accounting would quickly reveal what's missing, unlike simply walking into a lab after hours and stealing.

 

[Hornbein]

Did you? Are you sure you haven't forgotten some stuff?

You mean maybe I forget I died? Could be.

 

[Hornbein]

A. What is the right kind of hooligan?

Our hooligans are good. Their hooligans are bad.

 

[Rive]

I would start with establishing a policy of automatic expulsion with no possibility of appeal for destroying or taking control of university property.

Yep. It's one thing to be prepared for reasonable dangers and have a system of security measures and permissions for reasonably expectable dangers (and that may include at most a policy for any case of danger of mob attacks) but it's a completely different thing to be continuously prepared for unreasonable mob attacks, especially in a campus.

It should have been made very clear that entering the wrong place and doing the wrong thing will have severe consequences - and bolt the doors in case of any torch&pitchfork event, just to make the hints clear.

 

[Frabjous]

We do not live our lives believing that someone will break into our homes. We believe in societal constraints and taking reasonable precautions. These precautions will do nothing to prevent a determined intruder. We believe in the government to maintain order.

I believe the scenario assumes that uncontrollable mobs will be roaming around campus. Given that university administration will not maintain order in these scenarios, I would replace the current leadership with one that will create a civil society on campus.

 

[Frabjous]

Are we sure that V50 is not trying his hand at a viral marketing campaign for Furiosa?