Is Carleton University Disrespecting People With Cystic Fibrosis?

Sorry to get serious on "LOW" but this story...found here is pretty interesting and explains that Carlton University's student school board voted almost unanimously to switch the beneficiary of the annual "Shinearama" fundraiser from the Cystic Fibrosis foundation to a different charity that is "inclusive" because "cystic fibrosis has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men". This has caused quite an uproar, and than some!

I have actually had very substantive discussions about this with various people, who split to both sides of the argument. My opinion is that the school board's intentions were good. I firmly believe that, but their choice of words, and reasoning is very arguable because of the volatile nature of race relation, and passion of CF supporters.

I can side with Donnie Northrup, the student the motion was written by when he says:

"This is not saying that cystic isn't a 'good enough cause,' but acknowledging that others exist and we can be more representative of the desires of students if we rotate our charities," Mr. Northrup said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. "In this system, there is also the possibility to return to Shinerama after a few cycles. I genuinely do not understand all the attention this has garnered."

I think it's even more debatable because the university has been donating to CF for such a long time (it'll be 25 years come 2009), but if they decided to donate the money to MS research do supporters of CF now say...well...MS is bad but you've been giving to us for a long time! Don't give it to MS...or if you want to do that, set up a whole new charity initiative because "Shinarama" is ours?

Final verdict...the PR person was out on this one.