Turkey's comeuppance on Jayhawks
Lewis DiuguidThe faculty and staff at the University of Kansas need to be locked in an auditorium and given “thou shall never” social media lessons.
Jim Lichtenberg, associate dean for graduate programs at the School of Education, provided the object lesson with an email this week to an upset dog rescuer in Indiana over a recent animal abuse incident at a KU fraternity house. The email was in response to the woman’s reaction to an online news story about a turkey being chased, choked and its wing and leg broken, The Kansas City Star reports.
Lichtenberg thought his response was to two colleagues on campus, but it also went to the Indiana woman, Jennah Dibiase of Terre Haute, making fun of the animal abuse incidence and using a slag term describing masturbation. Really dumb!
Lichtenberg told The Star he realized seconds after he hit “send” that he had inadvertently sent the email to Dibiase. Really dumb!
A university spokeswoman told The Star, “The disrespectful levity used in this email does not reflect the opinions or actions of the university on this issue.”
The turkey sort of got his comeuppance on the Jayhawks.
Bill Mccwiliams
5 months, 3 weeks agoTo bad KU thinks their institution and the people that work their, and the people that attend and graduate from this school are God’s gift to Kansas.
Phil Cardarella
5 months, 3 weeks agoOK. in general I think the last time Kansas was right was in 1859-65, but…
While it is not acceptable to be intentionally cruel to animals, it is also unacceptable to treat fowl as if they were small children. I do not have a favorable opinion of deciding to bring a turkey to a party — even one in which one of its cousins was on the menu. But seeking to ruin the lives of actual humans over this is irrational.
It is obvious to anyone who pays any attention that the turkey having escaped was pursued by a bunch of (probably well-lubricated) young men, some of linebacker size. In their misguided attempts to recapture the terrified fowl, they hurt it — albeit probably unintentionally. Finally, someone had the good sense to put the poor thing out of its misery — an entirely appropriate action.
In a society in which many young women are fashionably vegan, a bystander was appalled at what she took to be an intentional infliction of pain on the poor animal — instead of the alcohol-fueled clumsiness that was more likely.
Animals should be humanely treated and food animals should humanely slaughtered. But, I suspect that the offending students did not intend to cause unnecessary pain and I suspect tha the offending dean simply understood that better than the lady from Terre Haute — and was comunicating to the intended recipients in terms more appropriate to them than her.
One does not have to be of the religious school that holds that Adam got to name tha animals to understand that turkeys — especially domestic breeds — are bred and fed SOLELY as a source of human food. Treating them as if they were human — while acceptable for children’s books — is just politically-correct silliness for adults.