Society is obligated to protect children from tobacco

In last Thursday’s Red & Black, graduate student Jacob Lovell submitted an opinion critical of Dr. Jessica Muilenburg and her position concerning the prohibition of flavored cigarettes citing prohibitions of alcohol and illicit drugs as proof that other prohibitions could ever be effective. He failed to note many other prohibitions that are successful and necessary public health interventions including regulations that control driving under the influence of alcohol, excessive speeding, not wearing seat belts, and helmets, unabated pollution of our air and water, and many more.

The health hazards associated with personal smoking as well as second hand smoke are incontrovertible. While personal freedoms must be protected, society also has an obligation to protect children as Dr. Muilenburg stated, and we have established a variety of prohibitions to protect children as they mature, including minimum driving age, working in sweatshops, and requiring child seats in cars. Smoking must be must be considered as part of our collective responsibility.

Dr. Muilenburg is a respected teacher and researcher in this field committed to protecting the interest of children.

Joel Lee
Faculty
College of Public Health

Art project’s ethics must be questioned

[This letter is in response to a story on 10/22 about a student who put an audio recording stimulating people having sex in a women's bathroom for an art assignment]

Yes, Brinkley warren, art is a vehicle for pushing the envelope. I applaud your attempt to use art as a way to “illuminate the ethics of digital surveillance”. While I agree that the sociological rationale behind your experiment is serious, you also need to consider the rationale behind and the ethics of your own project.

My biggest question to you concerning your research design is: Why the women’s bathroom? Was there a reason you did not want to use the men’s bathroom? Considering you are yourself a male, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to invade a territory in which you are already allowed? In fact, to really understand the sociological implications inferred from the data you collected from those subjected to your research, would it not have been more suitable to install this project in both the women’s AND men’s bathrooms?

Women’s bathrooms are not a grey area. They are an historic safe place for women where access for men is denied. They are one of the few places women have to themselves where men do not exist in the social dynamic.

I firmly believe that power is completely related to access. More powerful people and institutions have greater access to time, space and resources than those who are not as powerful: The University tells you when and where your classes will be held, your professors mandate of your attendance in class and the due dates of assignments delegate how you spend your time, parents schedule the lives of their children, etc. In fact, in your own field of Art women have a history of being the subjects of paintings while men are they creators. Perhaps that is what happened here.

Research, especially of this kind, also creates a power structure. Your participants were forced to spend their time in a way that you determined. As a researcher you, a man without consent, executed an experiment where women had to listen to a tape of, not just two people having sex, but a man seducing a woman. Your experiment did nothing but reinforce an idea of women as lesser; women as not as powerful as men. On top of that, all of your participants did not know they were even participating in an experiment. No unknowing participant can be a willing participant.

Your access of this space and the fact that you subjected only women to a sex-soaked experiment is what is unethical in this situation. Your methods imply a correlation with women and sex and you yourself describe sex as candid, innocent and intimate. Any adult knows that sex holds many different meanings for every individual. You do not know the lives or experiences of any of the woman who walked into that bathroom that day; you do not know anything about being a woman at all.

In the Spring, maybe you should try taking a class on research ethics.

Valerie Barnhart
Senior, Madison
Sociology, women’s studies and statistics