Word: accidentally
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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WORKERS have called the exposed stairwell of Carpenter Center "a mother's nightmare" for years now, but never with the conviction they used this week. What in the past had seemed merely a risky spot for small children suddenly showed itself for it was--a dangerous safety hazard in gross...
Yet the government letter, which was not an official citation, never even penetrated the inner circles of University decision-makers. The stairwell had even been covered with a fence, which was taken down before the accident. Top maintence officials said they never knew of the temporary fence, the letter or...
BUT from a wide range of interviews it appears that the accident was not caused by heartless officials putting an international reputation ahead of the safety of young children. Rather the incident seems indicative of the University's Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
While Harvard's handling of the accident itself has been admirable, the whole episode is troubling. How can the University claim to maintain basic safety, when it fails to act on hazards it is consistantly warned about? Is there any real attempt to find new safety problems in buildings?
That question would be explosive if the contender were a safe token, a man who had held all the right offices, adopted all the sensible positions, and differed from the majority's norms only by the accident of his race. But this contender challenges all the established verities at once...