A University of Minnesota task force that proposes one-on-one remedial work with school of education students who fail to adopt mandated political views has attracted a lot of negative attention to that school. All sorts of people have pointed out that this profoundly anti-democratic initiative violates freedom of conscience.

Here’s the Minnesota damage control guy:

“It’s not at all what they’re suggesting — that it’s some sort of litmus test — it’s just making sure that teachers are prepared to deal with the different situations that they might have for each and every student — which has been a challenge in the past,” he said. “Teachers obviously come from one perspective, so if they’ve got 15 other people of different backgrounds in their classrooms it’s a completely different situation.”

No, actually teachers don’t come from one perspective. No one – except, it seems, the ideologues on the task force – comes at life from one perspective. Americans especially, for obvious historical and social reasons, tend in fact to be remarkably culturally flexible. It’s sickening and insulting that anyone in a position of responsibility would take what’s best in us, what’s made this country a success — our high levels of assimilation and tolerance, our ability to imagine our way into foreign worlds — and gut it on behalf of a witless reeducation program.

The absolute catastrophe that the corrupt state of New Mexico has visited on its public university assumes, with each new scandal, the dimensions of a novel by Cormac McCarthy.

Maybe the darkest pages of All the King’s Men get closer to it. Or the film Mad Max, with its apocalyptic gore. Never, in UD‘s memory, has a university fallen so low.

A local writer, Joe Monahan, attempts to come to grips with the reality that an American campus has been buried. He asks whether it can be unearthed.

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The slow motion destruction of the credibility of the University of New Mexico continues inexorably. It seems no one can or will stop it. Not the UNM Board of Regents. Not the Governor. Not the Lieutenant Governor who would be Governor. Not the powers that be in the Legislature. And not depressed university boosters who remain silent.

The university sails alone in troubled waters, captained by the politics of cronyism. The ship is listing badly, struck by too many torpedoes–the coach Locksley scandal, the faculty vote of no-confidence in the UNM president, the hiring of multiple Governor-backed political appointees and the blatant politicization of the UNM regents.

The leading figures at the helm of the university are locked so deeply in politically incestuous relationships that no one will check the other’s actions. What is to be done?

THE PRESIDENT

The time for bashing university president David Schmidly is past. This administration is effectively over.

Now we can only beseech him to announce that he will resign his position within a year and spend that time attempting to clean up the mess (Ditto for Schmidly’s right hand man, the politically connected executive vice-president David Harris). The president’s best chance to preserve any legacy is to acknowledge that his has been a very troubled tenure, but that in the end reality was recognized.

Once his resignation is announced the president will need to dismiss UNM athletic director Paul Krebs and his key associates. He will also have to hand walking papers to UNM football coach Locksley which could mean a large severance payout, but there is no choice. The damage is done, and irrevocable if the same players remain. The cover-up culture must be purged and with it the elitist salaries and perquisites.

After securing Krebs’ resignation, the president should then consider giving the title of athletic director to UNM Lobo basketball coach Steve Alford. Through this violent storm he has retained his credibility nationally and locally. Paid $1 million a year, Alford should have no problem handling both jobs on a temporary basis.

The search for permanent replacements for Locksley and Krebs should be confined to New Mexicans. There are many fine coaches and administrators at area high schools. UNM alumni, athletic boosters and the sports media cheerleaders need to have expectations dialed down.

In short, the bar needs to be reset on the aspirations of Lobo athletics. Student athletes–especially those in the football and basketball programs–have been subjected to unreasonable expectations which in turn leads to the chaos we now confront. Basketball coach Alford seems to be finding a balance–another reason why we see him as a prime choice for an interim athletic director.

THE GOVERNOR

There is apparently no chance that Governor Richardson will take any action to acknowledge the manifold messes strangling UNM. His forceful political personality, so effective in other matters, overwhelmed the institutional strength of the university and set in motion the events that are consuming the school. But if he were to see the light, he would call for the regents’ resignations and begin replacing them with appointees who are not from the world of politics. (Is that possible?)

THE SENATOR

There is still a chance for the Legislature to prevent a complete shipwreck. We warned during the 2009 legislative session that the decision of state Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Linda Lopez not to hold an intensive confirmation hearing on the reappointment of regent Jamie Koch and the turmoil-ridden campus sent a signal that legislative oversight of UNM was not to be. Lopez could still hold that hearing in January and appropriators could start demanding change in exchange for dollars.

THE HOUSE

In the state House the current leadership is so deeply entwined with regent Koch and regents president and former longtime NM House speaker Raymond Sanchez, we don’t know where to look for reform. But university area state representatives and senators are a start. That would be Sen. McSorley and Rep. Chasey. They have safe seats for life. Where are they?

THE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish has made education a banner issue, but she has yet to wade into the UNM waters. That will come when the campaign for Governor begins in earnest. But she needs to know now that deep concern is being expressed among major donors and supporters of UNM about her long political relationship with former Democratic Party chairman and regent Koch. It is causing worried speculation that her election as Governor would be more of the same–which in this case means an endless spiral of controversy, cronyism and damage to UNM’s reputation. Will she have the political will to break with the past? Will she send any early signals?

THE OTHER REGENTS

And where are the regents you hear little from–Santa Fe attorney Gene Gallegos, car dealer Don Chalmers, attorney Carolyn Abieta and Farmington’s Jack Fortner? These are all distinguished volunteers, but the time for being bumps on the log is long past. They have the power to pressure the UNM president and even the governor who appointed them. Being an “honorific” regent in the breaking point year of 2009 is not an option.

Change must and will come, but this rudderless ship is headed into the sandbars. How much more damage it will suffer before the rescue party arrives is the dreaded unknown hanging over the home of the Lobos and those who fret for its future.

Joe Monahan, New Mexico Politics

America’s worst university is also its filthiest: As per tradition, thousands of drunken tailgaters have dumped … let’s see.. seventy tons of trash on campus after a recent football game.

“[P]olice estimate we have 15,000 to 25,000 people who come here to tailgate and spend the day with no intention of attending the ballgame,” says the university’s sports-mad president, Michael Adams, who deserves everything he gets, since his asshole-friendly policies created the problem.

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The headline in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution states the school’s quandary:

IS THE TRASHING OF UGA DUE TO TAILGATING OR DRINKING?

Hm, yes, take your pick. The regular transformation of an American university campus into a puke and piss dump is maybe because of its y’all come on down tailgating policies, or maybe because y’all doesn’t even know there’s a football game going on … doesn’t even know it’s on a campus…

So you don’t gotta choose, really. It’s tailgating and it’s drinking.

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Got my headline for this post from a remark someone made on the article’s comment thread.

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Here’s another comment: “It was just shocking to see the aftermath,” said Andy Carter, 37, who works at the UGA Library and only recently moved to Athens.

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What are these people seeing? Let’s not be coy:

Whole tailgate tents left half-standing. Abandoned portable grills. Urination in campus doorways. Defecation. Trash strewn everywhere.

Oh and they got all sorts of folk comin’ up with all sorts a jackshit excuses — Blamin’ it on the media ’cause they want UGA to have night games and you know how somehow I dunno but somehow folks just do that much more shittin’ in classroom doorways when it’s dark out…

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No one’s saying that the university campus has to be a meticulous little monastery. Have your games. Expect noise and mess. But America’s worst university holds that title in part because it’s lost all sense of decorum, all sense that it’s supposed to be a serious place, where people like librarians can go about their business without stepping in Bubba’s shit.

She gets sued a lot, so I guess that takes up a lot of her time… But as to what she contributes to the university, it’s hard to tell.

Her webpage tells us she teaches “in” one course every spring. Does this actually mean she has less than a one-course load every year?

As for her scientific research, she’s been dealing with a dragged-out lawsuit from a former student — and she’s been losing every element of it — for years, costing Stanford a good deal of time and money in lawyers.

She grabbed credit for patented work much of which he seems to have done; she subsequently plagiarized parts of his dissertation for a different patent application.

When he tried to deal with all of this in a direct way, calling her, she left the following phone message:

You have no case, and I really don’t want to spend time on this.

But what does Professor Calos spend time on?

Oh right. Lawsuits.

That’s Mr UD describing a just-released sexual harassment on campus study UD asked him to look at.

She asked him to look at it because its description on PR Web smelled heavily of bullshit:

A study conducted across ten of our nation’s college campuses to determine if they are physically and intellectually safe revealed disturbing levels of intolerance across the board. The Survey of more than 2,600 undergraduates, sponsored by Campus Tolerance Foundation (www.campustolerance.org), was conducted by the FDR Group from October 2008 to January 2009 and revealed the following alarming statistics:

-59% of all students surveyed said they have either witnessed or have been victims of bias incidents on campus;

-62% of women surveyed report that they have been victims of broader sexual harassment or personally know someone who has been; and

-33% of women surveyed were victims of serious sexual harassment — forced sex, attempts to force sex, or attempts to force kissing or fondling — or personally know someone who was

“As a grandmother of children soon to be looking at colleges to attend, I found these Survey results very disturbing, to say the least,” said Marcella Rosen, founder of Campus Tolerance Foundation. “By publicizing these alarming findings, the Foundation hopes that colleges and universities will address bias where it exists, and that parents and students will consider tolerance when selecting a college.”

Bugger me — it’s even got a granny!

Disturbing, alarming, disturbing, alarming. You get one disturbing in the first paragraph, and then a matching disturbing in the last. You get one alarming in the first paragraph and a matching alarming in the last. If you’re not disturbed and alarmed by the time you finish reading this release, you must not be a grandmother.

You must be something evil, like a social scientist who knows bullshit research techniques when he sees them.

A social scientist who says What the hell does intellectually safe mean?

And get a load of these results!

… Ohio State University fared worst (at 69%) when it came to students witnessing or being victims of bias incidents (verbal insult, graffiti, physical threat or physical assault) on campus, followed by Texas A&M (66%), University of Florida (65%), University of Nebraska (64%), George Washington University (60%), University of Minnesota (58%), UCLA (57%), and University of Washington (56%). Harvard fared best (at 40%), followed by Barnard (42%).

On the subject of sexual harassment, an alarming 73% of female students surveyed at George Washington University said that they have experienced or witnessed broader sexual harassment; Barnard was at the low end of the spectrum (at 52%).

Regarding serious sexual harassment (forced sex, attempts to force sex, kissing or fondling), Harvard fared worst, with 45% of female students saying that they had been victims or personally knew a victim, followed by George Washington University (43%), Ohio State University (42%), University of Nebraska (40%), University of Minnesota (35%), UCLA (30%), and the University of Florida (30%). The University of Washington fared best (23%), followed by Barnard and Texas A&M (both 24%).

73% of female students at La Kid’s own GW! My blood ran alarmed when I read that.

But then I read the home page of the organization that did the survey. I looked at the questions they asked. I tried to figure out if the research sample is random. I tried to figure out a lot of things about the research method, but even the section of the website meant to be read by other researchers is completely inadequate as description.

They formulate the questions very cleverly. They bundle into one inquiry about sexual harassment things like forcible kissing (all women have endured some of this at some time — some guy on your first date kisses you when you don’t want him to) and rape; or they bundle seeing offensive graffiti (in no way does this constitute harrassment) and physical assault. And then they report the results in such as way as to mix up mild or non-existent with extreme and hope you don’t notice.

Or they give you alarming, disturbing results like 52% of students at Texas A&M “sometimes or often fear speaking in class because others might disagree with you.”

First, get the sometimes or often. Makes a big difference, don’t it? I mean, if something happens to you sometimes, or if it happens often?

But don’t make no nevermind for this survey… And… why are students who often fear speaking onaccounta someone might disagree with them in college? Isn’t polemical discussion the basis of the seminar? Did these schools go out of their way to admit people who said in their application essays I often sit silently, full of fear that others may disagree with what I say?

Fear not. Do not fear disagreeing with bogus science that comes to us complete with grandmothers warning about the big bad wolf.

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Update: PhilosopherP, a reader, mentions in her comment something about the survey that Mr UD also noted. UD forgot to put it in the original post:

Don’t forget lumping together “have experienced” and “observed” and “knows someone who experienced” — so, one incident of public/ gossiped about unwanted kissing could generate a large number of responses.

UD thanks PhilosopherP.

Definitely beginning to sound like Borat.

And thank goodness a professor’s gotten involved. UD gets to cover the story!

The alleged crimes of the Brooklyn man arrested Thursday for dealing in black-market kidneys were first reported by an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley, who learned of the man’s suspected involvement through her research.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes – whose contacts in Israel define her as the world’s leading authority on organ trading – says she heard reports that the suspect, 58-year-old Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, held donors at gunpoint after they changed their minds about the operation.

Such reports that she received from her sources compelled her to go to the authorities. She met with an FBI agent at a Manhattan hotel and gave him information about Rosenbaum, but she says that the Bureau acted only much later. The Berkeley scholar is said to have identified Rosenbaum to the FBI seven years ago as a major figure in a global human organ ring.

The anthropologist says that the man who led her to Rosenbaum says that he initially believed Rosenbaum was a man who saved the lives of people in need. According to Scheper-Hughes, that man told her he had changed his mind after meeting some of Rosenbaum’s donors – confused and impoverished people from Eastern Europe…

One out of every five adult males in some of Moldova’s poorest villages has had his kidney removed, according to Scheper-Hughes …

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I boarded a broken-down jitney
To check out a show at the Whitney.
And jumpin’ jehovah
The Salle de Moldova
Was featuring recycled kidney.

… full of nostalgia for those, like UD, who have long followed the only medical school in America with rolling prison admissions.

It’s a pretty typical story, if you follow university sports the way UD does. Gruesomely-run state with way-past-dire economy features large public university run by jocksniffers. Pointless, cost-overrun new stadium, overpaid coaches, secret deals, academic mission shot to hell, blahblah.

But sometimes things get so shameless, so squalid, that a certain perverted integrity emerges. The people who run Rutgers will run it into the ground, and damned if anyone’s going to stop them.

It’s unseemly at best that as the Rutgers University Board of Governors was approving tuition and fee hikes this week, school officials were also exulting over a pair of large donations that will pay for a nearly $5 million luxury lounge for the new football stadium.

We know all the excuses. It’s free money. The wealthy donors — two of them — wanted the money used for this specific purpose. They have the right to attach whatever strings they want. And of course the lounge will be really nice and fancy and be a helpful recruiting tool for a program that aspires to greater glory, and since it’s all private money, who cares?

But here’s how officials could have — should have — responded to the donors. They should have graciously explained that given the current economic conditions and pressures it simply wouldn’t be appropriate to accept that much money for such a frivolous project. To pursue the lounge, some of the donated money would have to redirected to another worthy cause, either in academics or even to some of the more neglected sports. Some funds could even have gone to restoring the lost sports programs that a coalition of supporters is still fighting to bring back.

And if the donors refused, school officials could have politely declined the offer and moved on. Because that luxury lounge is hardly an urgent need, or a need at all.

… Let’s remember that the $100 [million]-plus expansion of the football stadium was a boondoggle from the beginning. After the football team threw together a couple of successful seasons officials started bending over backwards trying to grow the program. The expansion project was only part of it. The school also threw silly money at head football coach Greg Schiano, including secret, lucrative provisions that eventually prompted investigations and an overhaul of the entire athletic department…

If this comment is true, all praise to the TTU law school:

[The chancellor] tried to foist the man off on the Law School. Three times he tried and three time the Law School—-both through its Dean and its Faculty (and perhaps with some help from its alums) rebuffed him. But the Law School has a bit more autonomy than does the Poly Sci Department.

Second, the ONLY good thing that can come from this bizarre appointment is that it gives the Board of Regents serious pause about continuing Hance as Chancellor…

The University of Illinois law school only had to keep unqualified students out…

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UD thanks a reader, jbb, for the link.

… always appreciates fine writing. Here’s some. Let’s see how John Kass of the Chicago Tribune does his thing.

If there were any doubts that Illinois is the diseased poster child of political corruption, those doubts are long gone. [Such a fresh, strong opening sentence, in the context of such an absurdly over the top story of statewide corruption, that SOS laughed out loud. Great start.]

Friday’s story in the Tribune exposes a widening pattern of corruption at the University of Illinois. This time, with the trading of law school admission for patronage-style jobs. [Sentence fragment! Yes, the second sentence isn’t a sentence. But that’s okay, right? The guy’s pissed, and his clipped approach fits his anger.]

So any doubts about where this state stands should be erased. What remains is the smell. [Maybe he’s heading into a bit too much figurative language — poster child, disease, smell. We might ask him to polish this by finding one metaphor — stench would certainly do it — and sticking with it.]

The state stinks, from Rich Daley’s City Hall to Springfield, and now all that’s left, for taxpayers, is the smell and the stain. [Smell, stain, stink — I guess we’re basically into liquid doodoo here. And that’s fine. If the shit fits, wear it.] Corruption and patronage, once thought to be [Drop to be.] the exclusive province of greasy politicians, now reach into the law school of the state’s premier public university. [Not sure about greasy, though greasy-palmed is I guess the referent. If you wanted to stay with flowing manure, you might say malodorous or something.]

Friday’s story details how University Chancellor Richard Herman forced the university’s law school to accept an unqualified student. That student had the backing of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The student’s relative dropped wads of campaign money on ex-Gov. Dead Meat. [Laughed again on dead meat. Though again, if you wanted to keep the primary metaphor you might say ex-Gov. Fertilizer.]

In exchange for corrupting his law school’s admissions policy, Herman wanted to get jobs for five of his law school graduates. University officials considered the law grads so far at bottom of their class that they needed political clout to get a decent salary at a good law firm. If that wasn’t possible, the U. of I. was willing to place them in government jobs.

“Yeah, I’m betting the Governorship will be open,” Heidi M. Hurd, then dean of the university’s College of Law, wrote in an e-mail to Herman on April 29, 2006, perhaps joking that Blagojevich’s time in public life was coming to an end.

What followed in her e-mail was worse.

“Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don’t pass the bar and can’t think are close enough for government work,” Hurd wrote. In another e-mail to other U. of I. officials, Hurd wrote:

“FYI: The deal is supposed to be that WE get to pick the students — and they are supposed to be bottom-of-the-class students who face a hell of a time passing the Bar and otherwise getting jobs!”

That’s law school the Chicago Way. If they can’t pass the bar on the first or second try, they’re qualified to become mayor.

The latest e-mails from Herman, Hurd and other U. of I. officials were released Thursday. The Tribune had asked for all such e-mails in April. But these somehow were forgotten, until U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald issued subpoenas. Then, magically, that which was lost was found. A miracle!

Did the U. of I. search by the light of Batman’s beacon, Diogenes’ lantern or some other powerful lamp of truth? [Once again, funny. Remember: Writing is all about control. If you’re angry, don’t spew. Find some other way to convey your rage. Humor is a fantastic way.]

Thomas Hardy, spokesman for the University and a former Tribune colleague whom I know and respect, dismisses my skepticism and deserves his say.

“We’ve made a good-faith effort to respond to the Tribune’s Freedom of Information requests, and others,” Hardy said. “Some documents were not produced that apparently should have been. We don’t know right now the reason for that, but the fact of the matter is that in collecting documents and doing interviews for the Quinn commission, we’ve come across these new e-mails and made them publicly available.”

Within days, perhaps sooner, you’ll hear a few thudding sounds, like lonely bowling balls tossed down a dark alley, and you’ll realize you’re listening to the political heads of Chancellor Herman and his crew rolling into history. [Well, we’ve switched figures bigtime, and I’m not sure how fresh and lovely the bowling ball thing is. I mean, not that shit’s fresh and lovely qua metaphor, but somehow people always like it. And yes — He could rewrite with an eye to maintaining his dominant metaphor by saying That sucking sound you hear is the head of Chancellor Herman being flushed down the toilet of history.]

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that lopping a few heads and burning the stumps will clean things up.

Not in the state where our boss Democrats in the state legislature — guys like state Senate President John Cullerton (D-DeLeo) — are still slapping themselves on the back for stopping the Illinois Reform Commission led by former assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Collins.

Not in the state where Mayor Daley can pretend not to know that his nephew received $68 million in city pension money to invest, and then, without telling his taxpayers, puts them on the hook for likely cost overruns in his 2016 Olympic dream.

Not in the state where — just before the patronage abuse trial of Daley’s top aides a few years ago — mayoral mouthpiece David Axelrod, now the media wizard for President Barack Obama, defended political patronage by arguing it is the grease that helps government run smoothly. [Yeah, ye olde start every paragraph with the same words — Not in the state… Fine. Works well here.]

Think about your taxes. And all the fine students denied admission to the U. of I., though they have the grades.

Think of the clout that’s been reported by this newspaper. Consider the thousands of excellent, hardworking students at the U. of I. who’ve been dishonored by the corruption of adults who are [Drop who are.] supposed to protect them.

If you’ve read carefully here and elsewhere, you know about corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, corrupt businesses. But the last line of defense for the corrupt are kinky judges.

How do you get such judges? You begin in law school, with university officials establishing corrupt practices, leveraging unqualified lawyers into jobs.

Lawyers become judges, don’t they? [Terrific conclusion, in which he clarifies the food chain by which judges become just as corrupt as everyone else in Illinois government.]

… they’re engineering raises for their many diploma mill graduates.

Hey, even the superintendent graduated from one!

She tried to keep the guys off.

The woman shows a healthy sense of irony. (“Any more phone calls to make to influential people just to make sure they feel the love?”)  She’s even clever at making up words (Provostian!).

But the dean of the law school at outed, clouted University of Illinois wasn’t able to fight off the governor (Blago at the time) and his cloutslaves at UI. Heidi Hurd was forced to admit a whole raft of the well-connected.

At one point in March 2007, Hurd asked staffers to collect data about how the clouted students performed at law school to provide a weapon against their admittance.

Admissions dean Paul Pless reported that the school admitted at least 24 “SI,” or special interest, students during a four-year span. He said they had lower grades and standardized test scores than the general applicant pool and they lagged behind their classmates once admitted. On average, they maintained a 2.86 grade point average during their first year compared with the 3.2 grade point average for the overall class, he said. One faced “formal disciplinary charges” and left the school.

But their dislike of the program didn’t stop administrators from accepting the students.

“I’ll do my best to keep the number of Provostian admits to a minimum, and extract payment for them,” Hurd wrote to her admissions staff in 2003.

Payment here meant guaranteed jobs in Blago’s government. A perfect fit! And after all, as the immortal Roman Hruska reminded us, the mediocre too are entitled to representation.

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UD is very grateful to Wendy and James for the link.

… about the continued hagiography coming out of Kansas State University as its revered leader Jon Wefald finally retires. The saint of KSU is a panting jocksniffer who has handed much of KSU’s money to a dirtily run football program. He has also engaged in nepotism and conflict of interest.

Wefald is your basic long-running banana republic leader. Power went to his head. The Topeka Capital-Journal provides details of his conflict of interest. [Note: I got the newspaper wrong originally; I’ve corrected that, and I thank my readers for the correction. I can’t get the link to work at the moment, however. I’m working on it.]

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Here’s the link.

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And here’s the renaissance.

It’s Jersey.

Crime pays.

… What Cornell [University] is putting into Cayuga’s waters and possibly ending up in the water glasses at graduation dinners could become important table discussion.

Cornell plans to deliver a liquefied brew of animal carcasses and veterinary medical waste to the Ithaca Wastewater Treatment plant. There, the material would be treated and discharged into Cayuga Lake. The lake is the source of drinking water for thousands of county residents, businesses and visitors – like those Cornell families staying in area hotels this weekend.

For more than a month, Cornell has refused to disclose the components of its liquefied brew of dead animals and medical waste. In early April, The Ithaca Journal requested under the New York Freedom of Information Law that Cornell provide details on the chemical and biological ingredients of the waste.

Cornell argues New York’s FOIL does not apply to the university. Even though New York taxpayers fund many of the university’s programs and several state schools are located on its campus, Cornell claims it is a private institution and not subject to FOIL.

… Cornell’s brew of animal carcasses and waste is generated by the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. That state college also houses the New York State Animal Health Diagnostic Center and the New York State Diagnostic Lab. Note the word “state” in the previous sentence.

… The list of possibilities of what may be in the Cornell waste is broad and is a significant public health and safety concern. We’ve asked Cornell to provide documents that detail the chemicals and/or materials that the waste might contain, including:

* Anesthetics, carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic agents and chemotherapeutic agents.

* Contraceptives, drugs, pharmaceuticals and other therapeutic agents.

* Dyes, formaldehyde, formalin, other tissue preservatives, phenol and phenolic compounds.

* Sterilizing solutions, immunization agents or laboratory chemicals.

* Mercury, lead, silver, iodine or other heavy and non-heavy metals and metalloids.

* Persistent compounds of potential environmental or public health concern or volatile organic chemicals.

* Radioactive solutions, tracers or elements…

the ithaca journal