At 3:59 p.m. on April 27, I, and thousands of other MATC students, received one of the most condescending e-mails that I have ever seen. The e-mail was from MATC Student Services, as they sent out their latest mass e-mail, this one entitled MATC – Swine Flu Awareness.
Over the last week, I, and I assume many other students, have received several e-mails from Student Services. Most have been informative, about events involving MATC or our faculty and students or services offered by the school.
However, the e-mail I received at one minute to four was not really informative unless, of course, you’ve been living under a very unhygienic rock. It included two sentences about the symptoms of Swine Flu, and then went in-depth into how to wash your hands.
That’s right, this e-mail was about how to wash your hands. It wasn’t a real warning about the dangers of Swine Flu, or what to do if you think you may have contracted the disease, it was about hand washing. Apparently, our school fears that our parents may not have gone over this with us when we were children.
The e-mail included such helpful advice as: “Wet your hands with warm, running water.” and that by “slowly singing the ABCs in your head while you wash your hands” you can tell if you’ve washed them long enough.
After reading this e-mail, however, I’m somewhat surprised that they think we remember our ABCs. And as anyone who’s ever tried to wash their hands at our school knows, with the two seconds of water you get at the sinks, you’d be lucky to get to “C’ before the water shuts off.
The e-mail even contained a link to a video demonstration of how to wash your hands – just in case you couldn’t follow the complicated step-by-step written instructions.
All of this was followed by a list of “crucial times to wash your hands” – after using the bathroom, who would have thought?
MATC – Swine Flu Awareness was at best not terribly useful and, at worst, condescending to college students and adults in general. I, personally, found it to be downright depressing that our school thinks that we need this information. And remember, “Don’t put pens, pencils and other objects in your mouth!