The "Bad Ideas" Contest at Ottawa U

Two years ago I blogged about the faults of the University of Ottawa’s “Good Ideas” Contest, and about the idea I submitted in facetious attempt to topple the whole thing. (See “Social Experiment 2: Flinging Shit into my University’s Cyberspace” and its sequel.) This year, I decided to submit again, but a serious idea. Well, not any more serious than the previous, but something that I actually thought might win.

Alas, this has not happened. I won’t bother describing the ideas that did win. Some are all right, and most won’t be implemented anyway, but suffice it to say that none of the ideas target student health issues as mine did, and what’s worse, three of the ten ideas appear to be more or less the same: “Mini Art Shows,” a “Semaine des art et des talents etudiants,” and “Student Art Showcase.” One would think that an idea to encourage student health on campus would make it into this list — instead of at least one of the three campus art-related ideas!

Then again, my idea involved pointing out something wrong with the university. Evidently, they want innocent innovations that improve for the sake of improving, not innovations that call attention to and address actual problems or absences. To endorse my idea would have been to publicize one of the university’s points of neglect.

Now, I cannot remember whether the university acquires the complete rights for your idea upon submission, or upon selection, but my blogs from two years ago seem to say it was the former (back then, at least; but I can’t see why this would have changed — unless someone submitted a “Good Idea” to change it). If so, then it seems that the university could just as well consider and even implement my idea (“their” idea, now) without either having to (1) reward me for my intellectual production (i.e., actually “purchase” the rights to my idea — each “Good Ideas” winner receives $500), or (2) publicize the idea and therefore the points of neglect it calls attention to. In other words, the way the “Good Ideas” Contest is structured is such that the best ideas, the ideas that actually address shortages and points of neglect on the university’s part, have no reason to be rewarded or recognized. (What irony for an institution designed to provide incentives for intellectual production.) Why publicize these ideas, which draw attention to the university’s faults, when the university can anyway do with them what it will?

It is not that such ideas are intended solely to point out the university’s faults; it’s merely that, in order to suggest an improvement to faults, they must first suggest that these faults exist. Evidently, in the case of the subject of my idea (hygiene), the university (via its puppet student adjudication committee) was unwilling to contradict its shiny, air-brushed public image as a pristine and cleanly place of learning.

Well, consider for yourself. Here is my idea, which it may be now illegal for me to publish if it is, in fact, no longer my property:

uOttawa needs to make its computer and study stations hygenic. Research has shown the computer keyboard and mouse to be among the filthiest surfaces in the office and home, containing five times the germs of a toilet seat. Among the microbes: dangerous bacteria such as E. coli. [We only had 200 or 250 words, so it was somewhat difficult to include citations, but I think this research has been publicized enough that most people have by now heard something of it.] One can imagine, then, how much bacteria a PUBLIC computer terminal might contain. With uOttawa’s keyboards and mice, imagining isn’t difficult: you can see and feel for yourself the grease and grime, the particles of dirt, hair, dust, skin. [Anyone who has used Ottawa U's computers knows that this is no exaggeration.]

According to a BBC article—from 2004!—the problem’s not just keyboards, but work stations as a whole (desk, phone, etc.), which “contain nearly 400 times as many microbes [as] lavatories.” Students spend a lot more time at computers and study desks than they do in bathrooms. Why not enforce the same standards of cleanliness for work stations as we do for bathrooms?

There’s a feasible solution: (1) Include in our custodians’ duties the cleaning and/or inspection of keyboards, mice, and study desks; (2) Place near every cluster of computers cleaning spray or wipes, with which every user would be obligated to clean his/her keyboard and mouse after use—much in the same way as s/he would a machine at our gym; (3) Mount instructive signs or warning labels near computer stations.

Otherwise, with computers so integral to student life, we are harbouring an unnecessary, disgusting health hazard. Our lavatories are cleaned every day. Have our greasy keyboards EVER, even once, been cleaned?