Monona,

Excellent thoughts!

Alan

Alan H. Hall, M.D.

Medical Toxicologist

On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 2:12 PM Monona Rossol <0000030664c37427-dmarc-request**At_Symbol_Here**lists.princeton.edu> wrote:

Here's the problem:  The people running this shindig shouldn't just take a word and redefine it to meet their own uses.  The dictionaries do not agree with their definition of respect.  The wording might be close to the second dictionary meaning, but the first is:

1.  a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements: 

"the director had a lot of respect for Douglas as an actor"

SIMILAR:  esteem   regard   high regard

So I appreciate these seminar leaders on diversity telling me how I should act around others in order not to rile them, but I object to them telling me how to feel about others.

Respect is earned. Don't ask me to respect everyone, because I don't, can't and shouldn't.  

Instead of "respect," I prefer a vernacular term, that is, to give everyone their "propers."  This means treating others in ways that are consistent with the customs of politeness and courtesy.  That is what I owe everyone.  That plus the truth.  I owe everyone the truth. So also don't ask me to refrain from telling someone their argument is full of holes when it is clearly leaking all over us both.

Some of these trainers are people who tell us we should respect and love everyone.  I remind them that this is a religious view, not an ethical imperative.  Do NOT force your religion on me.  I have the right to hate some people.  I cherish and nurse those grudges lovingly. There are people whose health I worry about because I don't want them to die until I can get even with them.

Let's hope all this gets worked out soon so this diverse world can get a little sense of humor and I can go back to disrespecting everyone equally. 

Monona 

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Kuespert <000015c5a28e7459-dmarc-request**At_Symbol_Here**LISTS.PRINCETON.EDU>
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Sent: Wed, Dec 14, 2022 4:08 am
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Respect in Safety

Good morning all!

I’m presiding over a panel on Respect in Safety at the Indianapolis Annual Meeting in spring. I need a bit of help from the CHAS community—you don’t even need to attend! Read on…

The panel abstract is:

Respect refers to one’s treatment of another as a person of equal status, deserving of consideration and politeness in discourse. This is particularly so when that discourse involves disagreement—respectful people can ‘agree to disagree.’ Providing health & safety advice, especially when issues of enforcement are involved, can create situations prone to displays of disrespect. The panel members will discuss representative lived experiences of this effect and will engage with the audience in active brainstorming on ways to avoid and defuse such situations.

The panel has representatives from CHAS, the Committee on Chemical Safety (which is co-sponsoring), the Committee on Ethics, and possibly one other division (if they get back to me…), as well as the VPP director for Indiana OSHA. So we’ve got a wide variety of perspectives; it should be a great session.

There’s just one thing: We need stories to talk about.

The way we’d like to run this panel is to have several stories of disrespect, whether on the part of safety personnel or those we’re trying to protect, and to have a dialogue with the audience about them. (We won’t be taking stories directly from the audience—the panelists would like some time to think about the case studies.) The objective will be to find constructive ways to avoid or move beyond the situations discussed.

We’d be interested in your stories of disrespect. Email me your stories at dkuespert**At_Symbol_Here**pm.me; names and other obvious identifying information will be removed immediately (please try to sanitize your story so that individual characters, companies, etc. aren’t recognizable). We’ll choose the best 5-10 of them to discuss at case studies at the panel (tentatively scheduled 4-5pm Monday, March 27, 2023, following the “EHS Leadership and Diversity” symposium).

Thanks so much for your assistance!

Regards,

Dan Kuespert

-------------------------------------------------

Daniel Kuespert, PhD, CSP

Member, American Chemical Society (ACS)

Member, ACS Division of Chemical Health & Safety (CHAS)

Chair-elect, CHAS 2022

Associate, CCS, 2021-2022

CHAS Fellow

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