To the Editor:
Some more information has come to pass related to the lawsuit article printed in The Dartmouth on Friday, Oct. 30 ["Inn employee sues the College"]. On that same Friday night, one of the Inn employees who is 63 years of age, Bill Vivian, had a heart attack while on the job. This is sad news, and our hearts go out for him, wishing him a full and speedy recovery. Bill is one of my favorite co-workers because he is a perfectionist also. I especially remember his maturity on the job and his kind and generous help to the many younger workers.
I must add, though, that perhaps this unfortunate circumstance could have been avoided completely in the fact that Bill was "required to work" 14 days straight in a row of heavy physical work just before his heart attack. I do know that in winter time, snow-shoveling is a dangerous act for elderly persons, for it is heart attack prone. I do not know if there is a labor law that requires bosses to give at least one day of rest per week, especially to the elderly employees.
In that article of Oct. 30, The D wrote, and I quote, "Laurel Stavis, director of Public Affairs for the College, refused to comment on the pending litigation, other than to say, 'We're very proud of our employment record.'" I question that pride, because how can one be proud of two lawsuits on a restaurant kitchen in just five years elapsed time? That is perhaps the highest lawsuit rate of any college kitchen in the U.S.
I made the mistake with The D in the Oct. 30 article, in that I did not ask the reporter whether she would mention the Atom Totality Theory. I should have known better. I have been unlucky since the early 1990s with The D in that one of the first articles about the Atom Totality Theory to appear in The D had the word Theorem instead of Theory. And this mistake seems to be following me to this very day. So, the next time that I am interviewed for any article to appear in The D or area newspapers, the first thing I want to do is ask the interviewer what they know about the Atom Totality Theory. It is a science theory, a physics theory. It is not a theorem, for theorems are in mathematics and theorems are a different concept and have different connotations than does a theory of science. A theory of science is a big important thing, and a theorem of mathematics is a minor unimportant thing compared to a theory of science. I blame this error on our modern day computers for if one does not correct mistakes, then it is likely that those mistakes will repeat over and over because they are on computer. And one of the greatest fames of computers is their ability to repeat.
