Sorry that we are a little late to the game on this one. We are in the process of updgrading our blog and decided to maintain full radio silence until the migration of data took place. Well, it’s taking way to long, so you’ll just have to listen to us again.
We posted a story a couple weeks ago about the University of Akron’s controversial decision to take DNA samples from prospective employees in case it was ever needed for background checks. The policy reminded us the 1997 movie GATTACA starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law. Predictably, they kind of fell on their face on this one (kind of like the movie), unless as I maintain in an earlier post that this was all about publicity. Now they’ve reversed field on the policy and instead have reserved the right to take DNA if law enforcement should ever need it for criminal investigations. I’m still scratching my head over the fall back position, because if the police have reasonable suspicion, they’ll get a court order to get a suspect’s DNA anyway. I guess they want to make the submission of DNA in the event of investigation a mandatory condition of employment. Either that or they want to test all employees’ DNA if a crime is committed on campus.
Strange happenings indeed.
