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Comment by cafard | Hacker News Reader

There should a name and shame on this one. What is the university, and what does it think it is doing?

Author info at the end says "Karen W. is a Duke City denizen..." I'm not sure if that's misdirection, but "Duke City" is another name for Albuquerque, NM.

Edit: This is interesting. Not saying it's University of New Mexico, but it is in Albuquerque and this includes a reference to her exact phrase "pregnancy or prenatal care" : http://policy.unm.edu/university-policies/3000/3440.html

And, on their FAQ under #21: http://hr.unm.edu/benefits/fmla.php#faqs ... Mentions "serious medical condition"

As well as their contract : http://hr.unm.edu/docs/labor-relations/united-staff-unm-(usu... mentions "pregnancy or prenatal care"

Please don't do that. Posting personal information about people who did not wish to have it public is super uncool. I'm sure if she wanted to name the university she would have.

There's no personal information here. Everything you see was what she had posted at the very end of the article, her signature, and common knowledge "Duke City" is Albuquerque. What remains were DDG searches for the specific phrases she put into her article in quotes.

I understand "outing" is a legitimate concern, but these are bits of information that she herself has revealed. The rest is conjecture, as I'm sure she would have expected of her audience as an educated and reasonably intelligent person.

Where she works is definitely personal information. And I don't think you should post that sort of conjecture. At best, you're revealing something the author didn't want to be revealed and at worst you are fingering the wrong organization.

Hence, my prefix "Not saying it's University of New Mexico". Surely, the purpose of a discussion forum is to foster discussion? I didn't exactly go digging deep for this information and hitting the frontpage of HN would virtually ensure this exact line of reasoning will be repeated many places elsewhere.

The author strikes me as someone who carefully weighed the consequences of sharing the story.

Actually, it's better without a name because it's a widespread problem. If she gave a name, people might think that it's an isolated incident.

This is a systemic problem here in the US. It would be counterproductive to try and single out one actor when the issue needs to be address comprehensively.

Why not? Sometimes people desperately organize boycotts of institutions that they want to behave, but it never succeeds, because everyone needs at least one of the institutions (for example, everybody needs to be employed).

I think maybe there could be a lottery and people could collectively agree and randomly single out one actor and boycott it for some time. That would force at least that one actor to care and enforce competition. Who cares about fairness, if everybody is guilty?

I disagree. Naming the bad actor would hopefully shame them into changing their policy.... which in turn would put other unnamed bad actors on notice and encourage further naming and shaming by individuals working for them.

If you want to move the earth, starting a landslide is a lot easier than strip-mining.

Isn't that a decision for the author? Clearly she decided differently.

The focus is the policy, not the policy's enforcers.

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