From: utzoo!decvax!genrad!wjh12!foxvax1!brunix!gh
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: Engineers (sheer, unadulterated flaming)
Article-I.D.: brunix.2229
Posted: Wed Apr  6 08:36:02 1983
Received: Thu Apr  7 05:21:56 1983
References: rabbit.1270

Perhaps the prejudice that "scientists" have against "engineers" starts, like
mine, in college.

At the University of British Columbia, the engineers used to compete against
the forestry students to see which group could be the most disruptive,
disreputable, and disgusting.  These activities were officially run by the
student societies of each faculty -- they weren't just a lunatic fringe.

A typical engineering joke was fire-hose or fire-extinguisher fighting in the
corridors.  Occasionally, they would just burst in on a lecture with the fire
hoses.	We in Computer Science, who had to share a building with these people,
dreaded their rowdy weekly meetings (which often ended as described above), and
the annual Engineering Week (lots more of the same, a newspaper intended to
insult everyone on campus, the anti-feminist Lady Godiva ride, etc).
They also used to pick on female computer science teachers who taught their
programming courses -- at least two suffered greatly trying to teach them, and
the lesson was that females could not be assigned to those courses.

I have no reason to think that the UBC engineers were any different from those
at any other school with a large engineering section.  And if they are
completely disrespectable in college, why should we expect them to change after
graduation?

Re the question of "Engineers can't spell" (to rabbit!lucius):  A working-class
background is hardly an excuse -- if you made it out of college, you should
have had remedial work if necessary.  The problem is, I think, that too many
engineers aren't interested in bothering about correct spelling.

	Graeme Hirst, Brown University Computer Science
	gh.brown@udel-relay	!decvax!brunix!gh