Randomly Noted

The curmudgeon in me says: NO MORE TANNING BEDS IN CAMPUS DORMS! Check out colleague Dawn Wotapka’ story on the fact that college kids are demanding tanning beds or booths in college housing – despite the health risks and costs involved. Tanning beds have become “an amenity in many dorms that some budding scholars consider as essential as high-speed internet and good cuisine.” Moreover, students increasingly require tanning beds rather than “stand-up machines” because they “want to relax horizontally, instead of standing up,” one analyst tells Dawn. I would like to see the heads of the U.S.’s institutions of higher learning band together and actively discourage the use of tanning beds and booths on campuses and in college towns. Do adults (including young ones) not know the dangers of tanning beds – from falling asleep and incurring horrific burns to raising one’s skin-cancer risk? When my son, now 11, was a toddler his nursery school teacher in London was badly burned after snoozing in a tanning bed; she spent a long time in hospital and recuperating at home. It was awful. These stories need to be told.