University Closes Phage Labs; ‘Microaggression’

“Microorganisms in laboratories never provided their consent to be subject to the vagaries of the petri dish.”

Tel Aviv, March 1 – A leading research institute has decided to shutter its pathology and microbiology facilities amid concerns that countless acts of microaggression were occurring in those spaces, a spokesman for the administration said today.

Tel Aviv University Dean of Students Nambi Pambi called a press conference this morning (Tuesday) to inform the public, university personnel, and students of the change, which will take effect by the end of the month. The move, she said, is designed to prevent the life forms inhabiting the various areas of campus from encountering unwanted evocations of the brutality and cruelty meted out by so much of their environment.

“We have a responsibility as custodians of our student’s minds and welfare to nurture them and to protect them from harm,” said Dean Pambi. “But that responsibility extends far beyond the student body per se. The students, at least, can choose to enter contexts that present them with threatening or uncomfortable ideas, though few choose to do so. And the faculty and staff receive monetary compensation for their risk of exposure to the unpleasant. But the microorganisms in laboratories never provided their consent to be subject to the vagaries of the petri dish, and as a result are forced to undergo microaggressions that number in the hundreds of thousands on a daily basis.”

Precise statistics are unavailable regarding the number of microaggression incidents taking place at the cellular level, but microbiologists estimate it at hundreds of thousands of microaggressive acts per second per square centimeter of culture surface. “In addition to the viruses invading, commandeering, and eventually destroying other microorganisms, but primarily bacteria, there are bacteria that attack one another, or other organisms,” explained postdoctoral fellow Sami Agar. “The community of pathologists and microbiologists has encouraged, even promoted such behavior, I confess, and with the endorsement and funding of the university administration.”

Agar described how biology students are encouraged to grow colonies of certain microorganisms and then introduce a different cell or virus, and observe the interactions. “Even if the two sets of organisms do not directly engage in in microaggression, often the waste products of one organism’s metabolic processes proves toxic for the other organism, resulting in myriad cases of massive-micro-aggression, which carry their own traumas.”

Dean Pambi said the university would take specific steps to prevent further occurrences. “The cafeteria and the various implements used in food preparation will no longer be disinfected or cleaned,” he added. “Those procedures massacre billions of bacteria, and at such a scale, it already becomes inappropriate to append the prefix ‘micro’ to the phenomenon.”

In unrelated news, the Department of Health has closed the Tel Aviv University Dining Hall until further notice.