Perception

 June 23, 2006--

Pam Adams had an article yesterday in the Journal Star regarding OSF tearing down trees to build the most expensive construction (234 million dollars) project in Peoria history. 

Part of this project will include building a new Children’s Hospital at OSF. It seems that children in a local daycare center were disturbed by seeing the trees destroyed. OSF, with incredible generosity, purchased a tree and had a “tree planting ceremony” so the children would be happy again. 

It was a good learning experience for everyone, I suppose. I wonder what the Peoria children’s responses would be if they knew that Haitian children their age with heart disease were being turned down at OSF-Children’s Hospital of Illinois for medical care and the Haitian children were going to die like the uprooted trees. If the kids protested again, would OSF intervene to save Haitian children’s lives? 

Moral of this story: For OSF local community perception is much more important than far away dying Haitian children.