Lefties Have No Rights
By Misha Chellam
A&F Staff Writer

Lefties in America lead tough lives. They struggle to cut with uncomfortable scissors. Their weak handshakes leave poor impressions on potential employers. A residual ink stain on the edge of their dominant hand is a proverbial scarlet letter, marking them as social misfits. Recently, scientific research brought word of yet another burden to bear: lefties die early.

A study comparing the death and accident rates of left- and right-handed people revealed that, on average, lefties die nine years earlier than their right-handed counterparts. The study was motivated by the relative scarcity of left-handers within the elder population.

Many people assumed that an intolerant past generation had forced left-handers to become righties. “I wish my parents had made me a righty,” opines Aaron Carter ’04. “It’s horrible being left-handed in a right-handed world.” But the aforementioned study gives statistical weight to Carter’s abstract lament: left-handed people are four times more likely to die from injuries while driving and six times more likely to die from accidents of all kinds.

The hypothesis behind the study’s numbers is not startling clumsiness but rather a mechanical bias toward righties. “Almost all engineering is geared to the right hand and right foot,” said Diane Halpern, a CSU San Bernadino professor and the study’s co-author. “There are many more car and other accidents among left-handers because of their environment.”

The report has sent a shockwave through the country’s left-handed community. On the campuses of the Claremont Colleges, lefties were even more visibly downtrodden than usual. Adam Gardner ’04, who’s made the most of his handicap by participating in baseball, one of the few acceptable outlets of left-handedness, expressed his feelings on the subject: “That sucks,” Gardener said. “When I was studying abroad in Oxford I was having such a good time. ‘These blokes are all right,’ I said to myself. ‘I feel really comfortable here.’ I knew that being a lefty was tough, but I didn’t realize that it was life-threatening. Maybe I would be better off across the pond.”

Jen Schultz, a bubbly Scripps Senior who is normally upbeat about what she claims makes her “special,” seemed resigned about the news. “It’s been a tough life,” Schultz said. “Maybe it’s for the best. I went through most of high school without a boyfriend because I leaned in to the left, and normal people leaned in to the right. They said that I kissed wrong.”

But in other parts of the state some lefties are less resigned to their second-class citizenship. “Lefties are no different than righties,” asserts John Heringer, a senior Political Science major at UC Santa Barbara. “We are as smart, as strong, and as coordinated as our right-handed counterparts. I think that this new report is just more propaganda aimed at submerging the rights of lefties in this country.” When asked about the thesis that engineering biases lead to accidents, however, Heringer’s tone softened. In the last ten years he has broken his right arm, his left arm, his left wrist, his right index finger, his left ankle, his collarbone, and his nose (twice).