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dailyorange.com
N • Unsung hero
C • Buddy’s brands
S • Making the jump
Beverly Oliver has been providing child care to children in Onondaga County for over 35 years. Throughout the pandemic, Oliver kept her services running. Page 3
Buddy Boeheim shared his love for working with companies that have ties to the Syracuse community and athletes nationally. Page 6
Despite moving from Cornell to Syracuse this season, Jimmy Boeheim has been one of the Orange’s top scorers, averaging over 13 points per game. Page 12
on campus
Masking policies confuse students By Ivana Xie
asst. digital editor
SU student forced to evacuate Moscow SU junior Grace Sainsbury was studying abroad in Moscow, but the ongoing invasion forced her evacuation Story by Kyle Chouinard
asst. news editor
Illustration by Yiwei He
illustration editor
G
race Sainsbury started her Saturday night in a Moscow bar. Sainsbury said her friends at the bar were all European, besides one other American. Her friends were getting worried about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and a few had even booked flights to Europe as a precaution. As they were sitting at the bar, she said, they got an alert that all of their flights home had been canceled. The group, most of whom were international students, ran out of the bar to find an ATM. “We just wanted to make sure we would have cash to buy tickets if we needed to,” Sainsbury said. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “military operation” in the early hours of Feb. 24, two days before the students left the bar to find an ATM. Seth Tucker, Syracuse University’s Director of Global Safety and Student Services, confirmed to The Daily Orange in an email statement that a singular student was studying in Russia. Sainsbury, a junior at SU studying international relations,
went to Russia to further specialize in the country’s foreign relations. This semester, Sainsbury said she planned to take classes at the Moscow Institute for International Relations through The School of Russian and Asian Studies, which Tucker called a “partner organization” to SU. He confirmed to The D.O. that Sainsbury was in the organization’s Diplomacy and International Relations program in Moscow. She wanted to study Russian as a language because she thought the country would be one of the U.S.’ largest adversaries over the next 20 years. “I was sadly correct,” she said. She was first contacted by the U.S. Embassy in Russia on the morning of Feb. 21. She said the message warned her of potential attacks to public places in Moscow and to stay away from busy metro stations and large crowds. “Have evacuation plans that do not rely on U.S. government assistance,” the U.S. Embassy wrote in a security alert Sainsbury received. The next communication would come later that day from SU’s School of Russian and Asian Studies. She said the message she received from SRAS was “blasé,” assuring her that the situation was under control. The next day, she said, SU contacted her. “By this point, Putin had declared Donetsk and see russia page 4
Students who take classes in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management have noticed that some professors have chosen not to wear masks when standing by their lectern, which, for many classrooms within the college, is designated by red tape pasted onto the ground. These students said that their professors cited Whitman’s masking policy that allows them to remove their mask within these boundaries. Syracuse University is currently on the “BLUE” masking level, meaning faculty, staff and students — vaccinated or not — must wear masks during academic instruction. But according to a university press release from August 2021, professors within “designated teaching areas” can remove their masks. Emily Gray, an environmental policy major at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs who takes a class in Whitman, said that she was confused by the mask policy that her professor explained to her. She said she was shocked that Whitman seemingly has a different protocol than the rest of the schools she has classes in. “(My professor) said that it was a Whitman rule. I was literally sitting there in the middle of class trying to Google the faculty masking policy on campus. I was like, ‘There’s no way this is right,’” Gray said. Tenzin Norzin, a senior majoring in biology and psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, also has a class in Whitman. She was unaware that Whitman professors are allowed to unmask during class. Norzin added that the red line in Whitman classrooms will not stop the spread of COVID-19. She said she would be more comfortable if all students and professors kept their masks on. “It’s the safest option,” she said. Sarah Scalese, the senior associate vice president for university communications at SU, said that faculty across schools and colleges are allowed to remove their mask when in a teaching box in an email statement to The Daily Orange. However, because of classroom sizes and spacing, not all classrooms have this accommodation, she said. Scalese
see whitman page 3