27 minute read
VOLUME XLI, ISSUE
Fordham Begins Stronger Enforcement of Mask Policy on Campus A study conducted by The Observer reveals that one-third of students in the Garden-Level Lounge were violating university policy Masked Unmasked with food or drink Unmasked without food or drink Most students unmasked without food: 25 out of 43 seen on Oct. 20 Out of 549 students, 177 at 5 p.m. were not wearing masks and were
not actively eating or drinking
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Fewest students masked: 4 out of 17 seen on Oct. 22 at 5 p.m.
Fewest students unmasked with food: 0 out of 17 seen on Oct. 22 at 5 p.m.
Wednesday 10/20 Thursday 10/21 Friday 10/22 12 p.m. 5 p.m. 12 p.m. 5 p.m. 12 p.m. 5 p.m.
After a grace period of one to two weeks of the signage’s implementation, Campbell said the university is going to move to fullscale enforcement of student conduct — placing sanctions on students who violate the mask-wearing requirement.
Campbell said that, along with her colleagues, she has been reminding students to properly wear their masks throughout the school year. They are going to transition to handing out indicators to students as a warning that they are in violation of university policy.
“We are trying to get students on board with our expectations, but after a certain point — without question — you will be given sanctions,” Campbell said. “If we see individuals who are repeat offenders, that is going to kick in the student conduct process.”
As of Oct. 15, Campbell said she had not placed sanctions on any students. If an individual is in violation of student conduct, Campbell said their name and Fordham ID number will be collected.
After receiving a warning, a first offense requires the individual to complete a learning project, such as writing a research or reflection paper on the role young people have played in the transmission of COVID-19, according to Campbell. She also said they will need to provide an action plan to follow the university’s COVID-19 policy.
A second offense is met with harsher sanctions, which Campbell said is in order to keep the Fordham community safe. If the student who commits a second violation of the mask-wearing requirement is a resident, they can be placed on residence hall probation, which means any future violation of residence hall regulations or the code of conduct will result in dismissal from university housing. If the student is a commuter, they can be placed on activities probation, prohibiting them from participating in on-campus activities.
Campbell said if the violations of a student become egregious, “it can go beyond that.”
Kana Seiki, FCLC ’24, said she encourages other students to be more mindful about wearing masks in common spaces. As a theater student, she said risking a switch to virtual classwork after waiting a year and a half for in-person performances is not worth it.
As flu season approaches, Campbell also emphasized the importance of students being as safe as possible to reduce the possibility of a significant outbreak on campus that could run the potential of Fordham being unable to continue with in-person operations.
Allie Stofer, Chloe Zelch and Maryam Beshara contributed reporting to this story.
ALEXA STEGMULLER/THE OBSERVER A student is seen not wearing their mask properly while eating. Multiple students in the background are seen not wearing masks while not eating, as were 32.2% of students observed in the study. The university plans on enforcing mask policies more strictly in the future.
ANDREW DRESSNER/THE OBSERVER Two students are seen following the university’s mask policies. Students are permitted to take off their masks while actively eating but must keep it on at all other times.
In total,
177
were not wearing masks without food or drink
249
were wearing masks
123
were not wearing masks with food or drink
Opinions
Vaccine Patent Protections and the Hypocrisy of US Health Care
AIDAN LANE
Asst. Features Editor
This past May, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would support overriding the American-made COVID-19 vaccine patent protections to combat the pandemic more effectively.
Voiding patent protections would allow international manufacturers and governments to learn the development and distribution methods that have enabled Pfizer and Moderna to make effective COVID-19 vaccines so quickly. One of the major reasons for the low vaccination rates in developing countries is that they have yet to make their own vaccines. Access to patent-protected development techniques would mean these countries could spend less time and money on development and more on production and distribution of vaccines.
When I heard the announcement, I was relieved. I thought the pandemic would finally end, and I was proud that Biden was choosing to support humanity over profits. With only 48.7% of the world population and 3.1% of people in low-income countries having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, overriding patent protections is an essential step to increasing COVID-19 immunity worldwide.
There’s one big problem, however: Undercutting patent protections is a nonstarter to executives at major pharmaceutical companies. Manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna have refused to release patent protected information, even when they are pressured to do so by the World Health Organization and the Biden administration.
Why? The answer is extraordinarily simple: money. Their refusal gets to the root of why it’s absolute nonsense for these corporations to call themselves “health care” companies.
Health care executives want nothing more than to line their own pockets. While these giant conglomerates have positioned themselves publicly as those who keep Americans and their families healthy, they do nothing but cut spending in the name of maximizing profits. They have no ideological attachment to public health and are only interested in eradicating COVID-19 insofar as the endeavor is profitable.
If they truly care about public health, why do Americans spend more per capita for health care than those in any country on Earth? Why did it take the passage
48.7%
of the Affordable Care Act to prohibit insurance companies from denying care to patients with preexisting conditions? And why do U.S. consumers pay the most for prescriptions per capita than citizens of many other countries?
These questions have been asked by progressive political leaders ad nauseam. Moderate Democrats, on the other hand, including Biden, continue to legislate as if health care corporations work in the best interest of the American people. They declined to negotiate the prices of drugs with pharmaceutical companies before they are brought to market, knowing it will drastically reduce prescription costs. Some reasons for this are the constant campaign donations received from these very companies to Democrats and the unfounded fear that progressive policies are unpopular.
It’s important to note that in order for developing countries to actually make use of American vaccine development techniques, they need the expensive infrastructure required to turn that information into vaccinations. The lack of present infrastructure and its associated logistical problems will make it harder for developing nations to utilize overridden patents. Even so, giving foreign entities access to that information is one huge step the U.S. can make to implement the egalitarianism so often espoused by the Biden administration.
Biden’s refusal to declare COVID-19 a national security emergency — the only route he can take to mandate U.S. vaccine manufacturers to give up their
INFOGRAPHIC BY AIDAN LANE/THE OBSERVER
patent protected information — seems to be a political calculation. Although it’s true that such a mandate will result in a protracted legal battle likely to end up at the conservative Supreme Court, which may very well shut it down, the benefits are absolutely worth the risks.
Further, Biden seems more interested in keeping his approval rating from slipping than in supporting public health, even as he promoted such egalitarian rhetoric in a speech at the U.N. General Assembly in September.
“There’s a fundamental truth of the 21st century within each of our own countries and as a global community that our own success is bound up in others succeeding as well,” Biden said. “To deliver for our own people, we must also engage deeply with the rest of the world ... Our security, our prosperity and our very freedoms are interconnected, in my view, as never before. And so, I believe we must work together as never before.”
Clearly, this doesn’t apply to ending the pandemic. With this kind of rhetoric, the Biden administration continues to posture itself as aggressively progressive, touting its “Build Back Better” agenda as something that will substantially impact the American people and revive the American economy. But the reality is, as Biden said to the U.N., ending COVID-19 and the related economic crises requires a massive global initiative, like overriding patents. The 160 million vaccines the U.S. has donated across the globe is sadly not enough.
Othe bserver
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Baring It All: The Injustice of Female Birth Control
ALYSSA MACALUSO
Head Copy Editor
My mind and body haven’t been my own for over a year. Violent mood swings sweep over my mind while random cramps rack my body. Migraines last for days, inducing the ingestion of troubling amounts of pain relief medicine and caffeine. The semi-regular shedding of my uterine lining every month since I was 13 has disappeared completely, leaving me at a loss without this bodily ritual.
I was 19 when I first went on birth control, older than most women who get contraceptives, and I still wasn’t prepared for the extreme changes my body has undergone over the past year. I studied up on different contraceptive options and consoled myself with the knowledge that over 47 million women a year — or about 65% of all U.S. women aged 15-49 who use a contraceptive method — took the same step I was taking.
When I confidently strolled into the gynecologist’s office barely over a year ago, I didn’t realize that there were large parts of this process not explained in Google searches or superficial conversations about whether I’m better at taking pills on a schedule or if it’d be more effective to have an inchand-a-half rod inserted into my arm. My concerns about possible physical, psychological or physiological changes were brushed off by my doctor with a blasé, “You’ll be fine! Most people are.”
I was fine. And I am fine. I was one of the “lucky ones” — though my reactions to birth control sound dramatic, none of them truly inhibit my ability to live a normal life, and I didn’t have to switch contraceptive methods because mine was intolerable, unlike many women who have to “shop around” to find compatible birth control. I was able to select the kind of birth control I wanted and wasn’t coerced into choosing one I didn’t think would be a good fit, another often-overlooked issue related to women’s reproductive health.
But I’m frustrated by what is not discussed, what is downplayed and dismissed. Getting birth control is no small act. Yet, the process is often pushed into the shadows, marked as taboo in family discussions, scorned and used to judge women for being sexually active.
Contraceptives, or any means used to prevent the sperm from reaching the egg, are a form of birth control.
Though contraceptives include everything from condoms to hysterectomies, hormonal pills (“birth control pills”) and other hormone-based means of regulation are some of the more widely used contraceptive methods and have even been labeled as a “lifestyle drug.” According to a report by Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, “14% of pill users—1.5 million women—rely on them exclusively for noncontraceptive purposes” and “more than half (58%) of all pill users rely on the method, at least in part, for purposes other than pregnancy prevention—meaning that only 42% use the pill exclusively for contraceptive reasons.”
Birth control is not given a place of proper discourse in society. It’s relegated to whispered discussions in school hallways between young girls and searches on private browsers for answers about whichever symptom that’s suddenly manifested after getting on the pill. If you aren’t bleeding abnormally or in incredible amounts of pain because of your birth control, the other side effects — like bleeding more or less or not at all, weight gain, more or less painful cramping, nausea, and headaches — however persistent, are just written off as “part of the experience.”
But they shouldn’t have to be part of the experience. It’s scary to go through these changes, especially when other women don’t seem to go through them. As a young woman on birth control, the people I felt I could confide in were my friends, who could empathize with me about the changes I was going through but who could not provide any clarity on why a drug meant to prevent pregnancy was affecting so many other parts of my body.
Though women go on birth control for many reasons — pregnancy prevention being just one — there is little discussion about the widespread effects of birth control and even less discussion about why there aren’t separate treatments for preventing pregnancy and soothing painful menstrual cramps, two disparate yet common applications of the pill.
Doctors, who are responsible for guiding women through this process, often don’t have these answers themselves. Determining amenable birth control has been described as a process of “trial and error,” partly because the trial and error data gathered through research trials is absent, leaving doctors with a dearth of large-scale, detailed and accessible data to draw upon when advising women about birth control. The lack of data on birth control is compounded by how generally birth control is prescribed — for everything from painful menstrual cramps and endometriosis to severe acne and anemia prevention.
Contraceptives, especially hormone-regulating ones like most birth control options, often affect other systems of the body. A 2020 study demonstrated links between women who take the pill and a smaller hypothalamus, the structure in the brain primarily responsible for regulating appetite, body temperature and emotions.
Another study from 2017 found that women taking oral contraceptives experienced a “blunted stress response,” “highlight(ing) that the effects of the birth control pill go far beyond sex hormones” and extend into other systems of the body. The cortisol levels of women taking oral contraceptives actually resembled “the pattern that you see in people with PTSD and people who’ve experienced chronic trauma.”
Why are we okay with this? How do we live in a society where it’s just accepted that for women to protect themselves reproductively, they have to compromise their mental and physical health? If it were men who were expected to be on birth control, I doubt society would stand for it.
In fact, that’s the primary reason that male birth control isn’t on the market, despite numerous successful and safe trials — because men don’t have to contend with the possibility of pregnancy, there’s “a different risk-benefit analysis when it comes to men using a contraceptive,” one in which “male contraceptives aren’t really allowed to have side effects.” Simply because women’s bodies contain the mechanisms for growing fetuses, the responsibility of controlling the means of reproduction fall upon us. If women are to be saddled with this responsibility, the least society can do is make birth control less of a wild (and sometimes traumatic) card for women.
So why isn’t there already more research into better birth control to protect women? The unfortunate answer is that lessening the burdensome side effects of birth control for women is just not worth it to scientists or investors. A Bloomberg article from 2019 broke the news of a gel that would act as a “sexon-demand contraceptive for women,” comparable to the ease with which men use condoms as contraceptives, but the product stalled at the production stage because of low revenues and red tape.
Its story emulates those of other hampered improvements to birth control, as contraceptives are not as great a source of revenue as, say, cancer or Alzheimer’s treatments. Additionally, very little revenue from contraceptive sales goes back into research on the subject; where most other drugs have roughly 50% of the revenue going toward research and development of the treatment, contraceptives stand at only 2%.
Research on birth control is also not invested in because, at the end of the day, birth control does the bare minimum it was designed to do, side effects notwithstanding: It successfully prevents pregnancy. In an article from The Conversation, researchers explained that “Many women will also continue using birth control despite side effects because they don’t want to get pregnant — so many developers may not see improving formulations as necessary.” “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — that’s how the saying goes, right?
By not improving birth control so its application is more targeted and it creates fewer problems than it solves, we’re further contributing to harmful expectations that women can and should handle more pain than men. This simply isn’t true: There is no world in which a woman should move through her life in pain, however minor or slight, simply because she was prescribed a pill to prevent pregnancy, alleviate acne or relieve cramps. My symptoms, as trivial and common as they may seem, should not have to be a part of my daily existence in exchange for avoiding pregnancy.
I’m not arguing that women should stop using contraceptives or disregard all of the benefits that have come from them — having control over our reproductive systems has allowed women more freedom to choose the futures we want.
But not having information about birth control readily available, disseminated and destigmatized for women is a public health risk that should not be tolerated — and that isn’t tolerated for the opposite sex. Women shouldn’t have to put themselves at such risk just to ensure they won’t become pregnant or to mitigate acne or to help control depression.
We need more transparency when it comes to contraceptives. If the burden’s going to be put on women to look out for their sexual and reproductive health, then we need to normalize talking about the process and the side effects. We need more research to make birth control safer, more predictable and more targeted to the issue it’s meant to address — pregnancy prevention — rather than being a cure-all for a myriad of other medical conditions.
We need to stop forcing women to settle for the bare minimum.
GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY ROXANNE CUBERO/THE OBSERVER Health care manufacturers are hoarding COVID-19 vaccine information, even as the Biden administration has pressured them to release it.
The unfortunate answer is that lessening the burdensome side effects of birth control for women is just not worth it to scientists or investors. My symptoms, as trivial and common as they may seem, should not have to be a part of my daily existence in exchange for avoiding pregnancy.
Making space for more marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community
JAKE ERACA
Staff Writer
Recently, in a scandal-filled special, venerated comedian Dave Chappelle embarked on a transphobic rant, emulating the likes of well-known transphobe J.K. Rowling and embracing the ideology of trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or “TERFs,” as a whole. The hate-filled discourse — thinly veiled as comedy — displays yet again just how far away the LGBTQ+ community truly is from being accepted into mainstream society.
Chappelle’s words not only invoked feelings of anger at the discrimination faced by the LGBTQ+ community, of which I am a part, but led me to truly examine the state of it, especially in a place like NYC. Here, cisgender, white gays are as common as subway stops, and as one of them, I can attest to the density and equity of our section of the community. However, our privileged experience is not shared by all LGBTQ+ people.
In NYC, cis, white, gay men have wealth and protection and enjoy all the trappings of a normal life; there is often nextto-no stigma about the people we choose to love. Here, homonormativity is abundant, and we need to do better.
Why do we maintain the pretense of oppression under such utopian circumstances? As a community, centuries of gays have fought for equality and respect, and on these streets, we, for the most part, have it.
As a white, cis, gay man, I find NYC to be as unproblematic as life can be, with no qualms about whom I choose to love. Representation is abundant in the couples I see on the streets and on the advertisements plastered on every surface. Not a block away from Fordham Lincoln Center’s campus is a plethora of gay bars and restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen.
So for all the world on a silver platter, why are we still claiming to struggle as much as our counterparts who make up the rest of the community? Chappelle’s vicarious rant of blatant transphobia is something trans people are still dealing with in 2021. The same subtle criticisms and barbs thrown at cis, white, gay men would be met with a career ending maelstrom of cancellation.
The same existence in NYC is not afforded to gays of color, queer women or the rest of our community. We are a select overrepresented portion that benefits just enough from the racist, patriarchal systems that govern our society to stay heads and shoulders above the rest of our people. And yet, some white, cis, gay men act like we fight the same fight as them.
ALEKS MAGNUSSON VIA PEXELS
The LGBTQ+ community, like other communities, has intersectional differences.
Don’t get me wrong, hate is real, and I, just like a vast majority of the LGBTQ+ community, have faced it head-on. However, we experience hate disproportionately less than our Black, trans and nonbinary counterparts.
People of color who experience anti-gay hate crimes find it harder to determine whether the crime was committed as an act of homophobia or as a racial incident. The same issue applies to trans and nonbinary people, as well as women.
As a white, cis, gay man living in a position of extreme privilege, I say it is time to give up the oppression act. I’m tired of the performative Instagram story posts about hate crime statistics referring to black trans women dying regularly and the surface-level acknowledgments during Pride followed immediately by white, cis, gay men doing designer drugs at racist clubs in the most gentrified areas of the city.
As gay men in positions of equity and relative freedom from the oppressive systems that suppress our community, we need to do better. Too often it i a white gay accepting apologies for hate crimes committed largely against marginalized sects of our community.
It is not our place to stand on a podium and preach about the oppression of our people when we do not bear the brunt of it. There is a fine line between elevating and talking over the voices that need to be heard, and as a sect of a community that is suffering, we have to recognize our position.
We must stop taking up space in the fight for justice and recognize the progress behind our apparent freedom while in NYC. We can attend the rallies, but we have no need to be speaking; as a group, we need to take a supportive stance rather than absorbing the support. Here is the place to bite the bullet and work to liberate and support our counterparts who identify as trans, people of color and nonbinary and to do real work to help us all instead of just us. Pride parades are just as much a protest as a celebration. We need to advocate for gender-neutral bathrooms, regardless of our need for them. We need to advocate for total and comprehensive reproductive health care for all people, not just cis people. We need to share our privilege and equity to the people of color and trans members of our community suffering greater struggles than us.
Note as well that while this may be the case in NYC and in choice metropolitan areas, it is not always the case, and being gay is still very much a real and dangerous stigma globally. I am well aware of the dangers I and other white, cis, gay men — and the rest of our community — face in other places. There is still ample discrimination in faraway places like Brunei and Saudi Arabia, and even a hop, skip and a jump to the deep South of the continental U.S.
As much as it is seemingly a thing of the past in our locale, homophobia is alive and well. However, this fact should only drive our efforts and inspire us to use our privilege to support and empower the parts of our community that need it, to move equity and wealth into marginalized LGBTQ+ spaces, and to normalize all facets of being queer — not just being cis, white men.
As a whole, our community is stronger united than divided. On some base level, we have all encountered similar struggles as queer people that unite us, but there are different intersectional experiences within our community. As the most privileged of the bunch, it is our duty to stop the pretense of oppression and instead to lift up the parts of our community that are still very much left behind.
Rubberneck SATIRE & HUMORThe A Lincoln Center Student’s First Football Game
ISABELLA SCIPIONI
Asst. Social Media Editor
My roommates and I did the unthinkable — we went to a Fordham football game. When I told my other Lincoln Center (LC) friends that we were spending our Saturday evening at Jack Coffey Field, they all asked us why. The reason we gave: We wanted to experience a college tradition and cheer on our school. The real reason: We had nothing better to do and it was free.
As someone who went to a large public high school where football was more important than math, I have attended my fair share of games, but not often enough to have an appreciation or a basic understanding of the sport. Although football and school spirit are not my core values, I did go into the game with some expectations about student sections, bands, school spirit and, frankly, the team’s skill level. For the most part, Fordham did not offer what I was expecting.
On Saturday, Sept. 11, Fordham played Monmouth at home and — spoiler alert — lost. We arrived late in the middle of the first quarter due to a detour that involved my roommate, Caitlin, getting her nose pierced at Chelsea Market, which is the most LC way to go to a football
GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN BOCALAN/THE OBSERVER
game. We hopped on a Ram Van, sitting way too close to several sniffling and coughing Rose Hill students, and filed into the stadium filled with unenthusiastic, unmasked Ram Fans.
“Fans,” however, is a bit of an overstatement — I had never seen a crowd of people less excited for something in my life. Although the football team did not get much attention, one of the cheerleaders did. A group of 30 of her friends decided to celebrate her 21st birthday by coming to the game carrying megaphones and wearing matching t-shirts with her face on them. Happy birthday, girl, wherever you are.
After coming to the horrific realization that there were, in fact, four quarters and the game would not be over after the first 15 minutes, my roommate and I promptly left. We explored the Rose Hill campus and discovered it is just as boring as we expected. After the obligatory Instagram pictures, we sat in a pair of out-of-place beach chairs on an overwhelmingly large patch of grass and waited for the rest of our friends to get bored of the game.
As we sat contemplating our life choices and longing for the sterile hallways of LC, my roommate, Caitlin, turned to me, and said, “I’m just too cynical for this.” I pondered: Am I incapable of having fun? Yes. But are college football games and other traditions overrated? Also yes.
By the fourth quarter, I had thoroughly established my superiority complex and was ready to go back to judging other students at the game. Excitingly, the stadium was so empty that my friends and I were put on the jumbotron. About five minutes later, we were featured again. By our third appearance, the fame had completely gone to my head, and I was toying with a spinoff reality series. Those who, for some reason, stuck around were given the distinct pleasure of watching Fordham lose once again.
On a slightly unrelated note, I tested positive for COVID-19 two days after the game. I’m not saying I got it at the game (or in the Ram Van on the way over), but it was the largest unmasked gathering at which my roommates or I had been. Either way, any fascination I had with football or the Rose Hill campus has since been obliterated.
However, if college football is your thing, all I can say is be prepared for a booing-fest of no more than two dozen uninterested fans watching Fordham’s attempt to imitate America’s favorite homoerotic pastime. If you are interested in seeing a sea of students wearing red and watching a home football team win, New Jersey Transit can get you from Manhattan to Rutgers in about two hours.
For me, this football game was a learning experience. I learned that I am definitely too cynical for fun, that I could not be happier with my choice of campus and that I would rather spend my Saturday nights watching “Concussion.” Either way, at least I can say that I have taken part in a traditional college experience despite anything but a traditional past year.
