STANDS OUT
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BLACK SHEEP DELI
SEEING
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THE MASSACHUSETTS
DAILY COLLEGIAN DailyCollegian.com
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Serving the UMass community since 1890
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UHS to prescribe, AFD responds to three heroin ODs inject hormones for in two hours as drug sweeps state transgender students Incidents contribute Service is covered under health plan University Health Services at the University of Massachusetts announced today that it can now prescribe, inject or teach to inject, and monitor hormones for transgender students. The announcement was posted to the Stonewall Center’s Facebook page Monday afternoon. According to UHS’s website, hormone replacement therapy for transitioning students is covered under the Student Health Benefit Plan. The plan states that, “Benefits will be payable for Hormone Replacement Therapy outpatient servic-
es and supplies for peri and post-menopausal women including outpatient prescription drugs or devices.” Ilana Schmitt, a staff physician at UHS, will be prescribing the hormones. UHS can still refer students to local providers for hormone replacement therapy, as well as to local surgeons who can perform sex reassignment and gender-affirming surgeries. Previously, transgender students were only referred to local providers for hormone replacement therapy. Representatives from UHS and the University could not be reached for comment Monday evening. Anthony Rentsch
to overdose spike By ColBy SearS Collegian Staff
The Amherst Fire Department responded to three non-fatal heroin overdoses within a two-hour span Sunday night, continuing a string of incidents that public safety officials are describing as a spike in local area overdoses over the past week. Emergency responders administered the opioid overdose-reversing drug Narcan in one case and rushed all three patients to Cooley Dickinson Hospital by ambulance. The incidents occurred at homes on East Hadley Road, Northeast St. and Summer St. Fire Chief Walter Nelson said that the first call came around 9 p.m. and the last at 10:45 p.m., both of which
Amherst Police responded to, according to MassLive. He said that it is not unusual for his department to respond to drug overdoses, though having to respond to three incidents within such a short period of time is uncommon. Nelson told MassLive that paramedics administered nasal Narcan to one patient and that the medication had already been administered to a second patient before technicians arrived to the scene. Narcan was not used in the third case, he said, claiming the decision of whether or not to use the drug is based on procedure involving a patient’s medical condition. Narcan blocks opioids, which can slow breathing to the point of death in an overdose, and restores breathing to normal when administered nasally. All three patients were brought to the hospital
Get on your feet
AFD responded to the three overdose incidents at East Hadley Road, North East Street and Summer Street between 9 p.m. and 10:45 p.m. Sunday night. for further treatment. Sunday’s responses come after a week in which heroin-related overdoses have surged. Dr. Niels Rathlev, chair of
By Mark Chiarelli Collegian Staff
SHANNON BRODERICK/COLLEGIAN
The UMass Ballroom Dance Team hosted a Bachata social dance lesson in the Fine Arts Center lobby Monday night.
France calls for United States, Russia to unite in fighting the Islamic State successful. He made clear he was not going to send U.S. ground troops to Syria. “Every few months I go to Walter Reed,” he said, referring to the military By Matthew SChofield hospital complex outside Washington. and roy GutMan “And I see a 25-year-old kid that is McClatchy Foreign Staff paralyzed or has lost his limbs. And PARIS — Three days after declaring some of those are people I’ve ordered that France was at war with the Islamic into battle.” State, French President Francois Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hollande called Monday on the rest of also speaking after the G-20 conference, the civilized world to join in turning said the world had to work together to up the heat on “these despicable cow- stop the terrorist state, but he emphaards.” sized attacking its financing, not its Whether other nations would join military structure. “According to our his call was uncertain. In a speech information, 40 countries are involved delivered at the same time in Antalya, in the funding, including some G-20 Turkey, President Barack Obama told nations,” Putin said. He said that he reporters at the conclusion of the G-20 named those countries during the G-20 conference that the current U.S. strat- meetings but that he would not do so in egy against the Islamic State had been public.
Hollande, however, made it clear he was seeking collective action. He called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council and urged Russia and the United States to put aside their differences over Syria to work together against the Islamic State. Speaking to a rare joint session of the French National Assembly at Versailles Palace, Hollande insisted France would not be bowed by the attacks Friday that left 129 dead and more than 350 injured. He asked the assembly to extend the current state of emergency from 12 days to three months and vowed to “eradicate terrorism.” “Our democracy has triumphed over much more dangerous opponents,” he said.“We are not involved in a war of see
see
HEROIN on page 2
UMass student in Paris talks attacks Katie Mason was in the city on Fri.
French President Hollande says the country is at war
the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Baystate Medical Center, told reporters Monday that the health-
FRANCE on page 3
Katie Mason spent her Friday afternoon exploring the tourist attractions of Paris, taking in a panoramic view of the city after walking to the top of the Eiffel Tower. But by nightfall, a magical afternoon quickly gave way to what she says is a “senseless tragedy.” Mason, a junior hospitality and tourism major at the University of Massachusetts, was in Paris Friday when a series of coordinated attacks throughout the city left 129 people dead and more than 300 injured, some critically. The violence set off a European manhunt for potential suspects behind the assaults and prompted French President Francois Hollande to pledge vengeance against the Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Mason, who is studying abroad in Florence, Italy this semester, visited Paris last weekend with friends and was staying in an apartment just one mile away from the Bataclan concert hall, where four gunmen opened fire and killed 89 people in the audience of a metal concert. “I feel so fortunate that we weren’t in the wrong place at the wrong time Friday,” Mason told the Daily Collegian. “My heart breaks for all of those that were not as lucky as we were.” UMass Director of Education Abroad, Kalpen Trivedi, said in an email to the Collegian Tuesday that all University students studying abroad in Paris and its surrounding areas of France are safe and accounted for. At least one American student, Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, of California State University, Long Beach, died
in the attacks last Friday. Mason said she and two other friends, who are also UMass students, arrived in Paris Thursday night and planned to meet others that weekend. She said her group of friends were waiting to meet another friend, who was en route to Mason via train Friday evening at the Les Halles metro station. Mason began to receive text messages from friends in the United States concerned about her safety as she waited at the station. She said they didn’t think much of what they believed to be some type of shooting in central Paris, but when her friend arrived at the train station, Mason realized something was wrong. “(My friend) said that when she was on the metro, it skipped two stops and people were panicking,” Mason said. “She knew things were bad.” The women quickly returned to their apartment in the city’s second arrondisement neighborhood, which was five minutes away. Mason then learned about the severity of the violence as messages from friends and family rolled in. “We were safely back at the apartment when we realized what was happening,” she said. “Once I read frantic messages from my worried parents, I immediately started crying. I knew I was safe, but the feelings of sadness, fear and uncertainty hit me all at once.” Three teams of terrorists carried out coordinated attacks involving gunfire and triggered explosives at multiple sites throughout the city, including the concert hall, a soccer stadium and roadside cafes. Seven of the eight terrorists died in the attacks, per French police, while an eighth, Abdeslam see
ATTACKS on page 2