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DAILY COLLEGIAN
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
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U.S. writer on West Bank occupation Memoir of 2 years’ stay in Ramallah B y Josh R aposa Collegian Correspondent
JUDITH GIBSON-OKUNIEFF/COLLEGIAN
Jennifer Normanly, head of biochemistry, takes a photo of DNA with her cellphone in a renovated lab in the Morill Laboratory during a tour.
Au t h o r Pamela Olson gave a talk in the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall on Tuesday night to discuss her book, “Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland”. The event was hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine and coordinated by UMass’ Leila Aruri. It featured a narrative slideshow, a Q&A session, and book signing. “I was out of college and I decided to visit the Middle East in 2003. The Iraq war was still going on and I was sitting in a café, in Jordan, with a bunch of other journalists. I was talking about maybe going to Baghdad
in Iraq,” Olson explained. At the advice of journalists, who had just returned from Iraq, Olson chose to travel to Palestine. Following what she described as her “tantalizing interest in Palestine,” Olson decided to move to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, where she lived for the next two years. During her time there, she served as the head writer of the newspaper “The Palestinian Monitor.” She also served as the foreign press coordinator for Dr. Mustafa Barghouti during his bid for the Palestinian presidency in 2005 Olson showed images in a slideshow of the lush Palestinian landscape, dotted with olive trees, apricots, almonds and water. She showed deep valleys of the Sinai into the heart of Palestinian landscape. “I like to show the
Anti-clown crowd roams UHS opens pop-up flu clinic Students carry bats, sticks, and forks By Nujhat Purnata Collegian Staff
A crowd of approximately 80-150 students took to the streets of the University of Massachusetts’ Southwest Residential Area on Monday night after rumors of a clown sighting spread like wildfire. “I saw crowds of people, not even a group of friends but tons of people together, sprinting down Sunset Ave,” said Olivia Izzi, a sophomore legal studies major who saw the crowd from her window and then followed the story on social media. “It seemed like they were running away from something. It was nerve wracking. I had the same feeling as last year when there was a supposed gunman on campus,” said Izzi. Benjamin Fitzpatrick, an undeclared sophomore who lives in Southwest, first heard there was a sighting of a clown on social media. “It
got announced by some clown spotting account on Twitter” says Fitzpatrick. He saw pictures on social media of students carrying hockey sticks, baseball bats, lacrosse sticks and hangers. “Someone had a fork,” he recalls. One student who went clown-hunting seconded the use of a fork as a potential weapon “I showed up with a knife in my pocket. My friend met me with a fork,” Nicholas Soltowski, a sophomore resource economics major. Soltowski lives in Sylvan and first heard about the clown when his friend from Southwest called. “Well, to be honest, I didn’t know I went [clown hunting] until I went but I continued because my friend convinced me that clowns are evil and because I was fearful of being attacked by a clown,” he said. The “creepy clown” sightings is a new phenomenon across the nation and especially on social media. Several unverified twitter accounts such as @ClownSpotting and @ClownSighting have been releasing information
about the spotting of “creepy clowns” nationwide. Another such clown hunt occurred at Pennsylvania State University. On Monday night, reports of an armed clown forced a dorm evacuation at Merrimack College. A shelter in place notice was sent to students at 9:36 p.m. according to the Boston Globe. However, the police found nothing suspicious after clearing and searching the dorm where the clown was allegedly sighted. Similar reports have been made across other college campuses nationwide including University of New Hampshire and Springfield College. Aftermath
Alex Krell is a senior marketing major who first heard about the clown spotting from friends in Springfield College but does not feel threatened on the UMass campus. “It is a very safe community,” he said. Julia Vlahopoulos, a junior majoring in bio-chem, does not feel threatened or unsafe either. “The mob wasn’t scary. see
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Prevention made more accesssible B y Avery T homas Collegian Correspondent In addition to bringing good weather, summer represents a time when people might worry less about seasonal illnesses. The common cold comes to mind.—or even worse: influenza. “At the flu clinics we do not treat people who are ill; rather we administer flu vaccine to protect individuals and the community against the spread of flu,” said Ann Becker, University of Massachusetts Medical Re s e r v e Corps unit director. In fall, many UMass professors and students take precautions against one of the aforementioned illnesses. Mounting up defenses may seem like a daunting task now that the fall semester is beginning to heat up
academically and socially. On Sept. 29 the first walk-in flu clinic opened at the University Health Services in room 302. Becker, the public health nurse for the UMass campus, runs the flu clinics for UHS. “The clinics are staffed by UHS staff and College of Nursing students,” she said. This means that vaccinations are administered only by individuals who’ve been trained to estimate the proper dosage for each student. Professors and students may require different treatments for flu prevention. “Different ages require different treatment,” Tom Roeper, a UMass linguistics professor, explained regarding why getting vaccinated was important for people his age. It isn’t common knowledge that elder people require a higher dosage of an influenza vaccination than a younger student would. Becker says that UHS
staff are equipped to tackle that issue. Taking that into account, the walk-in clinics are no different from walking in for a scheduled flu-shot from your physician. According to Becker, UHS has made influenza prevention available for a long time. “UHS has provided influenza vaccination for the campus community for many years as it is the best way to protect against getting sick with influenza,” she said. The new walk-in clinics are a way to access flu prevention in a timely fashion, since no appointment is necessary. This is more incentive for people who simply lack the time to schedule any visits. According to the UHS website any students, faculty and staff along with their spouses and dependents are the primary recipients of all services, including flu prevention. For Ann Becker, making sure everyone see
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More than a million expected to flee during Mosul battle By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Los Angeles Times
CAIRO – Aid groups are racing to prepare for what they are predicting will be the largest humanitarian crisis in recent memory, with a million people expected to flee the northern Iraqi metropolis of Mosul once the country’s military and its foreign allies launch their offensive to seize the city from Islamic State militants. The planned operation to take back Iraq’s second-biggest city could trigger “one of the largest man-made disasters” in years, said Bruno Geddo, the United Nations refugee agency representative in Iraq. The conflict in neighboring Syria has affected more people, leaving 13.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance. But the
Mosul offensive is unique in that aid agencies know roughly when it will start and that it will displace a massive number of people at once. Representatives of the various forces have said the operation will start between mid-October and mid-December, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently specifying Oct. 19. The U.N. made an emergency appeal this summer for $284 million to deal with the crisis but so far has received less than half. The United States has pledged $130 million, said Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq. “We’re facing this enormous tsunami coming at us,” Grande said. “We’re racing against the clock to be as ready for it as we can be, knowing that we have funding
constraints, capacity constraints, and that we still need to get more supplies into the country.” If a million people were displaced for a year, the cost of caring for them would be $1.8 billion, she said. Islamic State seized control of Mosul in June 2014 during a campaign that soon put the militants in control of a third of Iraq and Syria. Iraq’s army has been fighting to recover. Backed by U.S.-led coalition warplanes and tens of thousands of paramilitary fighters - some supported by Iran - Iraqi troops this year reduced the militant group’s territory by a quarter, according to the group IHS Conflict Monitor. Across Iraq, about 3.3 million are already displaced, including 1.2 million from the area sur-
rounding Mosul. Of the more than 1.2 million who remain in the city, nearly a third are children, and a fifth are single mothers, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, Grande said. Many are expected to flee on foot, leaving most of their possessions behind. Matthew Nowery, Iraq country director for the U.S. relief group Samaritan’s Purse, compared the anticipated exodus to the flight of more than 2 million Rwandans into surrounding countries during and after the African nation’s 1994 genocide. “This is going to be a very large-scale catastrophe,” Nowery said. “A huge number of people will be moving into a system that’s already stretched.” Already, 66 camps through-
out Iraq house nearly 700,000 people displaced by violence. Camps near Mosul are already overwhelmed as new arrivals wait in fenced-off areas to be screened and camp workers try to keep out the Sunni tribal militias that arrive with trucks to recruit child soldiers to fight Islamic State. Debaga, one of the larger camps south of the city of Irbil, was built to house 20,000 families and is home to twice as many. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is building three camps in the Mosul area to house 36,000 people but is unlikely to complete them before the offensive, Grande said. With little public land in northern Iraq, it can be diffisee
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