Thursday, February 2, 2017

Page 1

Turkish students discuss terrorism, economic concerns in country see FEATURES / PAGE 4

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Jumbos one game away from tying record

Noor Ensemble celebrates birth of the Prophet see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 5

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE

THE

INDEPENDENT

STUDENT

N E W S PA P E R

OF

TUFTS

UNIVERSITY

E S T. 1 9 8 0

T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXIII, NUMBER 6

tuftsdaily.com

Thursday, February 2, 2017

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Sisters drop Chi Omega sorority in protest of Greek system by Elie Levine

Assistant News Editor

Over the course of the fall semester, Chi Omega’s Chi Alpha chapter at Tufts saw the departure of a number of members, amidst criticism that Greek life is exclusionary. Nine of these sisters — Gabriela Bonfiglio, Claudia Mihm, Chelsea Hayashi, Meg Weck, Emily Sim, Lily Blumkin, Benya Kraus, Supriya Sanjay and Zoe Miller — then wrote an evocative call for the abolition of Greek life at Tufts, published Dec. 15 on Medium. “What we are calling for is not the elimination of the type of community you hold near and dear, but a redefinition of what social life on campus looks like,” they wrote in the statement. “Yes, strong female friendships are important and empowering, but not when they are only available to white, cis, and/ or straight women and not when they depend upon financial ability as a condition for entry.” Weck, a junior, was one of the first sis-

ters to leave the sorority when she dropped while abroad during the fall semester. “As much as I felt marginalized as a queer woman in Chi Omega nationally, the women of Chi Omega at Tufts did not personally attack me for being queer,” Weck told the Daily in an email. Weck said that while she did not personally face discrimination from the women in Tufts’ Chi Omega chapter, she believes that this was mainly because her whiteness and feminine presentation allowed her to pass as a ‘typical’ sorority sister. JEREMY CALDWELL / THE TUFTS DAILY

see GREEK LIFE, page 2 The Chi Omega house is pictured on Sept. 26, 2015.

Tufts Professor Jonathan Davis leads research on neonatal medication

NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

The Tufts Boston campus is pictured on Oct. 5, 2015. by Emily Burke

Assistant News Editor

Jonathan Davis, chief of the Newborn Medicine Division at Tufts Medical Center and professor of pediatrics at the Tufts University School of Medicine, is conducting research and clinical trials to make newborn medi-

Please recycle this newspaper

Sunny 39 /21

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cation safer. According to Davis, the body of research on the safety of neonatal drugs is currently limited. He explained that most organizations do not want to conduct clinical trials involving infants because of a fear of publicity disasters and malpractice lawsuits if infants are harmed by their drugs during the trials.

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“People say, ‘We just don’t want to experiment on anybody that small and that sick.’ But what I say is: If you don’t know what you’re doing and you expose the child to risk that way, isn’t that worse?” Davis said. According to Davis, currently the most widely-used method for administering drugs to newborns is diluting doses of adult drugs. “Most of the time, we don’t have drugs specifically developed for newborns. Most of the drugs we use have never been adequately tested,” Davis said. He emphasized that one of the difficulties with neonatal medicine is that doctors do not have access to the same patient input that is used to treat adults. According to Davis, it can be difficult to determine whether an infant is in pain, so doctors work with nurse practitioners to make decisions. Unlike adults, Davis explained, neonates cannot participate in most types of clinical trials, like walking on a treadmill and describing how they feel afterward. This makes it difficult for doctors and scientists to determine the long term effects of drugs on neonates. Lynn Hudson, chief science officer for the Critical Path Institute and

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executive director of the International Neonatal Consortium (INC), expanded on the limitations of current medications available for specific health problems in infants. “If you or I had a seizure condition, there’s about a dozen different anti-seizure medications that we can use. Some people never respond to the first one that they’re given, and then they use some other one to see if [they] respond,” Hudson said. “Babies have exactly one drug that can be used, and when they don’t respond, there’s nothing that the doctors can do.” Davis said that most past legislative efforts have not solved this problem, but some progress has been made to raise awareness about the issue. In particular, Davis said, the United States Congress passed a law in 2012 that encouraged further study on the effects of new medication on newborns and required the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to hire a neonatologist. According to Davis, one way of supporting research about neonatal medicine is through the research consortium model. “What [organizations like the Critical

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................4 ARTS & LIVING.......................5

see INFANTS, page 2

COMICS....................................... 7 OPINION.....................................9 SPORTS............................ BACK


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