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Did College Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates Go Too Far?
By Sara Talpos September 18, 2023 Like many other institutions, the University of Pennsylvania campus was mostly shuttered to in-person learning when Vincent Kelley began work there as a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology in the fall of 2020. But when the first vaccines were rolled out to all American adults the following spring, Penn leadership announced that in-person classes would resume for the 2021-22 academic year — with one proviso: Only students, faculty, and staff who had received a Covid-19 vaccine would be permitted to return. Religious or medical exemptions were available, but Kelley, who had chosen to be vaccinated himself, said he still found the mandate overly coercive. Then, when the university…
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How COVID-19 Changed College Athletic Recruiting
Hoboken High School in Hoboken, New Jersey (Photo/Luigi Novi -Wikimedia Commons) By Nicole McNulty April 19, 2021 ARCELIA MARTIN, HOST: On average only about 6% of high school athletes go on to play sports in college. In a normal year, graduating seniors would be signed to their college teams by now. But COVID has disrupted this cycle. Nicole McNulty explores what that means for kids hoping to play sports in college. NICOLE MCNULTY, BYLINE: Tyler Sims has been playing basketball since he was 9 years old. And like a lot of kids. TYLER SIMS: My dream school is definitely Duke University. You know, I’ve been watching them since I was…
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Calls for Sonia Sotomayor to retire are ‘ableism, pure and simple,’ advocates say
Sara Luterman/Caregiving reporter April 10, 2024 Commentators have recently singled out the Supreme Court justice, who has type 1 diabetes. Disability lead s say it’s not a reason for her to resign. *Correction appended. Increasing calls from some Democrats for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire because of her age and diabetes diagnosis are biased and misguided, according to disability leaders who say she’s more than up to the job. For months — particularly with the November election approaching — left-leaning commentators like former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan have expressed concern that because Sotomayor is 69 years old and has type 1 diabetes, she may need to be replaced on the…
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Living with a disability is very expensive- even with government assistance
Zachary Morris Nanette Goodman Stephen McGarity Edward Mitchell is 34 years old and lives in Jackson, Tennessee, with a spinal cord injury caused by a hit-and-run accident that happened when he was 17. He has plenty of expenses that all Americans have, like groceries and utilities. But to maintain his independence, he also has to pay for home modifications to accommodate his wheelchair, personal nursing care, dictation tools to help him write and adjustments to his car so he can drive himself to work. He is just one of the 20 million working-age adults living with disabilities in the U.S., for whom it takes more money to make ends meet because of…
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Moral Shaming: “You do You”
By Jill Neimark November 4, 2022 When people have different views about health and freedom, they misuse morality to demonize one another, letting policymakers and corporations off the hook. One evening last September, Gavin Yamey, professor of global health at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, dined indoors and tweeted a selfie of himself and his two tablemates—Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke Global Health Institute, and Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist and global health activist who won a MacArthur genius grant for his work on AIDS, global health, and social justice. Gonsalves has long been a voice for the vulnerable and disabled. Throughout the pandemic he lofted the torch of COVID caution and…
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Clubhouse Rules:
New York’s New Young Republican Leader Eyes the Future November 8, 2022 By Asta Kongsted Gavin Wax sat on one of the many brown leather couches lining the studio apartment that serves as the “Clubhouse” of the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) on a recent Thursday afternoon. It is thanks to Wax that this group has that Midtown apartment at all – a fact which the 28 year-old Queens native does nothing to hide and which no one does anything to dispute. When Wax took over the presidency of the Club in 2019, it had 50 members and nowhere to host them. These days, membership stands at 1,100, while…
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Battling the Loneliness Ogre:
One Man’s Journey in the Remote Work Era By Ragnhildur Thrastardottir May 18, 2023 When Benjamin Schwartz, 25, moved from New Jersey to New York City in 2021, he felt lonely. He was working from home as an advisor for Deloitte, and his days would often start with him crawling out of bed to get his computer and then returning to do the work from his bed. Schwartz didn’t meet many people or take regular lunch breaks, and this lifestyle started to take a toll on him. “This sucks,” he thought. “Maybe this isn’t the way life is supposed to work.” He tried going to coffee shops and libraries and…
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Not All Heroes Wear Capes2
These innovators, scientists, creative thinkers and just regular people all played a pivotal role in helping me live my best life. Ralph Braun Wheelchair van pioneer Ralph William Braun (December 18, 1940 – February 8, 2013) was the founder and CEO of the Braun Corporation. He is also known as the “Father of the Mobility Movement” at BraunAbility. Braun was born and raised in Winamac, Indiana. When he was six years old, doctors diagnosed him with muscular dystrophy. He started using a wheelchair at the age of 14. At the age of 15, he created a motorized wagon with his father to help him get around. Five years later,…
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Should not take a lawsuit
Reluctant Localities Are Being Dragged Into Court to Fix Sidewalks for People With Disabilities By Maureen O’Hagan From her Baltimore dining room, Susan Goodlaxson can see her neighbor gardening across the street. But while other neighbors stop to chat, Goodlaxson just watches from the window. She uses a wheelchair, and there isn’t a single curb ramp on her block. If the 66-year-old wanted to join, she’d have to jump her wheelchair down the 7½-inch curb and risk a fall. Ditto if she wanted to wheel over to the library, a trip that would require riding in the street to avoid rampless curbs and broken sidewalks. “I don’t feel like it’s…
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Why it matters that Americans are comparatively bad at math
by JON MARCUS September 26, 2023 Employers, experts raise new alarms about competitiveness and national security Like a lot of high school students, Kevin Tran loves superheroes, though perhaps for different reasons than his classmates. “They’re all insanely smart. In their regular jobs they’re engineers, they’re scientists,” said Tran, who is 17. “And you can’t do any of those things without math.” Tran also loves math. He was speaking during a break in a Boston city program for promising local high school students to study calculus for five hours a day throughout the summer at Northeastern University. And his observation was surprisingly apt. At a time when Americans joke about how bad…
