This past weekend, Emory’s volleyball team traveled to the west coast and competed at the East-West Battle tournament in Thousand Oaks, California. After three matches of fierce competition, the Eagles came out of the tournament with a 1-2 record. 

On Sept. 10, the No. 2 Eagles battled Trinity University (Texas), the first-ranked team in the nation. In the first game, the Trinity Tigers won nine of the first 10 points. Although the Eagles scored six straight points down 18-6 in game one, the deficit was too much to delete. Both the second and third games followed similar rhythms with the Eagles starting the game down and not being able to complete the comeback. The Eagles lost in straight sets, with scores of 17-25, 19-25, and 15-25. 

Despite the loss, the Eagles left their mark on the court with confidence. Freshman right side hitter Alana Dawson, who had 10 kills in the match, spoke highly of the team morale during their game.

“There was no doubt in anyone’s eyes during the game, we all trusted each other,” Dawson said. 

The East-West Battle was also Dawson’s first road experience as an Emory volleyball player. While the sport and mindset are the same, the jump up to a higher level adds some new challenges for an experienced player. 

The Eagles’ next opponent was the College of Saint Benedict (Minn.), who they played a couple hours after their first match. The two teams were neck-and-neck, pushing the game to five sets. In the end, though, the Eagles clinched the victory by coming back from a 2-1 set deficit (23-25, 25-23, 16-25, 25-15, 15-11). 

Emory won the fourth set with their backs against the wall, winning six straight points when the score was tied at five and completely shifting the momentum. The Eagles went on a 20-10 run to force the fifth set, and they won 15-11 after ending the match on a 6-2 run. 

Freshman outside hitter Lily Martin finished the match with 16 kills while senior outside hitter Tara Martin had 15.

Emory wrapped up the weekend by facing Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Athenas (Calif.) on Sept. 11. While the Eagles fought a long and hard battle, they could not squeeze out a victory, ending the tournament with a 3-1 loss (25-18, 22-25, 25-13, 25-19). Despite the loss, Dawson and Martin both had impressive matches in addition to freshman Sarah Luong who finished with 40 assists. 

Head Coach Jenny McDowell was proud of the team’s efforts going up against the country’s best teams. Even though the tournament was not a success, McDowell recognizes the season is just beginning and hopes to get stronger before the end of the season in November.

“It was an amazing weekend for our team,” McDowell said. “[We] would’ve liked to come home with three victories, but we learned so much about ourselves and competed every single point.”

Emory volleyball playing in the Emory Classic on Sept. 3. The following weekend, the squad traveled to California to play in the East-West Battle. (Lin Yu/Contributing Photographer)

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Little league sports paint the image of overly passionate parents who take things a little too seriously. Whether parents are yelling at teenage umpires in baseball or constantly talking down at their kids after the game, these parents stray far from the values of little league sports.

Little league sports are an escape for children — a place to spend pent-up energy. Regardless of what sport is being played, little league sports provide the benefits of exercise, discipline and teamwork for kids. All parents should give their children this opportunity.

One of America’s scariest health problems has been obesity. And leaders have done a lot to curb its effects. Famously, Michelle Obama led a campaign during the Obama administration to provide children with healthier school options and encourage exercise. Still, the problem is increasing in children. Obese children are much more likely to face harsh health consequences down the road.

According to the CDC, nearly 20% of children in America are obese. While healthier school lunches may help reduce this percentage a little, exercise has shown to increase lean body mass, improve energy expenditure and lead to better appetites among children.

But, obviously, it’s not effective to send your kid to run around the block three times and call it a day. Kids need a fun, engaging activity, and although some like sports more than others, most kids would agree that playing a game of soccer is more fun than running on a treadmill.

Obesity numbers in America are staggering. By making sure children get adequate exercise at a young age, parents are setting them up for a healthier future.

One of the more important values to teach children in their adolescence is the value of discipline. Learning from mentors in pursuit of a goal is a trait that leads to success in life.

Having played baseball and football growing up, I credit most of my current work ethic to the hours I dedicated to those sports. Sports taught me that success is not easy, and only time gets you closer to achieving your goals.

Spending energy, time and emotion in pursuit of the end goal — whether it be a championship, a winning record or even just a fun season — is often not an easy thing to do and may not be as fun as some expect. But when those goals are achieved in sports, it shows children that good things often come with hard work.

There are real benefits to effort. Working hard at a job may result in a promotion, or working hard on relationships could lead to real, valuable friendships.

By introducing simple sports to children at a young age, they’re introduced to basic skills and facets of the game that make them much more likely to stick with the game for longer. According to the Aspen Institute, children who play sports are eight times more likely to play sports as young adults. These valuable lessons must be taught from a young age.

While considering teamwork as a benefit of little league sports is rather cliché, it’s very important nonetheless. However, teamwork means different things at different ages. In a child’s early days of playing sports, teamwork may just mean kicking a ball around and socializing with other kids. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. But the real benefits of teamwork come when sports start to get competitive.

As a child grows into this more competitive age, the childhood concept of a team is replaced by a more mature definition. There are rarely players that can dominate, and the teams that win are the teams with chemistry.

Giving it your all while knowing that all your teammates around you are giving it their all is a special feeling. Hours of blood, sweat and tears towards a common goal leads to greater trust, better friendships and bonds that are hard to find elsewhere.

When kids take these values into life, even if they aren’t becoming the next Tom Brady, it could easily lead them to a more valuable and rewarding future. There are almost no fields of work, relationships or hobbies that rely on individual success, so by learning the value of teamwork children are primed for success.

As much as little league parents may want you to think it, kids being the greatest at their respective sport is not the goal. Instead, the goal is to teach valuable lessons for life while getting in the exercise that’s vital for a child’s health.

By getting your child involved in team sports, whether it’s basketball, football or gymnastics, they are learning the essential values of discipline and teamwork, all while being set up for greater health in the future.

jackson.brown@dailyutahchronicle.com

@JacksonsTakes

The post Brown: Parents Should Encourage Little League Sports appeared first on The Daily Utah Chronicle.

Aya Ghoneim/The Cougar

Pregnancy prevention has always been a topic focused on uteruses. For so long it’s been up to women to take daily pills, consent to injections, get implants and go through the side effects caused by birth control. It’s time for there to be birth control for men.

Conversations surrounding a male contraceptive have occurred, but so far there are no breakthroughs. There are several reasons why and it’s surprisingly not because men refuse to take them. In fact, 83 percent of men would willingly take birth control depending on if it’s a pill, cream or something else. 

The lack of birth control for men ties back to Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the inventor of what is known as “the pill.” 

The start of the pill began in the 1950s when Sanger wanted women to take control over their bodies. At that time, most options were condoms for men. There were also IUDs but those were very hard for women to access.

Sanger believed if a convenient pill was made for women, it would allow women to advance further in their education, have fewer unwanted pregnancies and attain more equality in society. 

When conversations over a male version of birth control arose, Sanger was against it. To her, the whole point of creating a pill for women was to make sure men were not able to touch it. She believed if men were involved, they would end up controlling women in that area of women’s lives.

Her concerns were not unfounded. With Gov. Greg Abbott passing the heartbeat law in Texas, a lot of women in the state have lost control over their reproductive rights.

However, birth control should be the responsibility of both parties, not just women. Men should be a part of the conversation without trying to control women’s bodies. 

In the 1950s, Sanger’s goal was to expand women’s freedom in regard to their reproductive rights in order for them to achieve equality. But now, birth control has become a burden on women. 

With that in mind, the struggle to focus pregnancy prevention for both genders is a combination of biology and money. Unfortunately, a lack of funding for research in birth control for men has made it difficult for trials to progress. 

Additionally, the reproductive biology of men is different from women. While a woman only releases one egg a month for one pregnancy, men can produce millions of sperm per day. 

The biggest issue in creating successful birth control for men is lessening their sperm count enough for them to be infertile. This means lessening their testosterone with several side effects like erectile dysfunction, tiredness, weight gain and low sex drive. 

However, women have been dealing with similar, if not worse, side effects when taking their own birth control like migraines, blood clots, eye problems and more. Just like any other kind of medication, side effects are inevitable. 

In order to combat unwanted pregnancies, there should be more investment towards creating birth control in men. If men actively participate in preventing pregnancy, they will have less reason to meddle in the reproductive rights of women. They will also hopefully be more sympathetic for what women go through on birth control.

Women have been doing their parts for years in terms of preventing pregnancy. It’s now time for men to shoulder some of the burdens.

Cindy Rivas Alfaro is a journalism freshman who can be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com

—
“There should be birth control for men too” was originally posted on The Cougar

Following a humbling defeat at the hands of Florida Atlantic, the Georgia Southern football team received two more bits of bad news on Thursday.

All-American cornerback Derrick Canteen suffered a torn pectoral muscle during Saturday’s game against FAU, which will require season-ending surgery.

In addition, starting linebacker Marques Watson-Trent suffered a season-ending ACL tear during Saturday’s game and underwent surgery on Wednesday.

The loss of Canteen and Trent marks the second and third starters lost on the Eagles defense. Both guys join Todd Bradley-Glenn, who suffered a season ending torn bicep during fall practice.

As a result of the injury, transfer linebacker Khadry Jackson took over Trent’s starting spot at linebacker, while sophomore cornerback Tyler Bride is expected to record his first start in Canteen’s place on Saturday.

To provide much needed depth at the cornerback position, wide receiver NaJee Thompson will make the switch to cornerback, a position he last played in high school. In another switch, quarterback Sam Kenerson will make a switch to wide receiver.

The post Injuries force Eagles to make changes appeared first on The George-Anne Media Group.

Emory Wheel/Jay Jones, Stay Healthy

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the phrase “stay healthy” has become a common greeting and sign-off in our digital and in-person communication. It makes sense; we have been living with a massive risk to our collective health for the last year and a half, and many of us want to express support and a hope for the safety of our loved ones, friends and communities. However, the suggestion to “stay healthy,” is not as simple or encouraging as it may seem, especially for those of us who are disabled and chronically ill. In fact, the phrase can do more harm than good.

I have read the phrase “stay healthy” dozens of times in email sign-offs over the past year, and it is always sent with good intentions. However, as a disabled and chronically ill person, this message does not meet the sender’s goal of positivity. The word “stay” assumes everyone functions on the default of good health. Considering that disabled people are consistently devalued — such as the large-scale exclusion of disabled people from rationed ventilator supply due to their lower “quality of life” — the assumption of good health used in this phrase is not as innocuous as it may seem. Additionally, assuming that everyone around you is consistently healthy erases the reality of so-called invisible disabilities; this is especially true for those of us with chronic illnesses who deal with ableism and invalidation from this presumption of health on a daily basis. While “stay healthy” does not single-handedly oppress the disabled community, it perpetuates the ableist assumption that good health is the norm, which has consistently endangered the lives of disabled people.

By saying “stay healthy,” we reinforce a particular standard for healthiness that disabled and chronically ill people do not embody and that some have never embodied. In the dominant view of disability, the medical model, any variation in the functioning of body, mind or ability is considered a problem to be diagnosed, treated and cured. This model erases the social limitations placed on disabled people, while constructing a power dynamic between the inferior disabled person and their savior doctors. The medical model contributes not only to ableism, but also to the deprioritization and disposability of disabled people during the pandemic. The phrase “stay healthy,” then, supports the bodily norm of healthiness in the midst of a crisis that directly threatens the lives of those who do not fit that image. Disabled people, especially those of us who are chronically ill, do not have the privilege of feeling or staying “healthy” during a pandemic because our safety is always and already threatened by the ways a norm of healthiness pushes us to the margins.

Asking each other to “stay healthy” also frames health (and thus illness, disease or disability) as an individual practice under our control. While wearing masks, social distancing, washing our hands and getting the vaccine definitely minimize our risk of exposure to COVID-19, there are many more factors influencing our risk and our health that are out of our control. These social determinants of health range from socioeconomic status, neighborhood and physical environment (including surrounding pollution), to food availability, employment (e.g. hours, physical demands, environment) and access to healthcare (e.g. consistency, quality, experiences with medical oppression/trauma). Despite these many factors, disability and illness are viewed as personal responsibilities caused by personal failings rather than something that could happen to anyone. Individualizing health by saying “stay healthy” disregards the structural forces and privilege that undoubtedly influence one’s ability to stay healthy and abled.

Similarly, the phrase moralizes healthiness by implying that those who are healthy are doing all the right things, while those who get sick (with COVID-19 or any other illness or disability) have failed. This equivalence between health and morality also motivated the discourse at the beginning of the pandemic that only the old, disabled and otherwise at-risk would get COVID-19, while everyone else had no need to worry. In addition to its foundation in the eugenics movement, this mindset dehumanizes those at risk for infection or more severe symptoms as disposable. The moralization of health not only pervades everyday conversations but also the medical sphere, in which doctors view disabled people’s lives as less worth living, and thus limit access to care, treatment and life-saving resources like ventilators. At least 25 states have policies deprioritizing care for disabled people in the case of hospital overloads, and the phrase “stay healthy” plays a role in normalizing a negative association of disability and illness.

Of course, this small phrase is not, on its own, the biggest challenge presented by COVID-19, especially for the disabled community. But the issues with the greeting “stay healthy” represent many of the challenges disabled and chronically ill people have faced over the course of the pandemic, including erasure, exclusion and disposability.

We all want our loved ones, friends, peers and communities to avoid contracting COVID-19, especially as more contagious variants spread. But telling each other to “stay healthy” is not the best way to share that sentiment. The phrase is loaded with implications that assume a default of health, individualize and de-contextualize illness and healthiness and equate good health with goodness and worthiness. We must acknowledge that linguistic baggage and its connections to actions put disabled people at greater risk. Instead of using phrases that deprioritize disabled people, we should seek out our disabled and chronically ill communities not only for lessons on developing accessible forms of care and community, but also to build strong solidarity for this crisis and the next.

Jay Jones (22Ox, 24C) is from Tallahassee, Florida.

The post “Stay healthy” Is Not The Positive Message You Think It Is appeared first on The Emory Wheel.

Berkeley City Council addresses employee vaccine mandate, consolidates environmental efforts

Anthony Angel Pèrez/Staff

Berkeley City Council discussed a vaccine mandate for city workers, consolidation of Berkeley’s environmental goals and the need to comply with a new statewide waste reduction mandate.

While California Gov. Gavin Newsom triumphed in Tuesday’s recall election, Berkeley City Council members discussed the city’s employee vaccine mandate and environmental goals — issues Newsom said were symbolically on voters’ ballots.

The council discussed the extension of the vaccine mandate to contractors, remote work and supplemental sick leave in response to requests made during public comment.

City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley emphasized the number of positive COVID-19 cases among city employees has been “extremely low,” and workers are required to wear masks and social distance. She added, however, that public servants’ duty is to serve the local community, which can’t always be done remotely.

By the end of the meeting, the council unanimously expressed support for a strong COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city workers, and Williams-Ridley said she is committed to ensuring employees receive notifications of positive cases in their workplace.

“I understand that (the city employee vaccine mandate) is controversial but we have to make hard decisions,” said City Councilmember Susan Wengraf at the meeting. “It is ultimately in the best interest of our people.”

Although many city employees spoke in favor of these measures during comment, there were some who voiced opposition to the vaccine mandate. City Councilmember Sophie Hahn suggested that the city educate hesitant workers in a “private one-to-one setting” to alleviate concern.

Later, chairs of both the Zero Waste Commission and the Berkeley Energy Commission were among several other residents who spoke against the council’s previous vote to centralize the city’s environmental goals by combining the two groups.  

Zero Waste Commission chair Christienne de Tournay and Energy Commission chair Janet Stromberg both said the suggested consolidation would inhibit their workflow. Stromberg said the Zero Waste Commission is addressing the “consumption side” of climate change while the Energy Commission focuses on transportation.

Berkeley resident Geoff Lomax, however, argued in favor of “bringing new structure and focus” with a joint environmental commission to address the fact that the commissions’ recommendations sometimes contradict one another.

City Councilmember Kate Harrison, who authored the initial recommendation to combine the commissions, stated her support for keeping them independent toward the end of the discussion.

“We need more people working on this stuff, not fewer,” Stromberg said at the meeting. “But we do need more collaboration.”

Also during public comment, Berkeley Tenants Union representative Paola Laverde asked the council to consider implementing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, an anti-displacement housing policy long debated in Berkeley.

The council also discussed updating the city of Berkeley’s Zoning Ordinance to include language that is easier to understand, as well as the city’s need to comply with a new statewide waste reduction mandate that will require a substantial allocation of funds. The council will decide the fate of both these agenda items at future meetings.

Mayor Jesse Arreguín adjourned the meeting in memory of recently deceased leaders in the Berkeley community. The list included Vincent Koehler of Koehler Auto Body, lawyer and author Roy Doolan, environmentalist Philip Kreycik and activist Carole Selz.

Rachel Barber is the lead city government reporter. Contact her at rbarber@dailycal.org, and follow her on Twitter at @rachelbarber_.

The Daily Californian

In the wake of 9/11, Sandra E. Garcia, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote that after the terror attacks, she felt “as if a hole was torn in (her) reality and now anything was possible — even the unimaginable.” Sept. 11 was “the moment” that shaped the psyche of the preceding generation. For our generation, the pandemic has been that event: illuminating political division and the fragility of our global order. Hopelessness has been a common and understandable response to the mass devastation and mishandling of the pandemic. But instead of allowing the calamities of COVID-19 to lull us into an overriding sense of doom and subsequent inaction, they should incite urgency to confront our generation’s largest existential threat: climate change.

With the pandemic and our attendant failures to respond to it, it is natural to feel hopeless. One in every 500 Americans has died of COVID-19. Just looking at the graph of COVID-19 cases brings a sense of defeat, as every time it seems as though the end is near, the graph’s trajectory begins climbing once again. The only thing worse than the pandemic has been the response to it. This is a crisis that we failed to prepare for despite years of warnings. It is a disaster that we have failed to defeat even with the arrival of vaccines that are miraculous in their effectiveness and availability, at least in the United States. It is a tragedy that has devolved into a cynical, absurdist tragicomedy. What else would you call a reality where people have poisoned themselves by overdosing on a livestock dewormer that they trust to protect them against COVID-19 more than the vaccines themselves? For our generation, even those of us who have been lucky and/or privileged enough to escape the worst of the pandemic are dealing with the “hole” that has been torn in our realities. The hopelessness that has come from the dismal policy response to COVID-19 could very well bleed over into a hopelessness about climate change and our ability to combat it.

However, I believe that what defines a generation is how it responds to its “moment.” For the previous generation of Americans, even more impactful than 9/11 itself was the generational response to the attack. Of course, ours is an unimaginable moment that is not really a moment at all, but rather a recurring nightmare. And even if there is a post-pandemic light at the end of the tunnel, our disastrous global response to COVID-19 suggests that the worst might be yet to come. What happens when we are faced with a crisis that does not have the relative silver bullet of a vaccine and requires even more social upheaval and economic investment, such as the climate crisis? The climate crisis will require our generation to find methods of effective global action and cooperation unseen during the pandemic, lest we leave the next generation with the burden of a world that is not only unimaginable, but uninhabitable.

The climate crisis also illustrates why responding to our “moment” with collective hope and resolve is so important. Scholars of climate politics have begun warning us that we have moved past the phase of climate denial and into climate obstruction, where opponents of climate action readily acknowledge the reality of climate change while simultaneously working to keep any substantive action from being taken to combat it. A growing trend has been termed “doomism,” an ethos positing that an uninhabitable world is coming no matter what, and thus, we should stop any mitigation efforts and accept our fate — or as supporters might package it, rethink our “unrealistic hope.” Doomism is a clever ploy because it plays on human nature. When coming of age in a moment of crisis that never seems to end, it is natural to want to embrace doom, especially when that comes with the ability to fling aside future responsibility and embrace our happiness in the here and now in a privileged, “You Only Live Once” sort of way. But no matter how tempting it is — and no matter how futile the acceptance of the impending apocalypse — doom cannot be our generation’s response to this “moment.”

It is well-documented that in catastrophic situations, hope itself is a radical act. In one of my earlier columns, I wrote that the problems facing our world today, especially the pandemic and the response to it, have “not inspired great faith in the human race.” But nevertheless, “our only hope, as small as it might be, is each other… what we can learn from each other, what we can do for each other and what we owe each other.” I still believe we can place hope in one another. I still believe that if our generation shares this belief, there is a chance that we can turn that radical hope into necessary action. We should allow ourselves the space to mourn what our “moment” has taken from us. But we can also view the pandemic as a cautionary tale: one that inspires us to fight the other battle of our generation.

The digital city is rapidly approaching, but it may introduce more problems than it solves.

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With a little over 3000 parking spaces left on the Statesboro campus, Georgia Southern’s Parking and transportation started waitlisting students trying to purchase parking permits.

Parking lots started to sell out before the school year even started. First, lot 41 sold out in May and then lots 32, 30, 21 sold out in August, according to the Director of Parking and Transportation Services, Derrick Davis.

“Each week we take inventory of all of our commuter lots and if the lots are more than 90% we will not release anyone on the waitlist,” Davis stated. “We want to make sure if someone has a parking permit for a specific lot, there are always parking spaces available,” he added. 

Faculty and staff are not included on the waitlist, and when the capacity decreases to less than 90%, the first students on the waitlist will be notified. 

Davis stated that parking permits for certain lots are expected to be available soon and everyone on that waitlist will be notified within the next few weeks.

There are 16,967 parking spaces across campus and 13,889 student permits have been sold, according to Davis. 

In response to limited parking, “Lot 29, former UV residence hall, is being used as a Commuter lot now and some of the former residence halls will be demolished and the parking lot will be expanded,”  Davis stated.

 All students on the waitlist for lot 11 were notified that it is now available to purchase. Lot 13, 21, 30, 31, 32, 42 are all still on the waitlist right now.

Students can only park at Paulson Stadium without having a parking permit in order to avoid a ticket.

The post Students being waitlisted to buy parking passes appeared first on The George-Anne Media Group.