Whether it’s a failure of your local school district of applying an abstinence only policy during sex-ed, or your gym teacher’s approach of saying that having sex will result of you getting pregnant and dying, or even a failure of your parents in appropriately approaching “The Talk” without using a banana and a warm apple pie, someone forgot to teach many people an important lesson of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection prevention. What the Triangle wants you to know most important this week, kids, is about post-exposure prophylaxis.

There are many ways to get HIV, but there are a lot of ways that you can prevent it. HIV, as we hope you all know, can be spread through blood, semen, vaginal fluid, rectal fluid and pre-seminal fluid. You don’t get it by touching someone. You can even go into a full-on make-out session with a person, possibly swallowing close to a gallon of their saliva, and still not have a major risk of getting the virus. Oral sex is the least risky form of sex in terms of infection. Anal sex is the most. With the newest cocktails for HIV treatment, the risk of transmission for people who are positive can get pretty close to zero.

That isn’t exactly zero, however, and it shouldn’t encourage anyone to stop practicing safe sex methods and certainly shouldn’t prevent anyone from becoming aware of their options when they’re exposed. If you’re ever exposed to HIV for whatever reason, sexual or otherwise, the first thing you should do is go to the emergency room, preferably within the first hour, but definitely within the first three days. From there, the doctors should be performing a treatment called PEP (a treatment that has been in research since the late 80’s). It’s a month-long antiretroviral drug treatment (a combination of two or three drugs) that prepares the body’s immune system to fight the possible infection, its effectiveness depending on the timeliness of getting the treatment, the resistance of the virus, and the patient’s adherence to the treatment.

This treatment is effective for exposures to other sexually transmitted infections as well, such as hepatitis C, with other combinations for drugs (which is reportedly 100 times more infectious than HIV).

Take this in with a grain of salt. PEP is not 100 percent effective and it is usually given out as a last resort treatment only. You need to be pretty sure that you’re at risk of being infected to get it, otherwise you might have to pay a pretty penny for it. You need to still be practicing safe sex at all costs. But otherwise, enjoy this weekly newspaper’s duty in keeping the public informed about all of their options.

The post Preventative measures of HIV appeared first on The Triangle.

Earlier this week, Rolling Stone retracted its story from November 2014, “A Rape on Campus,” about a University of Virginia student who was allegedly gang-raped by seven members of a fraternity. While the story left many readers upset and disturbed about a horrific reality that plagues campuses all over the country, the story turned out to also have factual discrepancies that resulted in scrutiny and harsh criticism of everyone involved — including the survivor “Jackie.” An investigation showed the failure of Rolling Stone’s reporting and fact-checking. Irresponsible cannot even begin to describe what the magazine did and shame cannot even begin to describe what the magazine should feel.

Journalistic integrity and ethical decision is the hallmark of legitimacy for every published article. Reporting on sexual assault, in particular, requires an astronomical sense of care, professionalism and wisdom. All these are traits Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Erdely should have displayed before she decided to write and publish an unverified version of a survivor’s terrifying trauma. Instead, she became part of the problem of mishandling the widely misunderstood act of violence that leaves one out of three of its survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder, thoughts of suicide and depression. Sexual assault becomes even more complex because of a long-established understanding that it affects the memories of victims, with what The Washington Post reports as becoming “murky, but rarely false.” Jackie reported her own diagnosis of PTSD following her assault to the Post during its investigations.  But now, the errors found in the story threatens to not only invalidate her experience in the public eye but also those of many others who’ve reported sexual assault on campuses such as UVA.

What one must take away from Rolling Stone’s mistake shouldn’t be that people lie about being raped. It should be that time and time again, institutions fail to adequately understand the complexity of the trauma that results from sexual assault and act with that understanding. And in a society in which fraternities such as Penn State University’s Kappa Delta Rho members telling Philadelphia magazine that the fraternity’s Facebook page filled with nude, unconscious, females were “antics” as opposed to undeniable sexual assault and in which, according to One in Four President John Foubert, not one but three studies show that fraternity members are three times more likely to rape than other male students, mistakes cannot be made. Mistakes can also not be made by the news agency reporting about the situation. The consequences of failing to listen to survivors and properly report their story can leave us with the bitter aftertaste similar to the one when we realize those who raped Jackie, whatever their identity, might never see a courtroom.

The post Rolling Stone retracts rape article appeared first on The Triangle.

In October of 2014, the Dartmouth College student newspaper, conveniently called simply “The Dartmouth,” ran a front-page editorial titled “Verbum Ultimum: Abolish the Greek System.” That may be a little heavy-handed here at Drexel University, and the Editorial Board is not of the opinion that the Greek System at Drexel ought to be abolished. However, it goes to show that at other universities, Greek life has gotten completely out of hand.

Seemingly every year, there is an incident reported about hazing going wrong (if there is such a thing as a hazing going “right”), and someone is severely injured or killed. Or someone is date-raped at a party. Or some fraternity is caught dealing hard drugs. And so on.

Most recently, a video has surfaced of Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers at University of Oklahoma singing an old, racist song. As a result, the chapter has been disowned by SAE, and the university has expelled two students. Justice, it seems, has been served, at least in this instance.

It’s essential for national fraternity chapters to keep tabs on their local university chapters. While SAE was quick to shut down their wayward chapter and condemn their actions, the culture that developed there should never have been allowed to exist in the first place.

Here at Drexel, we’re privileged to have Greek Life, which in general isn’t guilty of extreme hazing, racism or Geneva Convention violations that plague other universities. We hope that it stays that way. We also have to say to those considering Greek life that if you experience hazing, discrimination, or behavior that otherwise makes you feel uncomfortable, report it, and if that doesn’t work, find a way out. It’s not the end-all-be-all to join a fraternity or sorority at Drexel; there are other options and other student organizations to join.

Student organizations ought to take pride in treating their members with respect and dignity. While they should understand that they do not have all of the same aspects that a fraternity would, they have one thing in common: students. We must respect all of these students so that they can grow to become great, respectable leaders of the organizations that we will entrust them with.

It’s important to remember that we are not only training students to be leaders of an organization but also to be leaders in business, academia and government. As such, Greek or not, all organizations need to remain conscious of the values they instill in their members.

The post Greek Life needs self-scrutiny appeared first on The Triangle.

A glance out the window of The Triangle editor in chief’s office reveals a crater where the Intercultural Center once stood. The corner of 33rd and Chestnut Streets has seen radical change in the last 10 years: first the Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building replaced a parking lot, then Chestnut Square replaced a green buffer between MacAlister Hall and Chestnut Street, then the University of Pennsylvania started endless construction on the New College House, and now The Study will rise on the site of the Intercultural Center.

A ten-story hotel will do a lot to ease overcrowding at the nearby Sheraton, and we’ll achieve hotel parity with the University of Pennsylvania, whose own “Inn at Penn” serves the same niche The Study intends to fill.

At what cost does premier hotel space come, though? Demolition and relocation of cultural facilities that many students have come to depend on. Years of construction on an already construction-burdened block. With so many developable Drexel-owned surface parking lots available in the nearby area, the only question we can ask is “Why?”

Isn’t developing a parking lot cheaper than demolishing existing structures? Wouldn’t it cause less outcry? Wouldn’t it better serve the community? Isn’t parking more replaceable? C-lot, F-lot, K-lot, etc. are close to campus, and are existing blights on the community. No one will wax poetically about the loss of K-lot. Few even know it exists.

With the loss of the Intercultural Center, and the demolition of irreplaceable lab space at the Frederick O. Hess Laboratories, Drexel is continuing down a destructive and ultimately illogical development path. Nothing was stopping Lancaster Hall from going up half a block away on K-lot. Likewise, nothing was stopping The Study from rising on the site of C-lot.

We understand that parking is important and necessary to Drexel’s faculty and students. After all, the only nearby transit is regional rail at 30th Street Station, the El at 34th Street Station, five trolley routes at 33rd Street Station, and a dozen or so bus routes, and it’s unreasonable to expect students to walk all the way from Powelton Village.

But should parking really take precedence over academic spaces? We could still have the Intercultural Center, the Frederick O. Hess Labs, and even Matheson Hall if we were just willing to sacrifice parking for a couple hundred cars.

The post Tear it down to build it up? appeared first on The Triangle.

On Jan. 8, President Obama unveiled a plan to make community college free for students who maintain a 2.5 GPA or higher and make steady progress in finishing their program. Such a plan would save community-college students on average $3,800 per year and would benefit up to 9 million Americans. Federal funding is intended to cover three-fourths of the cost, with participating states covering the remaining costs.

A few days later, Obama signed a presidential memorandum to direct federal agencies to offer six weeks advanced paid sick leave in the case of a new child or sick family member, while also advocating Congress to pass a more comprehensive sick-leave policy for Americans.

These policies may seem unrelated, but they all seem to point to a goal of Obama’s as he enters his final two years in the presidency. It seems he is trying to make the U.S. more European. Much of Europe is well known for its generous social policies, including long periods of paid parental leave and free or reduced-price higher education. Indeed, the U.S. is the only developed Western country not to have a paid parental leave policy, and higher education has become exorbitantly expensive to students and families, so these actions could become catalysts for more socialist policies in the future.

We agree that Obama is trying to cement his legacy with these moves. Since getting the Affordable Care Act through Congress, he has had few successes in Congress, with notable failures in the realms of gun control and immigration reform. After the midterm elections, where Democrats suffered a massive defeat, even after many Democratic candidates distanced themselves from the president, Obama is seen as even less likely to push his own agenda through Congress. Increasingly, the President has looked to executive actions to implement more progressive policies among federal workers. Such actions include protections for LGBT federal employees from workplace discrimination, establishing a minimum wage for government contractors and providing more resources towards citizenship and greater peace of mind for families of undocumented immigrants. We see this as planting the seed for more progressive and comprehensive policies in the future; if the massive cohort of federal employees believes the policies work, they may be protected even from Republican-led governments and be used as the basis for future policies.

Addressing the community college plan, we believe that such a policy, if well made, could be useful for the enrollment and retention of lower income students. Missouri high schools offer the A+ Program, which, in exchange for service or tutoring hours, offers free tuition to participating community colleges in the area.

While one editor didn’t use this opportunity, their parents greatly valued the presence of this program in Missouri. Several editors remarked that they would have highly considered the option if it were available in their states.

We see Obama as feeling very limited by a sometimes-recalcitrant Congress and expect him to continue to use executive actions and other federal policies to cement his legacy.