After a bizarre and exhausting academic year, students at the University of Maine are finally dragging themselves to the finish line of finals week, and while the restrictions of the pandemic are especially regrettable for graduates, they illuminate the truth in those cliches which many of us take for granted: the importance of being part of a community.   

In less than two weeks, members of the class of 2021 will be moving on to new professional and academic opportunities, with the majority doing so outside of Maine, according to research by Zippia. With those new experiences will come the inevitable anxieties of building new lives and relationships in an unfamiliar place, but access to local journalism can be an incredible and undervalued resource for this pursuit. 

For those graduates who will not be pursuing further education, the fact of the matter is that building a life beyond the confines of casual acquaintances at work can be a daunting task. 

Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told the New York Times that so many people make their closest friends in college because it is an environment that promotes the three widely-accepted factors for nurturing friendships: proximity, repeated and spontaneous interactions and settings that encourage meaningful social engagement.  

Life during the COVID-19 pandemic has been something of a trial run in this way, as it has similarly stifled these factors in students’ everyday lives. 

At The Maine Campus, staff members have found just as well as anyone that maintaining a sense of community and camaraderie amidst pandemic restrictions can be a struggle, even with the modern “miracles” of Zoom, email, social media, etc. to fill the void of social interaction. However, the fracturing of UMaine’s student population made telling its stories seem more important than ever, and so contributors, editors and production staff persevered. 

Not quite the “journalism heroes of the pandemic era” that The Washington Post over-eagerly slapped on one of its headlines, student journalists simply continued to do their best to connect the members of their communities in the same way they always have. This is a service that community journalism outlets have historically performed magnificently, and they can serve as invaluable guides to the nuances and storylines of the places where graduates will work, live, socialize and vote. 

However, local news organizations are a dying breed, as many have disappeared since online traffic giants like Google and Facebook began to dominate the advertising market and rendered traditional news revenue models unsustainable. 

According to a 2019 study by the Brookings Institute, between 2008 and 2018 the news industry experienced a 68% drop in advertising revenue. This had a devastating effect on local news outlets especially, who have struggled to transition to subscriber-based or nonprofit models, and, as of 2019, over 65 million Americans live in counties with only one local newspaper or none at all. 

Living in one of these “news deserts” may not seem like a major crisis, but without local news, the news consumption of entire communities becomes focalized through the perspective of the national media, rather than the perspective of those that live in their own town or county. Brookings also found that voters in communities where local newspapers closed were less likely to split their votes. In essence, when local news disappears, the individual values of a community can very quickly fade into the overwhelmingly polarized political landscape. 

Many opinion columnists in national news outlets like The New Republic and The Hill have suggested that local newspapers are so vital to the health and civic engagement of communities that they should be accounted for in President Biden’s $3-4 trillion infrastructure plan. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, many independent newspapers facing a bleak future have rallied behind proposals like the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which would subsidize the expenses of news subscribers, local journalists and small business advertisers with tax write-offs, while economists prefer simply providing consumers with vouchers that they can use to pay for the subscriptions of the local outlet of their choice. 

As with most solutions proposed at the federal level, these kinds of legislation could solve many of the news industry’s problems, or they could never see the light of day. The fact remains that there is a correlation between a healthy, civically engaged community, and healthy local news coverage. 

As future community members across Maine, the United States and the world, who will inevitably struggle to find their own place within them, there is something to be said for paying $30-50 for a year’s subscription to the local paper, as a first step toward expanding your local engagement. If this year has taught us anything, it’s that our communities and our abilities to communicate with each other are more than worth investing in.

Content Warning: The following article contains language that discusses sexual assualt, harassment and rape that may offend some readers. To speak in confidence about experiences of sexual assualt, you can contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault at 1-800-871-774. 

Among the undergraduate student population, 26.4% of females and 6.8% of males experience rape or sexual assault in their time as students. That is according to one 2020 study by the Association of American Universities, cited by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). For many, this is an unsurprising data point, but too often it is one that is ignored or quietly kept from those who would rather not think about it. 

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and the University of Maine’s Title IX Student Services office is working with campus and community partners to put together a variety of programs and other online events, such as weekly Teal Tuesdays, a webinar on navigating casual hookups and a virtual 5k to promote awareness for sexual assault. However, the average student could be forgiven for not knowing about these opportunities, seeing as the information is mostly located on either the university’s Title IX webpage or buried in a Friday Futurecast. 

Pandemic-hampered communications aside, it is also arguable whether promoting awareness is really the most productive avenue for the university to promote a safer, healthier campus climate.

A 2019 study by University of North Carolina researchers, published in the journal Violence Against Women, investigated university students’ usage of formal campus sexual assault resources like counseling, Title IX services and campus police, which researchers suggest that only 10% of survivors seek out. The study reports that some sociocultural barriers to students using these formal resources include stigma, feelings of shame or embarrassment, fear of reprisal from the accused and thinking that nothing would come of reporting. 

The study clarifies that in some cases the best course of action for a survivor’s well-being is not to pursue formal avenues, but rather informal support systems like family and friends. However, college administrations can also contribute to the mitigation, or inflammation, of the barrier factors described by the researchers through their actions, communications and the ways in which they nurture a larger campus culture. 

In 2019, the Bangor Daily News published a troubling article detailing the stories of two students at the University of Maine at Farmington who both sought help from the university’s Title IX office after being sexually assaulted. In both cases, committees came to the conclusion that the women’s allegations were accurate before the decisions were bizarrely overturned after the fact. These students walked away from their college experiences feeling utterly betrayed by the institutions that they allowed themselves to be vulnerable to. Regardless of verdict, that is something that can and should be avoided. 

Despite the dismal picture that these stories painted, former-UMF interim President Eric Brown’s response was about the best that could have been expected from an administrator in his position. 

“I was personally moved and saddened by this article. Nothing is more important to our well-being as an institution than the safety and trust of our students. I look forward to open conversations in the days ahead about how to ensure UMF is the best possible guardian of both,” Brown wrote in an email to the UMF community which was republished by the Bangor Daily News.  

Title IX is a sweeping civil rights law, passed in 1972 as part of a collection of other education legislations, which prohibits sex discrimination in education programs. College policies for responding to accusations of sexual assault, which fall under Title IX, have been intensely politicized since the civil rights law was passed. Under the Trump presidency, Secretary of Education Betsey DeVos instituted controversial rules which had administrators investigate allegations through courtlike tribunals that allowed accusers to be cross-examined by the defense’s representation. 

Many survivor advocates have argued that the rules enabled colleges to dissuade accusers from coming forward with convoluted rules and intimidating processes. 

“We’re really seeing it used as a way for schools to confuse and manipulate survivors, which is really what we’ve seen for decades,” Sage Carson, the manager of Know Your IX, a survivor advocacy group, told The New York Times. “Now it’s this really scary process on the books, and it gives the schools a way to say, ‘Do you really want to go through this?’”

In March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to the new Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, and during his campaign he promised to deconstruct the Trump-era rules. However, neither the president nor the secretary have been specific about how the rules will change, and any changes can be expected to take more than a year, according to NBC News. 

While the president’s reforms may help a year or so down the line, colleges and other educational institutions at all levels can start advocating for changes right now regarding the ways in which they fail to address sexual assault and sexuality. 

In her own article published in The Maine Campus, contributor Leah Savage argued that discussions about sexuality and sexual assault need to start early with young men and women in order to combat the culture of shame and stigma that prevents survivors from coming forward. 

Research by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center suggests that Comprehensive Sexuality Education, a K-12 style of sex education that develops and builds as individuals themselves develop behaviorally and physically, addresses the majority of the risk factors typically associated with sexual violence. 

This is to say, sexual assault cannot be solely or even mostly addressed with policy or formal supports, and it certainly cannot be addressed in a month. Perhaps it should be treated like a lifelong, ongoing process of open communication, free of stigma — like a relationship.

Maine’s recreational opportunities are part and parcel of the state’s identity; access to nationally recognized wonders like Acadia National Park and Baxter State Park are fundamental to the appeal of living and vacationing in the state. However, the popularity of these landmarks often means that they can be overcrowded and underestimated, and every season hikers are injured, sometimes fatally, miles from their trailheads. While services and circumstances can be held to some account, these situations ultimately fall on the responsibility of the recreationalists themselves. 

On Saturday, March 20, the bodies of two hikers from Massachusetts, a man, 28, and a woman, 30, were discovered after they fell over 100 feet and died on the icy cliffside of Dorr Mountain in Acadia National Park. Two days prior, a 26-year-old hiker had to be rescued by an Army National Guard Helicopter crew after falling on the park’s infamously dangerous Precipice Trail. 

According to the Maine Warden Service’s 2019/2020 Search and Rescue Report, hikers made up a significant majority of the rescues for the season at 107, up from 93 the year prior. The next highest category was watercraft at 60. Surprisingly, the majority of these rescues were not on especially strenuous or dangerous trails like Precipice or those on Katahdin. Instead, it was Tumbledown Mountain, located just outside of Weld and featuring a 1.5 mile loop trail, that led to over 16% of all searches. 

Precipice Loop is widely known to be treacherous even in the best weather, and the official National Park Service webpage for the trail clearly indicates that it should not be attempted by children, those with a fear of heights or in inclement weather. However, the page for Dorr Mountains South Ridge Loop, while not nearly as exposed but still dangerous under the right circumstances, features no suggestions that the trail could be at all unsafe. Neither page advises hikers on how to prepare for icy conditions. 

However, trail descriptions on government websites can often go overlooked regardless; suffice to say that the responsibility falls on the individual hiker to understand the risks that they expose themselves to. Easy access to short, and therefore seemingly easier, trails in popular recreation areas like Acadia often lead recreationalists to be overconfident and underprepared, which becomes all too clear when things suddenly go wrong. Things like layers, additional traction, proper footwear, headlamps, extra food and water, a map and first aid kits are necessities that, when overlooked, can make or break a hiker’s well-being and even survival. 

As a result of a national increase in recreation and outdoor exploration during the pandemic, there has been a similar increase in search and rescues. According to Outside Online, Mount Rainier National Park rangers have completed more search and rescues in 2020 than in any of the previous five years. This trend has been mirrored across the country and will more than likely continue in Maine as the weather warms and the ice below tree level melts.

Maine will be dropping the majority of its travel restrictions before the tourism season begins on Memorial Day, and since the announcement, camping reservations have skyrocketed. According to CentralMaine.com, camping reservations at Maine state parks are up 66% from a year ago. While a relief for Maine’s recreation and hospitality industries, these increased numbers portend significantly increased stress on Maine’s natural spaces and their stewards. 

An unprecedented number of individuals are seeking adventure in the great outdoors more than ever before, which is fantastic, but also means that an unprecedented number of people need to be acquainted with the standards and etiquette necessary to explore safely and conscientiously. 

Many new hikers may not necessarily be acquainted with the Leave No Trace standards that parks ask visitors to hold themselves to. This is to say, people disrupt the natural space and ecosystem by littering, stepping off of trails in spaces where vegetation is vulnerable and failing to properly bury their poop, which is mostly just gross. As the influx of new hikers continues across the country, it is imperative that park staff endeavor to communicate Leave No Trace standards and vital safety information to recreationalists as they arrive.  

With that said, preparation is not an ethic that can be instilled through a brochure and one doesn’t need to be an experienced hiker to make safe decisions in the mountains. More than anything else, it’s about knowing your limits. 

“It can be kind of crushing to your soul to have to do that, but sometimes your best option is to just turn around,” Jodi Brewer, a Maine resident and novice spring hiker, told News Center Maine. “I typically plan the hike I want to do and if the conditions aren’t conducive to me doing that, I have a second option in the area that I can go do.”

In the same spirit as “building back better,” the nation’s revitalized desire for adventure on its public lands represents an opportunity to instill a new respect for nature and an understanding of the risks that one takes in failing to do so. No one wants to eat their humble pie 4,000 feet above sea level and five miles from the car.

Last Tuesday in Atlanta, a white man shot and killed eight people, six of them Asian American women, and much of the response across social media seemed to follow a familiar routine of condemnation and information, thoughts and prayers followed by infographics and statistics. Calls for social justice from allies across social media over the last year, while generally rooted in good intentions, have often been labeled as performative, or “slacktivism”. To take full advantage of social media as an activist platform, well-meaning users ought to start thinking a little more critically about the purpose behind what goes on their Instagram stories. 

On Saturday, crowds of activists gathered in Atlanta, San Francisco, Houston, New York and various other communities across the country to march and rally in response to the shootings that targeted three Atlanta-area massage parlors. While authorities have not concluded that the killer’s motivation had to do with race, the tragedy has become a flashpoint for national condemnation, in the streets and online, of the uptick in hate incidents and racist rhetoric against Asian Americans since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stop AAPI Hate (AAPI standing for Asian American Pacific Islander), a nonprofit that tracks incidents of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States, received reports of 3,795 hate incidents between March 2020 and February 2021, which their report clarifies “represent only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur.”

While many Asian Americans have been afraid to leave their homes for fear of becoming another statistic, social media has been an equally hostile environment.  

According to a Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health, analysis of discourse on social media platforms from October 2019 to March 2020 revealed increases in sinophobic, or anti-Chinese, slurs. The New York Times reported that use of racists slurs for COVID-19 on sites and apps like Telegram and 4chan rose in December and that anti-Asian sentiment on Twitter has followed the rhetoric of conservative leaders like Donald Trump with hashtags like #gobacktochina and #makethecommiechinesepay.  

One of the benefits of the flood of condemnation, grief, and support on social media that follows nationally publicized tragedies like that in Atlanta is that, however briefly, hateful and prejudiced sentiments are overwhelmed by advocacy in the form of calls to action, infographics, links to organizations to which users can donate, and various other media. However, these responses can also expose the danger of mass-mediated activism. 

An extreme but useful example is the response to the shooting by 88rising, a media company that promotes Asian hip-hop musicians. The post was simply a yellow square with the caption beginning with “Enough is enough.” This was, of course, an ill-advised attempt to mimic the black squares that many users shared on social media platforms for Blackout Tuesday, which was a campaign in response to the death of George Floyd last May.   

The backlash from Twitter users against 88rising was swift, and the company took it down to post a hasty apology soon after. While the company likely had good intentions, it not only invoked the harmful “Yellow Peril” stereotype that dates back well into America’s xenophobic history but copied a campaign that was widely criticized for drawing attention away from useful and important information from the Black Lives Matter movement in favor of posting countless, useless black squares.  

Professor Pamela Hovland, a senior critic of graphic design at Yale who teaches courses on visual representations of protest and activism, suggests that so-called performative activism should be viewed as part of individuals learning how to situate their place and actions within a larger movement. 

“I think that [#BlackoutTuesday] was more powerful in the end because of the critique that resulted from it,” Hovland told the Yale Daily News. “If you were someone that gave over to that quickly … and then heard about that critique afterward, it caused you to think: What am I doing in addition to this? Am I donating to the cause? Am I speaking to other people about this offline?”

Part of the reason that posts regarding social justice issues are often characterized or regarded as performative or virtue signaling is because it is simply a superficial, performative medium. The fact of the matter is that an Instagram story doesn’t lend itself to sincerity, so while it is a good start for disseminating news and information, it is not a key to meaningful action.    

On Friday, University of Maine students and faculty gathered informally on campus in response to the tragedy in Atlanta to write out phrases of solidarity in chalk on the sidewalks across campus. One might regard this as no more different than a post to one’s story, as an impermanent, easy-to-ignore, symbolic gesture. However, the one difference, and it is significant, is that those chalk messages are tangible, embedded in the campus, however impermanently. Like an Instagram post, it’s not the answer, but if it’s followed by critical thought and conversations within the community, then it’s a decent place to start. 

On March 5, Gov. Janet Mills released a plan to exempt all states from travel restrictions by May 1 and to increase indoor and outdoor gathering capacity to 75% and 100%, respectively, in preparation for the traditional opening of Maine’s tourism season over Memorial Day weekend. However, many workers in the hospitality industry will not have been eligible for vaccinations by the time the state reopens, exposing an already vulnerable population of essential staff to undue risk. 

While Maine’s hospitality industry has suffered immense losses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a vaccination plan that doesn’t account for workers’ concerns will only undermine any potential economic recovery. 

Mills’ Moving Maine Forward plan is, in and of itself, something that Maine’s hotel and restaurant owners and staff dearly need. According to HospitalityMaine, about 10% of hospitality businesses went out of business in 2020, and the Bangor Daily News has reported that Maine restaurant’s taxable sales declined 25% in December alone. Sen. Angus King has publicly lamented restaurant sale losses of about $240 billion and job losses of around 2.5 million nationally, in an effort to stir up support for stimulus spending on the hospitality industry in the Senate, but every solution besides reopening is not much more than a Band-Aid.   

However, any attempt at reopening restaurants and hotels for the event reservations and tourism that once powered the industry will not work without, well, workers. Without a place in the state’s current vaccination timeline, many simply will not return.  

On March 3, the governor’s office made a significant change to the state’s vaccination plan by shifting from a complex phase structure that prioritized health care personnel and long-term care facility residents to a logistically simpler system that structures eligibility based on age, in addition to federally required eligibility for all members of the education workforce. 

The current plan only expands eligibility to residents below the age of 40 in June and below the age of 30 in July. This is to prioritize older Mainers who are more likely to experience severe symptoms and place more strain on the healthcare system. The only problem is that much of the young hospitality staff will be expected to expose themselves to out-of-state germs for months with lower capacity restrictions before they can receive a vaccine. 

Rich Shambaugh is one Maine restaurant owner who was incredulous in response to the state’s conflicting plans, according to the Portland Press Herald.  

“Without being able to vaccinate our staff, and the floodgates of exposure from other states having been ratcheted open, how can we possibly return to normal operations?” Shambaugh asked in a letter to state officials.

Ted Hugger, owner of the Cedar Crest Inn in Camden and the Cod Cove Inn in Edgecomb, has already noticed an uptick in wedding reservations for the summer in response to the state’s plan, but he told the BDN that he is concerned that rehiring enough staff “will be an issue.” 

The obvious limitation for any plan regarding vaccinations is the number of vaccinations that are actually available; since President Biden has required states to prioritize all educators, supplies have been even more strained. It bears acknowledging that adding another large demographic to an already burdened eligibility plan is not quite a politically viable decision for the governor or state leaders. 

However, since Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act and forecast vaccine eligibility expanding to all adults come May 1, that could give state leaders significant wiggle room. Otherwise, the wisest decision could be to simply revise the Moving Maine Forward plan to be less ambitious. 

Chloe Hepburn, a former UMaine student and staff member at the Maine Campus and current restaurant and hotel employee in the Portland area, created a Change.org petition to Maine leaders calling on Gov. Mills to include essential workers in vaccination plans. 

“It goes without saying that we all want life to go back to normal, but lifting these restrictions before vaccinating the employees that keep Maine’s tourism industry alive is a dangerous step backwards,” Hepburn writes on the petition’s page, which can be found here. 

Balancing people’s health and a state’s economic woes is not simple, and neither are the logistical details involved in creating and implementing a comprehensive vaccination plan. With that said, that is exactly what Maine leaders need to do in order to stand on ethically solid ground and reopen the state to the rest of the country.

On March 3, President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and members of the University of Maine’s Commencement Committee held a virtual town hall on YouTube to present a revised hybrid plan for the class of 2021’s commencement ceremony, in response to a Change.org petition rebuking the initial virtual plan that has now garnered over 1,700 signatures. This sort of response from students is impressive, but the town hall currently sits at just under 300 views. If the class of 2021 truly wants to have a hand in creating a memorable commencement, then their engagement needs to extend beyond typing their name into a petition. 

The events leading up to Wednesday’s town hall were something of a saga, but one that the average student could be forgiven for missing. It began with a memo sent to the UMaine and Machias campus communities announcing that this year’s commencement would be entirely virtual in light of COVID-19 continuing to ravage the country. This in turn inspired Brody Osborne, a fourth-year mechanical engineering technology student at UMaine, to post a petition calling for an in-person ceremony to the UMaine Class of 2021 Facebook page, eventually attracting the attention of news sources like the Portland Press Herald and News Center Maine. 

“So I guess it’s disappointment in the university administration, it feels like nothing was really done to even attempt to make this happen in person,” Osborne said to News Center Maine. “There’s certainly enough space and opportunity in this campus that some kind of in-person even can be held.” 

Osborne’s frustrations, the frustrations of many soon-to-be graduates, are absolutely valid. The classes of 2020 and 2021 were not dealt a fair hand, and the university’s administrators arguably should have expected the president’s sudden and brief memo to become an immediate target for students’ ire. 

However, the total views of the town hall represent less than 17% of those that signed the petition (if we assume that every viewer was a signee). Even accounting for the fact that town halls, as a general rule, are often boring and token opportunities for communities to air their grievances, this turnout is immensely disappointing considering how important the issue seemed for so many people. 

The commencement committee not only introduced a new, audience-less hybrid plan that would allow students to process across the stage in the Collins Center for the Arts and film each of them for their families, but it also clarified a number of the barriers limiting the university’s ability to host a larger event, such as Gov. Janet Mills’ executive orders imposing limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings. 

This is not to say that the town hall was not lacking in some ways. For one, there was no mention of the stream on either the class of 2021’s Facebook, where the petition gained its initial traction, or the class council’s Instagram pages. Additionally, while UMaine’s commencement webpage states that the committee includes student representatives, there were none given the floor during the stream, a significant missed opportunity to not only talk about student participation but show it as well. 

However, this isn’t to say the members of the committee were insincere with their sympathies.  

“I should’ve walked with my master’s degree May 2020, and so I truly understand what it means to not have that piece,” Benjamin Evans, coordinator for campus activities, said during his closing remarks at the virtual town hall. “What’s a little tough is that what’s best for our students is also making sure they don’t get COVID and making sure that they don’t take COVID home to their parents and their grandparents.” 

There are nine weeks left until commencement, and there are a variety of ways for students to make their voices heard before decisions are finalized. The class of 2021 council holds open Zoom meetings every Tuesday from 5:30-6 p.m. to discuss commencement and senior week, there is a suggestion form on the university’s dedicated commencement page and the committee will be sending out a survey in the coming weeks to get student’s feedback and assess their interest in the hybrid event.

To use these opportunities for communication with university decision-makers effectively, students will need to make their peace with the realities of the COVID-19 crisis. Administrators will not plan for an outdoor event, there will be no large gathering of even a fraction of the 1,600 students that typically graduate each year, and friends and family will not be allowed to attend in-person. The fact of the matter is that people, students and administrators, are more likely to take an argument seriously if they feel heard. This goes both ways.      

Many graduates could probably care less. If the petition was just a bit of organized fist-shaking, well that’s just fine. But if the class of 2021 is willing to toss out some ideas at a meeting, or participate in a survey or two, commencement might not be an entirely awkward affair. Which, after the last two semesters, would be really nice.

Last week I found myself in one of the most frustrating and painful conversations that a woman can find herself in: I was begging someone to take a sexual assault seriously. It wasn’t that this person didn’t believe that the assault happened, or that someone they knew was capable of raping someone. It was just that they didn’t care enough to do anything besides avoid eye contact, and muster out an “oh wow,” or the ever-so-meaningless “yeah,” all coded language for, “please stop talking about this I feel uncomfortable.” Later, after the shame of not caring had turned into defensiveness, I heard one of my listeners bragging about how funny their rapist friend had been the night before.

 The conversation left me feeling defeated and hopeless; how on earth are we meant to change rape culture if people don’t care? Of course everyone is going to say that rape is bad, but that does not mean anything if we aren’t able to uphold that value in our own lives. It was with these frustrations swirling in my mind that I decided to front the $20 to watch Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film, “Promising Young Woman.”

 A brief disclaimer: this is not a movie review, but an examination of Fennell’s brilliant example of how misplaced most people’s feelings about sexual assault really are. The film is a thriller-comedy and follows Cassie, played by Carey Mulligan, as she seeks revenge on rapists and rapist-enablers alike. Some critics seem to only seek out flaws in this masterpiece of feminist commentary, like The New York Times’ Jeanette Catsoulis, who wrote that the film, “too often backs away from its potentially searing set up.” I say they are missing the point. 

This film perfectly illustrates the most maddening aspect of rape-culture: the priority of protecting the rapist, in most cases the man, at all costs. This typically emerges in the form of blaming the survivor of the assault referring to the way they dressed, their sexual reputation, how much they had to drink, their mental stability, and various other excuses. 

 Perhaps the most meaningful moment of the film is when one of the victims of Carrie’s vengeance the very rapist that set her vendetta into motion, tells her that a man’s worst fear is to be accused of rape, to which she responds, “do you know what a woman’s worst fear is?” To put it simply, if one does not want to be called a rapist, don’t rape people.

 This film left me wondering: if the people who I was having a conversation with earlier that day had been exposed to this perspective on sexual assault earlier in life, perhaps they would have more sympathy for the person that their friend assualted. Perhaps they would recognize their own complicity in a culture that consistently fails to hold men accountable for their actions.

Research suggests that it would, and the earlier that parents, teachers and other role-models start have tough conversations about sexual assault with young men, the better. Teaching students about sexuality, and what consent really means is essential in reducing practices like slut-shaming and will help put an end to the cultural norms that perpetuate rape-culture. While the content of “Promising Young Woman” might be too mature to be shown to young students, its content should be taken seriously and used to inform others.

Remember when this was all supposed to be a two-week shut down? Everyone seemed so optimistic at the beginning. People took time to indulge in their hobbies, making sourdough starter kits, writing music, catching up on all the shows they never had time to watch. All of this under the assumption that they only had a couple of weeks until everything returned to normal, then those weeks turned into a couple of months, those turned into half a dozen, and now, in a few days, it will be the anniversary of the initial shutdown. However, there are increasing indications that we’re near the end of it all, that the pandemic is slowly coming to an end.

Along the way, everyone lost their initial optimism. People are even questioning if things will ever go back to normal and not without good reason. This virus is unlike anything most people have seen in their lifetime. As a country, we’ve lost over 500,000 citizens, and many of us have lost too many friends and family members. But we can and will get through this. 

As of today, new cases are a third of what they were two months ago. Death rates have also decreased. If that isn’t enough to instill a little optimism, take a look at the progress made with vaccines. At the beginning of President Joe Biden’s administration, he set the goal to vaccinate 100 million Americans within his first 100 days in office. He then changed the vaccination goal from 100 to 150 million Americans. As of right now, from estimations from the CDC, 77 million or 10% of Americans have been vaccinated. If kept on the same path, the administration will surpass its goal.

It seems ages away, but things could be back to feeling normal as soon as the fall or, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, as late as the beginning of 2022. All of this isn’t just speculation. There is an attainable end to the pandemic within sight.

2020 taught us not to get too ahead of ourselves. Any time I suggest that the end of all this isn’t far out of reach, someone reminds me that I shouldn’t get too excited because things could always get worse. Things can and will get derailed. Or, worst of all, life may never really go back to normal. Just because it can get worse doesn’t mean we should assume it will. We can hope for the best and prepare for the worst, so let’s do it. For now, to make sure we reach the end, we must all do our part to help move things along as we have been. We got to where we are for a reason. After all, you wouldn’t stop running right before you finish the race. Wear your masks, practice social distancing, wash your hands frequently, use hand sanitizer, and most of all, stay optimistic. We’re almost out of this.

Maine’s housing market seems to be stuck between a rock and the state of Massachusetts. 2020 was a record year for home sales due to mass-migrations of wealthy teleworkers from crowded cities, and with demand refusing to subside, accessible regions like the greater Portland area are struggling to keep up with a dwindling inventory of homes and apartments. Such shortages have historically resulted in resentment amongst communities that have to deal with skyrocketing housing and rental prices. While municipalities will likely have to address the difficult issue of rezoning for new development, residents, new and old, would do well to embrace their new neighbors and the benefits they offer their communities.

The cause behind the unprecedented demand for housing outside of dense, urban environments has everything to do with the massive shift to teleworking across the country at the outset of the pandemic. The fact of the matter is that a small apartment or condominium isn’t so appealing when it’s suddenly one’s office as well.  

“Most people want to own a home that they can work out of, that they can recreate from. A rural environment is attractive,” Madeleine Hill, president-elect for the Maine Association of Realtors, told Maine Public. “The narrative is we’re seeing people come in and buying in small rural towns, not just in southern Maine.” 

With this kind of housing boom, the untenable increases in housing and rental prices that push out middle and working-class residents from popular communities like South Portland can produce significant resentment towards their new neighbors. Northern Idaho is experiencing the same phenomenon, and Boise has been struggling with it for years. 

In the 2019 Boise mayoral election, Candidate Wayne Richey gained traction and attention with a platform entirely devoted to preventing Californians from moving to the city. According to the Los Angeles Times, Boise’s median home and rental prices have been steadily driven up since 2018 by explosive influxes of wealthy buyers from California trying to escape the Golden State’s own housing crisis. While Richey’s one-track platform was extreme, it expressed many Idahoans’ frustration with a housing market that has been seemingly impossible for them to compete in. 

Now, Boise’s stressed housing market has extended well beyond the city into northern Idaho’s rural towns in counties like Kootenai, where out-of-towners are pursuing the very same things as those moving to Maine, and it is producing a climate in which residents are afraid to sell their homes because they may not be able to find another that they can afford. 

According to The Spokesman Review, “People are moving from larger West Coast cities to North Idaho for a variety of reasons, including proximity to lakes and outdoor activities, the ability to work remotely, and what they consider to be a more moderate political climate with lower taxes.” 

With no end in sight to this current housing climate, it stands in residents’ best interest to acknowledge the benefits of this influx of remote workers. For one, it stands to significantly benefit the state in terms of its ambitious economic goals. With an aging workforce, the state expects to see a loss of 16,000 in the workforce by 2028 as residents retire, according to the Bangor Daily News. Gov. Mills has set the goal of increasing the workforce by 75,000 by the end of the decade, and encouraging more teleworkers to move to the state could help to offset some of the anticipated losses. 

Additionally, Maine’s rural counties, where traffic from out-of-state is typically seasonal, have experienced significant boosts in home sales that have been mirrored in the local economy. According to the Portland Press Herald, home sales for the period of November through January in Piscataquis County have nearly doubled since the year prior, and Maine Public reported that the median price of units in Franklin County had increased from $150,000 in the summer of 2019 to $194,000 in the summer of 2020.  

However, while inviting more teleworkers to Maine could improve the state’s workforce, it is unclear how much it would affect the measures for economic productivity, gross domestic product (GDP) and value-added per worker. While the workers could very well reside in Maine, the hubs of the entities that they work for could remain in cities like Boston, complicating the true measure of their labor’s contribution to Maine’s economy.

While individual municipalities should pursue sustainable ways to increase housing inventory like affordable housing projects and zoning regulations that permit increased housing density in already developed areas, Maine residents should look at cities like Boise as instructive examples. Very little can be done to limit the migration of out-of-state residents who are willing to pay top dollar for whatever is available; in the short term, Mainers should welcome them as the economic stimulus that they are. Otherwise they will have no reason not to return to the apartments and condos from whence they came.

On Saturday, Feb. 13, Community Water Justice, a group dedicated to combating water privatization in Maine, held a protest in Fryeburg in response to the news that Nestle S.A., the Swiss food and drink processing corporation, was in negotiations with One Rock Capital Partners LLC, a New York-based private equity firm, for the sale of a number of Nestle’s bottled water brands, including the Poland Spring brand and its nine springs in the state. While Mainers should not necessarily have to worry about a Wall Street firm pillaging their aquifers, the public anxiety surrounding this possible sale speaks to a larger, ongoing debate in the U.S. regarding the commodification of water as its availability becomes increasingly unreliable.   

While Maine has not yet come to a reckoning with its use of water as a public utility, it is safe to say that the entire country has been continually struck by the fragility of the water supply in states like California. According to CNN, California accounts for 9% of water usage in the U.S., with the majority of the water used for agriculture. Because of this, when drought strikes parts of the state it can be crippling for farmers who are forced to spend unprecedented financial resources on surplus water from other parts of the state when demand is highest. 

Wall Street’s solution to this problem was, of course, to make it more complicated. They did so by introducing a market for water futures; a futures contract is, in short, an agreement to a fixed price on a specific asset (water) at a specific point in the future. This new option stands to benefit farmers who can, essentially, purchase water for the parts of the year when they anticipate drought. 

However, for anyone who has seen “The Big Short” or “Mad Max,” the implications of this unprecedented avenue for purchasing water rights may be a little unsettling. It doesn’t take an economics degree to imagine a scenario where a smug Wall Street hedge fund purchases an abundance of water futures and then sells them high when farmers are desperate. As Basav Sen, climate justice project director at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Gizmodo, “What this represents is a cynical attempt at setting up what’s almost like a betting casino so some people can make money from others suffering.”  

With regard to Nestle’s dealings in Maine, the situation is not nearly as dystopian, but there are some shady aspects. For instance, in 2015 all three members of Maine’s Public Utilities Commission, which exists to regulate entities like Nestle, had to recuse themselves for conflicts of interest when a new, 45-year deal between the private Fryeburg Water Company (now the public Fryeburg Water District) and Nestle came to them for review. However, there is little evidence to support accusations that Nestle’s withdrawals from aquifers in towns like Fryeburg and Lincoln have negatively impacted citizens’ access to those same resources. You won’t find “Mad Max” here. 

Confrontations between residents in the Fryeburg area, under the impression they have received the raw end of the deal, and Nestle have been ongoing since the early 2000s, according to The Guardian. On their website, the corporation has a page titled “Know the Facts about Nestle Waters in Maine,” where they lay out claims, such as “Poland Spring pays next to nothing to take water from Maine,” and proceeds to debunk them by arguing that their rates for purchasing spring water were “approved by the Maine Public Utilities Commission” (the same three members who had to recuse themselves for conflicts of interest). Suffice to say, from the perspectives of many citizens, it has not seemed like the playing field was particularly level. 

However, now that Nestle is selling Poland Spring, many are coming to the conclusion that the devil you know is preferable to the devil you don’t.

“Nestle is at least a little bit more responsive to negative press,” Nickie Seckera, co-founder of Community Water Justice, said in an interview with the Bangor Daily News, “I think a private-equity firm is going to be even less responsive to the concerns of Maine people.”

What both the emergence of a market for water futures and the negotiations for the sale of Poland Spring signal is that there is a growing concern across the country that a basic resource for people’s survival will become poker chips for those that live thousands of miles away from them.

Congressional representatives like Rashida Tlaib and Debbie Dingell have prioritized combatting the privatization of water, with actions like reintroducing the Emergency Water is a Human Right Act in January, which would direct $1.5 billion to keeping taps on for struggling Americans. But this is not an issue that can be solved solely at the federal level. It falls on states, municipalities and citizens to consider the value of their natural resources, and whether that value is being distributed equally or being exploited by corporations and hedge funds with deep pockets and friends in high places.