On Friday, Dec. 11, 2020,the Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer-BioNTechCOVID-19 Vaccine for emergencyuse in the UnitedStates.
For many, this is along-awaitedrelief and for others a cause for further concern.
Jocelyn Avila, 20, of North Andover,says she would like to get the vaccine after seeing how it works for others.
Mirrorajah Metcalfe, 19, of Haverhill is hesitant to receive the vaccine once she becomeseligible. “It feels all too rushed,” she says.
Andrew Venditti, 21, from Haverhill, planson gettingthe vaccine eventually andsharedthat his momhas already received her firstdose and the only side effect has been “an itchy arm.”
The federal government is allowing each state to decide how they will distribute the vaccineto residents.
Massachusettshasa three-phase plan,prioritizing health care workers, first responders and public service providers. This plan is expected to allow everyone over the age of16that wishes to bevaccinated to receive the shot by the end of June 2021.
At this time, it is not clear as to whether the vaccine will be mandatory at some point in the future,like how the flu vaccine is mandatory for many health care workers, with few exceptions.
Metcalfe feels the vaccine should not be mandatory. “People should have the right to choose and a vaccine should not determine theirlivelihood.” she says. She feels more people will voluntarily receive the vaccine as time goeson andits safety and efficacyareproven.
Vendittifeels that everyonewhois able to get the vaccine should and in some cases it should be mandatory.He compared it to drinking and driving lawswhich are not only for the protection of the individual but also for those that can be injured by a drunk driver. A vaccinated person is not only protecting themselves, but those around him or her as well.
At this point, people all over, young and old, are familiar with personal protective equipment, of PPE, like masks and gloves.
MirrorajahMetcalfe, 19, of Haverhillwears PPEwhen she goes to workat MarketBasket anddisposes of it in a trash can when done.
Jocelyn Avila, 20, of North Andover uses glovesandreusable masks as often as possible todo her partin keepingextra trash to a minimum.“I hate litter,” she says.
Avilaalso cuts the loops on her disposable masks before throwing them awayto avoid animals getting stuck in them.
Andrew Venditti, 21, from Haverhill, is currently working from home but does use masks, both disposableand reusable,when out for walks with his dog Sherlock.
Unfortunately, we do not only see PPE on each other while we are at work or at thesupermarket, we also see it everywhere littering our streets, sidewalks, benches and various other surfacesand bodies of water.
Venditti has noticed the increase of PPE litter over the last several months.
“My dog finds masks and sometimes sniffs and picks them up,” he says.
He sees PPE litter all over main roads, on sidewalks and in gutters.
“It seems irresponsible and ignorant.” he says. “It’s so easy to just throw it away. Don’t be that guy.”
Venditti does give people some benefit of the doubt, saying, “Some trash gets blown around by the wind.”
Avila says she’s “annoyed, disgusted” and feels “secondhand embarrassment” byall the PPE litter she sees.
Thereare things that can be done to reduce and perhaps stop all the PPE litter.
Metcalfe suggests using reusablePPE that can be washed and used over and over.Avilasayslittering fines should be enforcedto deter people from littering.
Vendittithinks more signs in public on how to properly dispose of PPE could help.
A collage of various examples of personal protective equipment litter. Isa Grullon
This pandemic has been different for everyone. Some of us have been more busy than ever, and some of us have more free time than usual. In regards to that, the people of NECC have some TV show recommendations for readers of The Observer!
NECC student Ian Shea, who runs his own website, Your Favorite Nerd (yurfavoritenerd.com), has been watching the second season of The Mandalorian, which is the first live-action Star Wars series. “I’m a longtime Star Wars fan and I think the show is just fantastic. It has great action sequences, a compelling story and a phenomenal cast!” says Shea. The Mandalorian is on Disney+.
Shea has also been watching The Boys, which is an Amazon Original on Prime Video. The Boys is known to have a lot to say about various issues regarding society and morality, “A lot of its stories are a type of social commentary. It deals with how much society allows big corporations to influence people’s lives, whether or not we’re seeing people’s true colors, and what it really means to be a good and moral person.” says Shea.
One series that Shea has on his list that he hasn’t gotten around to yet, is Lucifer.
Another NECC student named Robert Smith, has been focusing on some lighter entertainment, “When I like to binge television shows, they must have a combination of some of the following: a great plot, the ability to make me laugh, a great cast, and they must be engaging (otherwise it is not worth spending numerous hours on the couch watching this).” says Smith. He has been watching Diners Drive-ins and Dives, Recess, 800 Words, and Impractical Jokers. TV series on Smith’s list that he hasn’t gotten around to yet include The Office, South Park, That’s So Raven, Raven’s Home, and Fuller House.
NECC Dean of Liberal Arts Amy Callahan has been watching The Crown, which is a TV series on Netflix based on Queen Elizabeth II. Particularly, Callahan has been enjoying Gillen Anderson’s role in the series, “Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher is a treat.” she says. On Callahan list is, The Queen’s Gambit, another Netflix Original, which follows a young chess player, “My family plays chess frequently, so I’m curious about that element of the show.” she says.
Personally, I’ve been enjoying The Mandalorian, and I also watched the first episode of the first season of The Boys – I’m hoping to continue with that show sometime soon.
The Community Outreach Group works throughout the academic year by doing meaningful work that supports the communities adjacent to NECC. These are included but not limited food drives, bake sales, recycling days and other selfless good deeds that help others in need.
On Dec. 11, this group put on a Holiday Trivia Night where all the proceeds went to the Fidelity House, an organization that supports families with people who have disabilities in the Merrimack Valley. The event overall was a success, and there were many highlights as well.
The most memorable part of the evening was the commentary of Dermot Luddy, the Master of Ceremonies for the evening.
Luddy provided his quick wit through every step of the way (including when technological difficulties arose because that is a theme of 2020) and used his thick Irish speaking skills to good use and made sure everyone was having a good time.
Luddy had good pace when asking the questions and was totally engaging with the participants as well. If there was one thing that could have been improved upon, I would have liked to see him give less hints, but that was the only flaw there in an otherwise great hosting job from him.
The participants reaction was overall great but could have been better at times. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, however during certain portions of the event there was a lack of energy. This could have been chalked up to being completely Zoomed out (because again 2020), and it got a tad competitive as the evening wore on, but that is to be expected when participating in a trivia contest. Luddy and NECC Professor Meredith Gunning did a great of getting the event back on track, and all was good in the end.
At the end of the trivia portion of the evening, a winner was declared. The lucky winner was Alisa Bucchiere, and she received a Yankee Candle basket worth $250.
Then we proceeded to the ugly sweater portion of the evening. The people who chose to participate in this contest went one by one showing off their ugly sweaters in the hopes of winning a basket. There were a lot of great sweaters out there, and this event was judged by Gage Prezioso, the President of COG.
Bucchiere again was the lucky winner of this event and took that gift basket as well. This event raised $1,149 and was a great way for NECC folks to connect with one another and support a worthy organization as well.
To learn more about the Community Outreach Group, please contact Professor Meredith Gunning at mgunning@necc.mass.edu. To learn more about the Fidelity House please visit their website https://fidelityhhs.org/.
Moment of the capture of journalist Romero while he was on his evening news. More than 100 policemen were used to capture him, who entered the radio station building to capture a person who was working in front of a microphone. Photo Daily El Heraldo, 07, 18, 2020
Although some newspaper articles state that Mexico and Syria are the most dangerous countries to be a journalist, I think they have long overlooked how dangerous it is for a journalist to work in the Republic of Honduras, a place that in 2013, during the establishment of a dictatorial regime, the highest global indicators of murders and deaths were reached in a country free of wars. Among those deaths, journalists were perhaps the group that experience the highest number of assassinations, mainly due to their commentary an investigative reporting into and against the dictatorial regime.
Every year the Infoplease[1] organization presents a ranking of the countries where more journalists are murdered while performing their work. Most of these countries are going through conflict, which in some way rationalizes the reason for the death of journalists who were at the time covering what happened on the battlefields. However, in the case of Honduras, there has not been any kind of war since 1969. Yet, they carry the rank of having the highest rate of death in the world.
In an interview with Mr. Hector Amador, who is the News Director of The Globe Group, possibly the strongest opposition news group in Honduras where he conducts the morning and afternoon news program. He began the interview addressing how difficult it is to practice investigative journalism in Honduras: “In Honduras, journalism is a high-level risk profession,” he said. “Not only because of the marginalization and boycott that opposition journalists are been facing, but also because of the death threats they normally received, especially from state institutions, including the president of the republic itself. Better said, dictatorship of the republic.”
Amador said that the problem of Honduras to the eyes of the international community is that many of the people killed while exercising communication work were not necessarily journalists, which shows a much lower indicator of the reality of the murders in our country than they really are.
He explained that the deaths of journalists in Honduras have been mainly due to complaints that they have exposed acts of corruption of politicians in high government positions as well as irregularities of business unions and in recent years, attacks against the environment due to business reasons. Even more, many of those social communicators did not just die during the exercise of their profession, they were first kidnapped and then assassinated or have experienced attacks by hitmen while driving or even been killed by “random bullets” to their heads.
In Honduras, there are other people, not necessarily professional journalists and even non-collegiate journalists but who are also engaged in social communication activity, writers or public relations who have also been assassinated. These people have been excluded from the statistics of assassinations because they didn’t have a degree in journalism even though they had a strong relationship with the management of social communication.
Amador mentioned the existence of one government office whose function is, in theory, to protect journalists. however, they have only provided them with a telephone number so that they can be contacted in case of receiving an attack. Unfortunately, in Honduras, it is very difficult to escape an assassination attempt. When it is happening, at least three heavily armed individuals shoot directly from different angles to the journalist they were paid to disappear. “When you are getting killed”, he used a sarcastic tone, “it has to be very hardly for a person to remember that someone gave him a telephone number to call and report the attack while he is receiving gunshots.”
In this regard, I commented that I remembered three months ago when I heard of a journalist who was shoot while doing an interview. Two hitmen on motorcycles began to follow him and shooting him to death. The journalist kept his camera and microphone on throughout the macabre event, recording his cries for help as he expired. To this event Amador said “By the way, this crime has still not been prosecuted.”
One of the darkest and poorly documented passages in Honduran history was the disappearance of journalists by official order, perhaps the most representative case of this genre is being the capture, imprisonment and subsequent murder of the journalist and social communicator David Romero H. when he served as Director of the newscasts of Radio Globo and Globo Televisión. The journalist Romero dedicated himself to the branch of investigative journalism that for many years, disclosing with ample evidence a series of acts of corruption that involved the current president and of Honduras[2].
Among the acts of corruption that the journalist Romero reported in the different newscasts that he directed are:
The financing of the presidential campaign of the current president with the diversion of funds from the Honduran Institute of Social Security for an amount greater than L.4,000 million (equivalent to 300 Million Dollars).
The extradition process and judgment for the introduction of drugs into North American territory of Antonio Hernandez, brother of the Honduran president, Juan Hernandez.
The systematic diversion of funds by the president’s wife and sister for more than 800 million dollars from different offices, particularly those that handle donations and international funds aid for natural disasters.
The link of the president of the republic with the case of his brother, in the role of conspirator in drug trafficking to the USA.
The political and secret movements of the ruling party aimed at launching a third illegal reelection of the current president.
More recently, participation in the diversion of 50 million Dollars allocated for the purchase of hospitals for the care of COVID-19.
Amador explained how his capture developed in March 2019. All began after Romero discovered a political trick to achieve the illegitimate presidential reelection. A few weeks later he denounced the hidden links of the the current Honduras’ president with the drug trafficking operation that his brother operated. A few days later he was irregularly captured and taken to a maximum security prison. He was charged with libel based on an old judgment that he was practically reinstated and sentenced to ten years in jail.
Never had a journalist or anyone else been sentenced in Honduras to such a long sentence for that same “crime”, which was even being eliminated from the new Honduran criminal procedure code. In an unprecedented speedy trial, he was convicted and transferred to a maximum-security prison where he was imprisoned and isolated for almost 16 months[3].
In the first days of June 2020, his wife was notified that Don David Romero was ill and that he would be transferred to a hospital. The transfer took place almost two weeks later, justifying bureaucratic paperwork. He was admitted to a hospital in the capital with symptoms of COVID-19, where he remained for two weeks. He passed away on July 18 due to complications from the virus.
The journalist Amador mentioned that there were several questions raised about this case. For example, how was it possible for him to have been infected if he was in a maximum security cell, without maintaining contact with anyone? Another unanswered question is why the medical team at the jail took so long to refer him to a hospital.? A medical source told me that the journalist Romero got infected through his food to an excessive viral load of COVID-19 and was not referred to any hospital until it was difficult, if not impossible, to reverse the delicate state of his health. He finished his questioning himself by saying that clearly this is a case of murder, which like many other cases, will remain in oblivion and impunity.
Unfortunately for Romero, even with the participation of the inter-American court and human rights offices, he was never able to regain his freedom. Another situation against him is that the Honduran judiciary is under the rule of the current dictatorship, so he could not accuse anyone. His file was disappeared and the investigation into his death was diluted in abandonment and impunity as many other.
After closing Mr. Romero’s story with sad voice, Amador recalled one of the first quotes of this interview, “It is dangerous to do journalism in Honduras”. “In my case, I leave my house at 4 in the morning to be ready for the 5 am news. I use two or three vehicles alternately and I always travel on different routes. Their fear intensified after great journalists such Anibal Barrow and Alfredo Villatoro, both hosts of the 5 am newscasts of other powerful radio stations, were kidnapped and found murdered several weeks later[4]. None of those cases were solved. Both are in the coldest impunity. Although unofficially, the entire journalistic union of the country knows who the intellectual authors of both deaths were.
He also mentioned that the station where he works simply does not receive advertising from the government. “Worse still, the government puts pressure on and threatens private companies that have an advertising contract with its radio station so that they do not make advertising contracts with said radio station. All this causes great pressure against the finances of the radio station.” He rest for a few seconds and then he continue developing the problematic the radio station where he works is facing. “Many journalists do not want to work here precisely for this reason. We live in a dictatorship disguised as democracy, where the government has managed to suffocate private companies that have the audacity to question or oppose its wishes and demands.” Then, he took a long pause before closing the interview.
A few days later, I was lucky to get a telephone interview with the journalist Merlyn Aplicano, an independent journalist for the news radio “En la Plaza”. She told me that being an independent journalist is complicated and even dangerous, since it is difficult for them to find a stable work place, mostly due to their nature of opposition to the government and their interest in discovering and publishing acts of corruption, it is difficult for them to get advertising contracts, and even jobs in other areas related to their profession. She worked part-time in an advertising agency and had to leave it since the agency could not be qualified to participate in government tenders. This boycott occurred because she worked in a news program where they attacked the efforts of the government in power. She had to quit from that agency.
Then, Aplicano expressed that an estimate of 20 journalists have been killed nationwide since 2000, mostly because at some point in their career, they published some of the scandals or corruption acts of the groups that currently occupy the presidential leadership. She also mentioned that even when there has never been a strong political opposition in Honduras, a few journalists have dared to write against the government as it is “popular knowledge” that the typical government response is not prison, but rather the disappearance, hit-and-run or murder of a relative of the journalist. She closed the interview by saying “it is hard to practice journalism in Honduras.”
In an interview with the journalist Miriam Elvir, Deputy Director of the Committee for Free Expression, known as C-Libre, she explained that Honduras is a country with a combination of a strong degree of impunity, asymmetry of information, a recent dictatorship that controls all the institutions and powers of the state, the country also has an easily corruptible society. She said it is not easy to work with all those factors against the people who work in journalism. She mention that the organization where she works keep records not only of murdered journalists but also of other people who are members of the same “ecosystem,” made up of cameramen, photographers, editors, presenters, even other people who have also been murdered while doing some social communication. She mentioned that between 2000 and 2010 a total of 4 to 6 murders of communicators were reported, but, between 2010 and 2020, an estimated 86 journalists and communicators were murdered where more than 95% of these cases are in impunity, or only a few of the material authors of the murders have been captured, but none of the intellectual authors who ordered the murders. Worse still, there is secrecy for the judicial files of murdered social communicators and journalists, where no one has access to them and they justify it by saying it is “by superior order”, contrary to what the laws and legal procedures dictate. Besides, obtaining justice is more complicated, given that it is speculated there are strong links between the executive branch, the legislative branch and the drug cartels in the country. The president’s brother is awaiting sentence for his ties to drug trafficking in a New York state jail. And everybody know that in Latin America, drug dealing is a family business.
The journalist Victor Aguilar, who works with the newscast channel 11, a member of the Diario Tiempo group, states (without mentioning the number of the year) that in Honduras more than 70 journalists have been murdered since opposition journalist appeared almost 20 years ago. He explained that, historically in Honduras, the written radio and televised media have been controlled by a small group of powerful families and business groups in the country that never held open opposition to government irregularities given their direct links, both with the government itself such is the case of former presidents Flores (1996-1999) and Maduro (2000-2004) who both owned newspaper and radio stations.
Aguilar continued explaining that it was at the beginning of the year 2000 when small newscasts began to appear in different cities of the country that focused their attention on creating a government opposition. These groups have found it difficult to expand their coverage, as they have suffered from targeted boycotts from government structures.
Twenty years later, some of them, such as the Globo Group and the Progreso group, have maintained their fierce opposition and investigative journalism. The rest succumbed to the boycott or accepted government bribes and preventions, making them new national potentates in a short time. He then said “I do not deny that at some point in the journalistic history of Honduras, a country where the legal framework has been systematically weak, some media outlets have abused their power, not only by publishing false news, but also by using extortion. media, for the benefit of a politician member of the families that have historically controlled the country.”
To support what the interviewed journalists expressed about the journalism environment in Honduras, I read an article written by Edwin Funez on November 3, 2019. Funez writes about the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights when denounced that in Honduras since 2010 more than 81 journalists have been murdered, which places the country as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the exercise of journalism. It also stated that more than 90% of the murders are in a state of impunity, regardless of the participation of having created a protection mechanism journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers, which is made up of government representatives and members of civil society[5]. His findings are consistent with the one claimed by the three journalists I previously interviewed.
With similar topic, an article written by The Daily of Las Américas published in Miami Fla, states in its edition of September 28, 2020, that in Honduras, an estimated 85 journalists and social communicators have been murdered, between 2001 and 2020. This information is a part of an article where they mention the murder of a journalist from the city of Comayagua, whose complaint to the police that he received life-threatening phone calls but never received the corresponding protection from the government. It is worth mentioning that, like this case, many others remain in impunity since not even government entities or human rights societies provide protective measures against journalists who make this type of requests and complaints.
In conclusion, the exercise of journalism in Honduras is highly risky, not only because of the weakness of the legal apparatus, but also because of the dominance exercised by the current dictatorial regime that controls the country, in all the sectors, institutional, judicial even private sectors.
There are two situations that inhibit the economic and social development in Honduras. First, the information asymmetry, where a group of communicators receive braves to presents a false face of the national reality. And second, the official pressure that is practically eliminating the independent journalist for their efforts to communicate their findings and research.
When the official communicators of Honduras express to the world about the country’s economic growth and potential, more than 100,000 people, entire families in caravans, are living the country trough all the borderlines. The lack of jobs, the unsafe conditions and treats to their life they confront on daily bases force them to leave their homes. They trust on those independent journalists who accompany them inform the world of the reasons that forced them to leave their home. They don’t want to be seen as opportunistic by the countries they would like to be received. Honduran people and the world must be informed of the critical situation they live. A situation which, unfortunately, in recent months has been deteriorated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the passage of two hurricanes in the month of July.
References:
Once periodistas destacados que fueron asesinados en Honduras
The entertainment industry is one of the most popular and influential things that we as human beings consume. One of the more popular themes that we are exposed to within this industry is violence, but there is a troubling aspect to this as well. The thing that concerns many folks out there, including me is the connection between violence in the entertainment industry and violence in real life. Acts of violence like mass shootings have been popping up quite frequently over the past couple of years, and it feels like the entertainment industry plays a role in this.
One of the biggest reasons for this is because the media tends to overdramatize the scenes that include violence in order to enhance the plot of the product they produce. There are many ways they do this from massive explosions, to big fight scenes, to using top of the line weapons among other things. While it often leads to a successful product, it can also show a susceptible audience (children) that violence is cool and shows that it is acceptable for anyone to solve their problems with violence.
There is another aspect that should be considered in this struggle as well and it is something that is difficult to talk about: mental health. While nobody has ever proven that there is a direct correlation between this, violence in the media and violence in real life it makes me wonder if we devoted more resources into this if events such as the Stoneham Douglas High School shooting and many others could have been possibly prevented if we had done this.
Now that the problem has been discussed, what are the ways that we can combat this problem to possibly prevent it from happening in the future. There are the old tried and true ways of doing this by controlling what are kids have access to, but kids will just find a way around that. There could be more resources devoted to mental health, but it is not on the top of the decision makers to do list. The discussions will continue to happen, and we need to figure out a solution now. Hopefully, the media will be a part of the solution instead of continuing to be a part of the problem.
Northern Essex Community College hosted a holiday themed movie night on Dec. 17. The community was encouraged to participate in the showing of the movie, The Holiday, being shown via Zoom. Any and all students and faculty members were welcome to join with a super simple signup through a link.
The organizer of this recurring movie night, Stephanie Haskell, actually calls it Theater Thursday. For members of the community who are trying to stay inside, this is a perfect plan for every other Thursday night during the holiday season.
This event can be found easily on the Northern Essex Community College website, along with many other events! This time of year is when COVID-19 cases are striking and people are being asked to stay inside. There is no better way to stay cozy and entertained than watching a holiday movie with the members of your community.
“I am always looking for a way to stay a part of my college’s community and this movie night is right up my alley,” says NECC Alumni Emma Formosi. Theater Thursday is perfect for current and past students, faculty, and family members!
It can be difficult to get into the spirit with everything going on in the world, but watching a holiday movie definitely helps!
For inquiries and mor information about Movie Night, feel free to contact Kalyn Ryll at kryll@necc.mass.edu.
No matter what your typical traditions may entail, this holiday season is most definitely going to look a little different this year. With the aim to keep family members and loved ones safe, many people are avoiding huge family parties or going out at all.
“This year’s going to be really different for my family, actually,” says NECC student, Emma Kallery. “Usually, I spend Christmas Eve with my mom’s side and Christmas Day with my dad’s (with around 15 people present for each day), but with everything going on this year, we all made the decision to stay home and celebrate within our own houses.”
Many other people have had to make difficult decisions like Kallery and since a large part of Christmas involves being close to the ones we love, people like Isabella Behm, who “…haven’t felt like it’s ‘that time of year,” are left with Zoom calls and curbside pickups to try and replace the once ‘jolly’ holiday.
For some, the inability to visit family is much more taxing.
“On Thanksgiving night two years ago (2018), after our usual gathering of the whole family, my dad fell ill and passed away two nights later. That’s one reason my sisters and I didn’t like the idea of nobody seeing my mom in person for Thanksgiving, ” NECC professor Dave Rattigan says.
“Originally, my teenage daughter and I were going to go over and sit at the other end of a long table from my mother, but I had contact with someone who had Covid so spent the whole week in self quarantine. My only contact with Mom came when she packed up a turkey dinner and I picked it up off her porch like a ransom drop.
“With cases escalating, I’m not sure about Christmas. One sister and her two adult kids are planning to self-quarantine for two weeks and go see my mother. I’m probably going to end up with another dinner-to-go from my mother’s porch.”
Being alone for the holidays has become somewhat the norm this year, and while this statement in of itself is a depressing one, it gives people something to bond over; a similarity between us all that will fuel the drive to hopefully make the get-togethers and parties of Christmas future worth waiting for.
In the meantime, students like Shaun Hood are making an effort to do the most within our current situation. “I even figured out how to play music in a Zoom meeting!” Hood exclaims, referring to his plans to meet his family via Zoom this Christmas.
“Hopefully things will get better in the new year and we can visit our relatives then,” says another NECC student, Greg Lagasse.
It is the constant reassurance of our own selves and others that things will indeed be good again, but rather than dreaming of ‘going back’ to normal, I believe we should try and ‘push ahead’ to something even better.
2020 has taught us all many valuable life lessons, one of which is the importance and values of a community. We’ve all learned so much about ourselves and one another through this pandemic that we can now attempt to take what we’ve learned and grow from here.
U.S. health workers today already began receiving their vaccinations, as there are 87 million essential workers in line for theirs. There is no guarantee all of them will receive one though due to the high demand.
“Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines submitted to US states say that the nation’s 21 million healthcare workers should be prioritised first, as well the three million elderly American sliving in long-term care homes,” according to the BBC.
Some companies had just got their vaccines passed by the FDA.
I was able to talk to Michelle Scott, a nurse that works at Lowell General Hospital and she was able to get hers.
“I had the option to get it or not and I felt it was the safest for me to get vaccinated,” she said. “Working in this field everyday you never know who you can come across and what they have.”
Another person I was able to speak with is a Methuen resident Ryan Adams. “I’m excited to be able to get the vaccine and try to move on with everyday normal life again,” he said.
The Trump administration predicts that by at least early February\ many more Americans will have the vaccination available to them.
“The company says they hope to have enough vaccines for 25 million Americans produced by the end of the year, and enough for 50 million by March,” said the BBC.
Cases are continuing to spike as more than 300,000 Americans have died from Covid since January 2020.
A normal life may still be further than we anticipate even with the vaccine out.T
he vaccine itself will not end this pandemic, as we need to take accountability as a community.
Life may not get better until next fall as the BBC news stated “Dr. Fauci says Americans may be able to roll back those necessary precautions by the autumn of 2021 if 70% of the U.S .population has been vaccinated by then.”
College students throughout the country have been asked to follow a unique set of expectations and requirements equating to seemingly nothing else in recent educational history this past year.
With serious adaptation necessary to adhere to COVID-19 protocols, college students at all levels seemed to pay the price both literally and figuratively, in the sense that each individual’s experience was inevitably hindered in some way this semester and for returning students or graduates the semester prior, as well continuing to pay the full price, of course ludicrous amounts for some schools, for an experience that for many did not feel worth it.
The similar and contrasting approaches and changes that have come acquainted with the altered experience has undoubtedly effected students of all ages, but outside of those set to graduate college in 2021 who have had their senior year stained, it feels the incoming freshman class got the shorter end of the stick in terms of the appeal in attending college.
While the opportunity for vast improvement in the remaining years should be taken into consideration before labeling their experience to be not worthwhile, for the limited and watered-down semester just endured to be their only taste of college life to this point, it should be of no surprise that many students are second-guessing their decisions or waiting out lifting of restrictions.
Students who attended NECC this past semester dodged a serious bullet in comparison to others, as costs associated with the community college is a small fraction lined up next to the price of other state and private schools, thus making transferring to NECC an attractive option to the number of Massachusetts students sent home or never even stepping on a campus as COVID-19 concerns grew.
While some schools have declared themselves optimistic and ambitious enough to open their campuses when students return for next semester, NECC, like many others, has chosen to continue operating over the computer. With these second and third weeks of December requesting final exams and projects, and knowing the semester ahead is likely to be more of the same, three first-year Northern Essex students were asked to reflect on their first college semester.
David Brickley, 19, is a business major in his first year at NECC who had initially hoped to go away for college, but instead chose to enroll at NECC.
“When our school shutdown in March, I was in the process of deciding between a few schools in Mass, then when things started to get more concerning, I hit pause on the decision. At the time I was working at Chick-Fil-A, and it would get so busy so fast. I took on more hours and started building up my savings, so when I came back to my decision, and since questions about how the schoolyear would look started to come up, I felt NECCO was the best choice for me both because it wouldn’t drain the savings I had built up and would allow me to maintain working more hours than I planned to if I were living on campus somewhere,” Brickley said over the phone.
Brickley was then asked to describe his experience of his first semester, stated “I definitely underestimated the workload. I started a new job for more money with UPS, initially the thought of having the computer there, not needing to go to a class, made me assume things would be easier, and at first when everyone was new to this it was, but as time went on my assignments started to take longer and longer. It was hard to get myself to sit at my desk and focus on the computer for hours when I would get back from work, and it definitely required me to do more in each class on my days off”
Brickley was then asked to reflect on his grades, work habits, and name potential improvements he could implement to make next semester better, replying “I was never concerned about failing or anything like that, but my grades definitely weren’t what they were in high school, but knowing I was going to be working as much as, I was mostly focused on keeping everything afloat, and there were some assignments that I just couldn’t get myself to do and had to just take the hit”
Continuing to his work habits, “As time went on they got better, I learned how to budget my time better as the semester went on and the last month or so I started to be on a schedule in terms of how much I would expect to do each day,” he said.
As for methods of improving his experience next semester, Brickley floated the idea of attending classes part-time rather than full-time, referencing the workload that grew to be excessive at times when paired with long hours at UPS.
Aya Kasbi, 19, spent her first semester at NECC majoring in forensic science, and shared a similar experience to that of Brickley’s in relation to her first semester.
“I didn’t really know what to expect, and based on the online work I had been given to finish off senior year, I had gotten my hopes up and convinced myself it would be easy,” she responded via FaceTime
Kasbi expanded on her answer in stating “Things started off slow, for most incoming freshmen this was their first real online course designed to challenge them in the same way a regular schoolyear would, if not more, having to stay on top of and understand everything on your own. The first couple weeks had led me to believe more of the same would continue throughout the semester, but I felt like my classes were getting harder by the week.”
In terms of grades and work habits, Kasbi stated “It was definitely not one of my better years in terms of percentages, but my scores for assignments and quizzes started to go up, during the middle chunk of the semester in October. I was leaving a lot of things till the last minute and some things I just was not in the mindset to do, but I definitely know how to approach my work better now”
Kasbi has not yet made a decision as to whether or not she will return for next semester but when asked to name potential methods of improvement, Kasbi mentioned “Just not to dig myself in a hole at any point, now that I have an idea of what to expect I think I will be able to maintain better grades.”
Tatiana Matrille, 18, was the final NECC student interviewed to reflect on her semester, this being Matrille’s second interview in the past month following up on previous statements regarding her online experience. Matrille had previously mentioned switching her major, spending the past semester majoring in liberal arts and now aiming to major in exercise science.
Asked to elaborate on her semester description, Matrille stated “A lot of the work felt tedious, not just the required classes, but the classes I had elected to take. I didn’t come in with a great understanding of what I wanted to study, and didn’t really want to come in undecided, so I picked something I felt kind of 50/50 about, and once things started moving at a regular pace, I found I just didn’t feel the same about majoring in liberal arts.”
As for her grades and work habits, Matrille said “I worked really hard throughout the semester, and got mostly everything done, even though there were many nights it took a long time for me to get motivated. After a little over a month once things started picking up, I started putting aside a few hours each day, some weeks more than others, and I got myself back on track and stayed caught up once I got there. The work itself wasn’t necessarily hard, but had multiple parts and required more time.”
Asked to include potential methods for improving next semester, also designated to be online, Matrille stated “Picking classes I like and can maintain interest in, and if the ones I take initially don’t fit that description, having the courage to get in contact with advising, I was too shy to try and get in contact with anyone that could change my classes.”
This past semester was far from traditional, and to be an incoming freshman, exposed to your first college experience, it should come to no surprise that this past year was confusing and rather underwhelming for many.
Set to for the most part continue to operate online (outside of a small number of classes in need of equipment only available on campus), NECC students of all ages can reflect on their approach to this past semester, gather explanations as to how some things were successful and others were not, and maintain the perseverance they developed in completing this online semester in the interest of reaching goals for the remastered digital semester.
