Amy Barrett Ginsberg

Dear Commons Community,

Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times reviewing President Trump’s nominee to the US Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett. Entitled, Amy Coney Barrett Is No Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Bazelon comments: 

“Judge Barrett, who is on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, has impeccable intellectual credentials — and a record that stands in stark contrast to Justice Ginsburg’s. She has written that abortion is “always immoral,” and joined two dissents against decisions supporting the right to choose.”

Bazelon likens Barrett’s nomination to Justice Clarence Thomas who replaced Thurgood Marshall and who “has become famous for his hostility to civil rights; affirmative action; and most of the claims raised by criminal defendants, who are disproportionately people of color.”

Bazelon concludes:  “Make no mistake: Judge Barrett’s confirmation will be the wrecking ball that finally smashes Roe v. Wade and undoes the Affordable Care Act. Her crucial vote on these cases and so many others will undo decades of the progress that Justice Ginsburg worked her whole life to achieve.”

The entire op-ed is below.

Tony

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New York Times

Amy Coney Barrett Is No Ruth Bader Ginsburg

By Lara Bazelon

Sept. 26, 2020

President Trump’s promise to name a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Sept. 18 at 87, was cynical and insulting to the millions of women who view the late Supreme Court justice as a feminist icon. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, praised the decision as a “powerful positive statement” to young women, who would embrace the president’s nominee as a “role model.” The message to women is clear: Nothing to see here, ladies! One of you is as good as any other.

But Mr. Trump’s pick, Amy Coney Barrett, is no Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Women aren’t gym socks, purchased in bulk so that a replacement can be seamlessly substituted into the rotation when one goes missing in the washing machine. The next Supreme Court justice will cast crucial votes that affect women’s fundamental rights, including the right to control their own bodies and to gain access to affordable health care for themselves and their families. The fact that President Trump’s nominee is a woman matters less if she does not support the causes at the heart of the long, continuing march for gender equality that Justice Ginsburg championed.

The Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has also vowed to pick a Black woman as his first nominee to the Supreme Court. But he’s not going to gaslight us by choosing someone who will share the judicial philosophy of the court’s conservative wing, just as no one believed that Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential pick — whom he also promised would be female — would be a Republican who repudiated every plank of his platform. (Indeed, Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris — fairly or not — has been denounced by the Trump campaign as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate.)

Judge Barrett, who is on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, has impeccable intellectual credentials — and a record that stands in stark contrast to Justice Ginsburg’s. She has written that abortion is “always immoral,” and joined two dissents against decisions supporting the right to choose. One decision stopped the enforcement of a state law that would have required a minor — regardless of her maturity or family situation — to notify her parents of her decision to have an abortion, giving them veto power, unless a judge found this was not in her best interests.

Another decision struck down a state law banning abortions at any stage of pregnancy based on fetal disabilities, including those that were life-threatening. (The law also banned abortions based on race, ethnicity and gender.) Judge Barrett dissented from a ruling banning people with felony convictions from possessing firearms, and publicly criticized Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for voting with the high court’s liberal bloc to uphold the Affordable Care Act, saying he pushed the statute “beyond its plausible meaning” to save it.

Make no mistake: Judge Barrett’s confirmation will be the wrecking ball that finally smashes Roe v. Wade and undoes the Affordable Care Act. Her crucial vote on these cases and so many others will undo decades of the progress that Justice Ginsburg worked her whole life to achieve.

Justice Ginsburg’s most important legacy is that she was a forward-thinking, canny and unabashed feminist. Beginning in the 1970s, as a co-founder of the A.C.L.U.’s Women’s Rights Project, she argued six sex-discrimination cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and won five. In several of them, she sought to invalidate laws that barred men from taking advantage of certain benefits, driving home the point — to an all-male court — that unequal treatment hurts everyone equally.

She built on that work as a justice. In 2016, she called out Texas’ claim that a law sharply curtailing women’s access to abortion was actually safeguarding women’s health as “beyond rational belief.” (The court struck down the law 5-4.) Justice Ginsburg was known as much for the power of her dissents as for the majority opinions she wrote. When the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that a female supervisor at a tire company had waited too long to sue her employer for paying her less than her male colleagues, Justice Ginsburg noted that the secrecy shrouding employee compensation made a timely filing impossible and urged Congress to act. Congress did, and in 2009 President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which did away with stringent and unrealistic time requirements.

Republicans would have us believe that ramming through Justice Ginsburg’s replacement less than two months before the election — and after denying President Obama, who had 11 months left in his second term, the chance to replace Justice Antonin Scalia — is fine and dandy because, well, the new justice is a woman. When it comes to the Supreme Court, we’ve been to this identity politics movie before, and we know how it ends.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a federal appellate judge, to replace Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights warrior who had argued Brown v. Board of Education and then as a justice had written many decisions expanding civil rights and criminal justice protections for racial minorities. (Justice Ginsburg was known as the “Thurgood Marshall of gender equality law.”) Republicans predicted, correctly, that Democrats would find themselves in a difficult position because, like Justice Marshall, the nominee was Black.

Although nothing about Judge Thomas’s career and judicial record suggested he would be anything like Justice Marshall, and though he faced credible allegations of sexual harassment from Anita Hill, he was confirmed 52 to 48, after accusing Democrats of orchestrating a “high-tech lynching.” (In another twist, many blame Mr. Biden — then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — for his bungling of the confirmation hearing and his poor treatment of Ms. Hill.) In his decades on the court, Justice Thomas has become famous for his hostility to civil rights; affirmative action; and most of the claims raised by criminal defendants, who are disproportionately people of color.

On her deathbed, Justice Ginsburg wrote that her “most fervent wish” was that a new justice would not be installed until after the election. It is a cold calculation by the president, a master misogynist, that the nomination of a woman, in and of itself, would be enough to soften any opposition to the ugliness of a rushed, hypocritical and nakedly political charade. Think again Mr. President: We aren’t stupid.

School Daze

Dear Commons Community,

Stephan Brumberg, a colleague of mine from CUNY, was interviewed on a podcast for faq.nyc.   The podcast contrasts early 20th century  New York City schools with today’s including how policy makers dealt with major issues such as pandemics.

I found it a most illuminating and fun visit to the past.

Thank you, Stephan!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As someone who follows national news and politics, it was only natural that I would read Bob Woodward’s Rage, his most recent book reporting on Donald Trump and his presidency.  According to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, it sold over 600,000 copies in its first week. The book is carefully researched and cited throughout and includes material based on seventeen interviews with Donald Trump himself.  Why Trump would give these interviews is beyond me.  

I found the 450-page book including footnotes a quick read.  I knew many of the stories in its chapters but Woodward fills in gaps in my knowledge and most of the time they are based on revealed primary sources.  There were many enlightening takeaways (below is a an article that comments on five takeaways from Rage) especially related to coronavirus, Trump’s relationships with several of his appointees including James Mattis, Rex Tillerson, and Dan Coats, and exchanges with Jared Kushner. 

I agree fully with a New York Times review that concludes:

“Woodward ends Rage by delivering his grave verdict. “When his performance as president is taken in its entirety. I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

Amen!

Tony

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New York Times

5 Takeaways From ‘Rage,’ Bob Woodward’s New Book About Trump

By Aishvarya Kavi

Sept. 9, 2020

“This is deadly stuff,” President Trump said of the coronavirus in a Feb. 7 interview with the journalist Bob Woodward for his upcoming book, “Rage.” But it was a vastly different story than he was telling the public at the time. Mr. Trump would later admit to Mr. Woodward that publicly, he “wanted to always” play down the severity of the virus.

Mr. Woodward conducted 18 interviews with the president for the book, which goes on sale next week. Mr. Trump also granted Mr. Woodward access to top officials inside the White House, revealing the inner workings of the president and his administration.

Here are five takeaways.

Mr. Trump minimized the risks of the coronavirus to the American public early in the year.

Despite knowing that the virus was “deadly” and highly contagious, he often publicly said the opposite, insisting that the virus would go away quickly.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

And while he was saying publicly that children were “almost immune” to the virus, he told Mr. Woodward in March: “Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too — plenty of young people.”

In April, as he began to urge the country to reopen, Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward of the virus, “It’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.”

Two of the president’s top officials thought he was “dangerous” and considered speaking out publicly.

Gen. Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s former defense secretary, is quoted describing Mr. Trump as “dangerous” and “unfit” for the presidency in a conversation with Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence at the time. Mr. Coats himself was haunted by the president’s Twitter feed and believed that Mr. Trump’s gentle approach to Russia reflected something more sinister, perhaps that Moscow had “something” on the president.

“Maybe at some point we’re going to have to stand up and speak out,” Mr. Mattis told Mr. Coats in May 2019, according to the book. “There may be a time when we have to take collective action.”

Ultimately neither official spoke out.

Mr. Trump repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military and his top generals.

Mr. Woodward quoted Mr. Trump denigrating senior American military officials to his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, during a 2017 meeting.

“They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals,” the president said.

And in a discussion with Mr. Woodward, Mr. Trump called the U.S. military “suckers” for paying extensive costs to protect South Korea. Mr. Woodward wrote that he was stunned when the president said of South Korea, “We’re defending you, we’re allowing you to exist.”

Mr. Woodward also reports that Mr. Trump chewed out Mr. Coats after a briefing with reporters about the threat that Russia presented to the nation’s elections systems. Mr. Coats had gone further than he and the president had discussed beforehand.

When asked about the pain “Black people feel in this country,” Mr. Trump was unable to express empathy.

Mr. Woodward pointed out that both he and Mr. Trump were “white, privileged” and asked if Mr. Trump was working to “understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country.”

Mr. Trump replied, “No,” and added: “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”

Mr. Woodward writes that he tried to coax the president into speaking about his understanding of race. But Mr. Trump would only say over and over that the economy had been positive for Black people before the coronavirus led to an economic crisis.

Mr. Woodward gained insight into Mr. Trump’s relationships with the leaders of North Korea and Russia.

Mr. Trump provided Mr. Woodward with the details of letters between himself and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in which the two men fawn over each other. Mr. Kim wrote in one letter that their relationship was like a “fantasy film.”

In describing his chemistry with Mr. Kim, Mr. Trump said: “You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s going to happen.”

Mr. Trump also complained about the various investigations into ties between his campaign and Russia, saying that they were affecting his abilities as president and his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“Putin said to me in a meeting, he said, it’s a shame, because I know it’s very hard for you to make a deal with us. I said, you’re right,” Mr. Trump said.

Dear Commons Community,

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center published a report yesterday indicating that preliminary enrollments among all undergraduate higher education sectors decreased 2.5 percent.  Graduate student enrollment increased 3.9 percent.  Overall postsecondary enrollment is down 1.8 percent.  Among the various sectors, public community colleges have experienced the largest declines at 7.5 percent. 

The Center’s enrollment results are based on 3.6 million students at 629 colleges, nearly 22 percent of the institutions that report to the organization.

“The picture will become clearer as more data comes in, but at this point the large equity for students who rely on community colleges for access to higher education is a matter of concern,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the Center, in a news release.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

This morning, Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, were greeted with boos and chants of “vote him out” while paying respects to Ruth Bader Ginsberg (see video above)..

Tony

College Football’s Worst Fear in the Pandemic: The Death of a Player – Mourners at Jamain Stephens’ Burial

Dear Commons Community,

Jamain Stephens, a college football player, was buried last week after succumbing to a coronavirus-related blood clot.  Below is his story as published this morning in the New York Times.

Jamain Stephens did not need much of an introduction when he showed up years ago for his first day of practice at Central Catholic High School. His father, with the same name, was a former first-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But Stephens made a memorable entrance anyway, wearing a white T-shirt, as was required by all freshmen, that happened to be dotted with red Kool-Aid stains. A fitting nickname was born: Juice.

Wherever Stephens went, through high school and then to California University, a small college in southwestern Pennsylvania, he brought juice to the room.

Stephens grew into a mountain of a young man, at 6-foot-3 and in the neighborhood of 350 pounds, playing defensive tackle. His feet were so enormous that his high school coaches went to the Steelers to find size 19 cleats. His hands were so immense that he carried a tablet in the palm of his hand as if it were a phone.

His personality was equally outsize. Juice always had a smile on his face — even, as a former teacher said, when he wasn’t smiling. At Cal. U., as the school is known, he was typically the first player to reach out to a new recruit. A professor could count on him to liven up discussions when night classes inevitably dragged. The campus minister said any father would be happy to have him date his daughter.

“If you see Juice as a human being, you see a very large human being,” said Garth Taylor, a youth football coach who had known Stephens since he was a young boy. “His spirit was twice as big as that.”

Stephens’s impact explains why so many people were left reeling earlier this month when the college senior died from a blood clot after being hospitalized with Covid-19 and pneumonia.

His death devastated many at his high school, where he had returned to work out this summer, and at his college, where he was the embodiment of the big man on campus, known for flashing his basketball skills in intramural games, rounding up friends for a weekly Krispy Kreme run and mentoring children back home.

But his death also rippled through the sports landscape, as he is believed to be the first college football player whose death can be traced to the virus.

The football team at Central Catholic High School, led by Coach Terry Totten, knelt in prayer for Jamain Stephens at the beginning of a practice.

Most colleges around the country, including Cal. U., which plays at the N.C.A.A. Division II level, have canceled or postponed fall sports because of the coronavirus pandemic. But some schools have forged ahead, hoping to salvage billions in TV revenue, and perhaps some ticket sales. The Big Ten Conference said last week that it would play football in October, reversing an earlier decision to wait until at least next year. The Pac-12 is considering a similar pivot.

Part of the rationale for playing is that young athletes, even if they carry and spread the virus, are highly unlikely to die from it. While that is largely true, the virus can have other serious effects, and the risks have been shown to be more severe for Black people and those with large body mass indexes, like many linemen.

So as cases among college football players persist — Louisiana State Coach Ed Orgeron said last week that “most” of his players had contracted the virus — Stephens’s death may not be the last. More than 10,000 players are expected to suit up this fall.

“This is a billion-dollar industry — I get that,” Kelly Allen, Stephens’s mother, said in an interview. “But not at the risk of these boys’ lives. Nothing is worth that.”

Allen spoke last week in a courtyard at Central Catholic overlooking the football field, just after visiting a funeral home to make arrangements for the burial of her only child. Even though Cal. U.’s campus has been closed since March, and football activities have been shut down since then, Allen said her son returned to school in mid-August so he could work out with his teammates in anticipation of a spring season. The players were not tested for the coronavirus or even given temperature checks upon their return.

Allen, who spent Monday — her son’s 21st birthday — visiting his grave site, said she had many questions for which she would seek answers.

“My heart is shattered in a million pieces,” she said. “I can’t even describe the pain I feel. But do I have fight in me? Absolutely. If it will save some parent’s grief, absolutely.”

Although California University has not allowed students on campus, the school reported six Covid-19 cases this month among students who returned to the nearby Vulcan Village, a sprawling, 770-bed student-housing complex where Stephens had lived since his freshman year.

A school spokeswoman, Christine Kindl, said the school is not responsible for testing or contact tracing of students at the complex because it is not on campus and is owned not by the university, but by a nonprofit that funds student organizations, Student Association, Inc. State health officials are responsible for contact tracing, she said.

The distance between the student association and the university extends only so far: students who live at Vulcan Village pay their rent to the university, as well as student fees that are routed to the nonprofit.

The university’s president, Geraldine M. Jones, declined an interview request to discuss the school’s coronavirus policies. Justin Schiefelbein, a manager at Vulcan Village, did not respond to a message.

Cal. U., a public school whose enrollment last year was 6,842, is wedged into a bend in the Monongahela River, an hour south of Pittsburgh. Allen drove her son there on Aug. 17 and checked him into his ground-floor apartment at Vulcan Village, which is popular with football players because it is adjacent to the school’s football stadium.

When they arrived, Allen wiped down the furnished, two-bedroom suite, which shares a kitchen with another unit, with disinfectant. She left her son with a bag of masks, plenty of Lysol and a reminder to stay away from parties, which have been linked to outbreaks at schools around the country.

Stephens had wanted to return so he could work out with his teammates, even if it were in small groups, his mother said. He was determined to make the most of his senior season, no matter when it might happen. He had lost 15 pounds over the summer with the help of a nutritionist and had wanted to drop another 45 by the start of the 2021 season. To help, his mother dropped off prepared meals.

Sports had taken root early for Stephens.

When he was barely big enough to sleep in his own bed, Stephens wrapped his hands around a baseball at night, and propped up a football and basketball behind his pillow. Even though he rarely saw his father, who settled in North Carolina after a five-year N.F.L. career, Stephens began playing tackle football by age 6. He was so big that, because of weight limits, he was required to play with children twice his age.

“For five years, he was basically a tackling dummy,” said Taylor, one of his youth coaches. “He got his butt whipped, but his spirit was such that he came back the next day.”

Stephens befriended Taylor’s son, Erick, and they became so close that they told people they were cousins. Juice loved to ask people what position they thought Erick, who is 6-foot-4 and 265 pounds, played. They would guess lineman, linebacker or tight end, and Juice would chuckle, revealing that Erick played quarterback at West Liberty University.

The inside joke also carried a message: Don’t prejudge me.

Juice fancied himself as more than an immovable object on the defensive line. When he played catch, he’d pluck passes out of the air with one hand, like Odell Beckham Jr. On the basketball court, he played like a rotund Stephen Curry, mesmerizing a hapless defender with his dribble and footwork, then bouncing back and draining a 3-pointer.

He understood how sports could connect.

When the Chain Gang — the nickname for his high school defense — convened each Thursday for an open forum in the locker room, it was Stephens who was the first to console a teammate whose mother had breast cancer and another whose father had just died, said Dave Fleming, the defensive coordinator at Central Catholic.

Kurt Hinish, a defensive lineman at Notre Dame who played with Stephens at Central Catholic, cherished the talks they would have when he drove Stephens home after practice. “It didn’t matter where you came from, the color of your skin, your religious affiliation or who you associated with,” Hinish said. “Juice was going to interact with you in a genuine way.”

That empathy also was at the root of an improved relationship in recent years with his father.

“My son and I had a great relationship,” the elder Stephens said in a phone interview. “That’s not to say there wasn’t strain over the years; that’s not to say there wasn’t separation over the years. As far as the time I wasn’t there as frequently as I should have been — as they say, there’s two sides of every story. My side is simply that I love my son and my relationship with him was improving. I’ll tell you this: Jamain Allen Stephens was the best part of me.”

If the younger Stephens eagerly opened his heart to others, his eyes were open, too.

He watched as his mother helped others qualify for housing assistance in her job with Pittsburgh’s housing authority. And how she took on two other jobs — working as a bank customer service representative at night and a tax preparer on weekends — to help pay tuition. He also noted how the men who ran the Garfield Park Gators, his youth program, taught more than football to young, mostly Black boys, helping them navigate difficult circumstances at home, at school or in other parts of their lives.

Juice and Erick had visions of one day opening a high school so that it wasn’t only the select few who ended up at a place like Central Catholic, where they could flourish academically, socially and athletically.

“We’ve lost about 15 different childhood friends due to gun violence and things they shouldn’t have lost their lives to,” Erick Taylor said. “It was our dream to open up a school in Pittsburgh where everyone could be exactly what they’re meant to be in this world.”

Erick last spoke with Stephens two days before he died. They were continuing a longstanding ritual: watching their favorite athlete, LeBron James. Usually they watched together, but this time they spoke by phone as James’s Los Angeles Lakers blew a big lead but recovered for a playoff win over the Houston Rockets. “He said, ‘They’re about to kick me out of the hospital, I’m going so crazy about this game,’” Taylor said.

By then, it had been a little over a week since Stephens had begun to feel ill.

When his mother spoke to him on the phone on Friday, Aug. 28, she asked if he was congested. He told her his allergies were acting up. But he also said his roommate, Josh Dale, had been fighting what he thought was a cold.

“The next day, he said, ‘Oh, I think I caught Josh’s cold,’” Allen said.

That night, Stephens attended a party in his building, but left after a short time because he was tired, according to one of his teammates. School officials would not say if any of the six reported coronavirus cases at Vulcan Village stemmed from the party. But in an email to residents two days later, Schiefelbein, the complex manager, said the party exceeded a 10-person limit on gatherings and warned that similar parties could lead to dismissal.

When Allen called her son on Aug. 31, Stephens was uncharacteristically asleep at 10 a.m. She started reading a list of Covid-19 symptoms to him: headache, sore throat, loss of taste and others. “It was no, no, no, no,” Allen said. “And when I got to the bottom of the list, I said ‘diarrhea’ and he said, ‘Mom, when I got up this morning, I did have diarrhea.’”

Allen picked Stephens up, and he was hospitalized later that day after he tested positive for the coronavirus. A chest X-ray revealed he had pneumonia.

Stephens let some friends know he was in the hospital, sending a Snapchat photo of a hospital bootee that covered only three toes on his enormous feet. Doctors moved him into intensive care for several days to increase his oxygen. He was moved out of intensive care and told friends he hoped to be released soon. But he was sent back the next day after he said he had become lightheaded while taking a shower.

“And mind you, this whole time he’s talking, he’s laughing, we’re bantering back and forth like we normally do,” Allen said.

But the next morning, Allen received a call from a physician assistant: an ultrasound had revealed a blood clot in one of Stephens’s lungs.

Allen called her brother to tell him what was happening, and went upstairs to get dressed and head to the hospital. As she did, a nurse called again with an urgent message: Come now, he’s gotten worse.

“I drove like a bat out of hell,” Allen said, pausing to hold back tears.

“When I got there, they pulled me in the office for the doctor to talk to me, and I just remember screaming, ‘Where’s my child?’ And then when the chaplain came around the corner and told me he was gone, I just remember screaming. The rest is just a blur, honestly, after that.”

For nearly a week, Allen did not go back to her home. She stayed with her sister and was comforted by her brother and other relatives, with her son’s death coming four months after the death of her mother.

She wants to make clear that she does not blame Dale, her son’s roommate, even if she has had that urge.

“I don’t want that young man to torture himself, because I’m sure he feels a certain amount of guilt already,” she said. “This pain that I feel, I don’t wish this on anybody.”

In an interview outside his apartment the day after Stephens died, Dale said they had spoken less than 48 hours before he died. “It’s so surreal that I’m going to be here by myself and he’s just gone,” Dale said. “I’m still in shock. I still don’t want to believe it.”

He added: “He was the first person I met when I transferred here, the first who took me around campus. ‘Hey, bro — I’m going to show you — do this, don’t do that, eat here, don’t eat here.’ That’s who he was 24-7.”

Dale said then that he was awaiting coronavirus test results, but he did not have any symptoms. The New York Times followed up with Dale several days later, and a man who identified himself as Dale’s father, James, returned the message. He disputed Allen’s account that her son said he had gotten sick from Dale: “It was the other way around,” he said before hanging up.

Allen called that version a lie.

“Josh knows that he was sick,” she said.

Stephens was buried on Friday. The funeral procession from Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ wove through the city’s serpentine streets until it arrived at Allegheny Cemetery, where he was laid to rest under a maple tree.

As the college football season begins, few university presidents or conference commissioners have invoked Jamain Stephens, at least publicly.

His father, as much as anybody, understands why.

“As a competitor, as a parent with children in sports — there’s an energy and excitement that go with that,” the elder Stephens said. “It can cause us not to think straight about something we don’t know enough about.”

Stephens said his son’s autopsy showed the right side of his heart was enlarged because of Covid-19. The effect, one of several linked to the virus, elicits echoes to his time in the N.F.L., when the league played down the severity of concussions.

“It’s about money,” he said. “We’re going to make it happen regardless of how it happens. So what if we lose a few lives?”

Stephens was speaking just before Thursday’s viewing. It drew more than 500 people, including dozens of his son’s former teammates.

Some went off to play at universities like Penn State, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and Clemson. They are big, strong and imbued with the sense of invulnerability that football requires, but after Stephens’s death they were as shaken as anyone else who had lost someone to the coronavirus.

That night, Allen said in a phone interview that many players, as they had shared their sorrow, over and over again expressed what they would likely not admit to anyone else — an uneasiness about playing football during the pandemic.

“This makes Covid seem really real,” Allen said, “having to look at their friend and teammate in a casket.”

May Jamain rest in peace!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) received a sharp education lesson on virus immunity and prevention from Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing yesterday when the Kentucky physician attempted to attribute New York’s dramatic reduction in COVID-19 cases to herd immunity instead of people following safety protocols.

During a heated back and forth, Paul, who has opposed mask mandates, criticized Fauci’s past praise of New York and its Democratic governor’s handling of the pandemic.

“New York had the highest death rate in the world,” Paul said. “How can we possibly be jumping up and down and saying, oh Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo did a great job? He had the worst death rate in the world.”

Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, responded with a fact check.

“No, you misconstrued that, senator, and you’ve done that repetitively in the past,” Fauci fired back. “They got hit very badly. They made some mistakes. Right now … the things that are going on in New York to get their test positivity 1 percent or less is because they are looking at the guidelines that we have put together from the [coronavirus] task force.”

Those safety guidelines include mask-wearing, social distancing, avoiding crowds, washing hands and participating in public gatherings that are outdoors instead of indoors whenever possible.

“Or they’ve developed enough community immunity that they’re no longer having the pandemic because they have enough immunity in New York City to actually stop,” Paul interrupted.

“I challenge that,” Fauci responded, before repeating the latest data presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s director, Robert Redfield, was also testifying at the hearing.

“This happens with Sen. Rand all the time. You are not listening to what the director of the CDC said. That in New York it’s about 22%,” he said of the positivity rate. “If you believe that 22% is herd immunity, I believe you’re alone in that.”

To establish herd immunity, a large percentage of a community would have to contract the virus, or a similar one, and produce antibodies to it. Every disease’s threshold for herd immunity is different. In the case of the measles virus, which is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, it’s estimated that 94% of the population would have to be immune to it to achieve herd immunity, according to the Mayo Clinic.

“Experts estimate that in the U.S., 70% of the population — more than 200 million people — would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the epidemic,” the Mayo Clinic’s website states.

Another report published in the medical journal JAMA in May estimates that to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19, between 55% and 82% of the population would have to have developed antibodies to the virus.

Sen. Paul went on to suggest that there may be people out there, about one-third of the population, that have “pre-existing immunity” to COVID-19. This idea is based on these people having what are called cross-reactive antibodies after successfully fighting similar viruses.

Fauci shot that suggestion down too.

“I’d like to talk to you about that also because there was a study that recently came out that pre-existing immunity to coronaviruses that are common cold do not cross-react with the COVID-19,” he said.

My wife and I are in our 70s and live in New York.  We thank Governor Andrew Cuomo for how he has led the state during the pandemic these past seven months.  We also are of the opinion that the only person we believe in Washington, D.C. about Covid-19 is Dr. Anthony Fauci.  There are too many  ill-informed officials like Rand Paul who attempt to politicize and to mislead the public about it.  It is also our opinion that many of the two hundred thousand Americans who have died from coronavirus in this country, were victims of the Rand Pauls in the United States government.

Tony

Cindy McCain

Dear Commons Community,

Cindy McCain, widow of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has officially endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for president. 

“My husband John lived by a code: country first,” she wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost.” 

Biden, she added, is the only candidate in the presidential race who “stands up for our values as a nation.”

As reported by The Huffington Post, though McCain’s statement represents the first time she’s explicitly endorsed the former vice president, she has gone to bat for Biden before. 

During the Democratic National Convention, McCain was featured in a clip that celebrated Biden’s friendship with her late husband, who died in 2018 of brain cancer.

“They would just sit and joke,” McCain said in the video of the two men, who developed a close friendship after meeting in the 1970s, when Biden was a young senator and John McCain served as his military aide during an overseas trip. 

“It was like a comedy show, sometimes, to watch the two of them,” Cindy McCain said at the DNC.

Like her husband, who’d been described as a “critic in chief” of the Trump administration, Cindy McCain has been similarly vocal in her criticism of President Donald Trump. The couple’s daughter, Meghan McCain, has also been an outspoken critic of the president, who has often expressed his dislike for the late senator, once exclaiming that he didn’t consider the former Vietnam prisoner of war a hero. 

“I feel like right now the president doesn’t have my back, he doesn’t take a stand on things that are really important and we have a time of crisis,” Cindy McCain told the Arizona Republic this week of her decision to back Biden. “I’m worried that this could go further than it should. My point in getting on board with Joe is that he’s proven — he’s been there. I’ve known him for 40 years. I know his character and his leadership and his honor and his integrity and those things are very important to me.”

Country first!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Enrollment figures are beginning to be announced at colleges and universities around the country.  Some schools have seen increases and some decreases.  Early estimates were that enrollments at private colleges and universities would see declines.  As reported by The GW Hatchet, George Washington University President Thomas LeBlanc said at a Faculty Senate meeting on Friday that undergraduate enrollment fell by about 7.2 percent this year based on preliminary estimates, and would require a “second phase” of budget cuts in the coming weeks.

LeBlanc estimated that  11,000 undergraduate students are enrolled this fall, which fell short of last year’s figure by roughly 1,000 students. The loss in tuition revenue from decreased enrollment is largely driving GW’s budget shortfall, which is now estimated to be $180 million on an annualized basis, LeBlanc said.

He added that estimates will continue to change until the “benchmark date” in early October, which is used for official enrollment data and revenue statistics.

“Given the fluid nature of the pandemic and its effects on the University, as we expected and repeatedly tried to remind folks, our estimate will always be evolving until we finally get to the benchmark,” LeBlanc said. “But as of now, we have a much better idea of fall enrollment and tuition revenue because we’ve actually passed the deadline for paying your bills.”

Financial impact
LeBlanc said the enrollment drop, based on current estimates, would reflect a nearly $76 million budget impact. He said officials are projecting a decrease of undergraduate and graduate tuition dollars by $46 million and $17 million, respectively, and about a $10 million increase in financial aid.

GW’s financial projections assume classes remain online for the entire academic year, which removes about $100 million in housing revenue, LeBlanc said.

He said officials are completing the first phase of budget cuts, which will reduce expenses by roughly $100 million and be completed within two weeks. The cuts include a suspension of most capital projects and hirings, salary freezes and staff layoffs.

LeBlanc added that officials have laid off about 250 staff members, who had an average salary of roughly $75,000. At the meeting, Provost Brian Blake confirmed the layoffs include some Center for Career Services employees.

Officials have repeatedly declined to answer The Hatchet’s questions about layoffs in specific offices. The layoffs include dozens of employees in IT offices, the career center, facilities and event departments.

“Even with our revised enrollment projections as positive as they are today, it’s clear that we need to take additional mitigation steps,” LeBlanc said at the meeting.

He said officials will likely make final decisions about the second phase of cuts in the next week. The phase already includes suspensions of the University’s base and matching retirement contributions for employees beginning Oct. 1.

“I anticipate things could get better,” he said. “We built in fairly conservative projections so I don’t see it getting much worse than this.”

LeBlanc added that there have been no discussions among administrators about laying off tenured or tenure-track faculty. Officials have discussed temporarily reducing faculty salaries, he said.

“We talked to the senate leadership and Board of Trustees, but no decision has been made,” LeBlanc said.

Enrollment drop
Provost Brian Blake said non-degree registration – which includes exchange students – decreased by 31 percent. About 400 more students requested deferrals for enrollment and leave of absences compared to last year, and “hundreds” more students are now attending GW part time, he said.

LeBlanc said more than 600 upperclassmen chose not to return this fall amid the pandemic. He said 175 international students were not able to or chose not to enroll, and the University enrolled 220 fewer new domestic students this year based on current estimates.

Blake said the graduate population increased this year by 1.3 percent, which is just under half of the 3 percent increase officials had originally anticipated. Officials held graduate tuition steady this year, which led to an annual budget shortfall in graduate tuition.

“There is some gap there as well even though we had a higher enrollment than last year,” Blake said.

He added that the “biggest piece” to enrollment changes this year is a drop in the international population by 916 students – 253 undergraduates, 556 graduates and 107 non-degree students.

The drop marks another setback for the University’s goal of increasing international enrollment to 15 percent of undergraduates and 30 percent of graduate students by 2022.

“As a provost, there’s been some concern there because these shortcomings in our enrollment are likely to follow us, particularly when it comes from that particular population,” Blake said. “I honestly feel a certain way about this too because I know that body of students provides diversity and a real experience for the student body.”

As Fall enrollment figures are finalized, we will find a number of colleges in the same situation as George Washington U.

Tony

NOTE:  After this posting was made, the National Student Clearinghouse published a report indicating that preliminary enrollments among all undergraduate higher education sectors decreased 2.5 percent with community colleges experiencing the largest decline.  Details are available at: https://nscresearchcenter.org/stay-informed/