THE DAILY
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MISSISSIPPIAN
T H E S T U DE N T N E W S PA P E R O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I S S I S S I P P I | S E R V I N G O L E M I S S A N D OX F O R D S I N C E 1 9 1 1
OPINION: LET’S WAIT FOR THE STORM TO PASS
OLE MISS’S SUNDAY GAME WITH WRIGHT STATE CANCELED
Jacob Gambrell writes, “No matter how noble your motives are, please do not participate in a counterprotest. Our community’s safety is more important. Your safety is more important.”
After splitting the first two games of the opening weekend series, game three on Sunday was canceled due to rain. Our new column “Bases loaded” will take a look at three points from the weekend.
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There’s a new (interim) chief in town Students struggle to afford insulin
TAYLOR VANCE
THEDMNEWS@GMAIL.COM
Jeff McCutchen will prioritize increasing dialogue in the community as Oxford Police Department’s new interim police chief. McCutchen, a New Albany native, began working at OPD as a patrol officer and worked his way up to major of operations over a span of 14 years. He first started interacting with the community on a large scale by helping launch OPD’s Twitter profile, which has a following of over 38,000 people. “The goal of starting the Twitter page was just to start having a conversation with people,” he said. McCutchen wants to build on this philosophy, regardless of the length of his term as interim police chief. “Our goal is to be a relationship-building department,” he said. “We want to care about our community. We want to pour into our community, and you do that with balance. That’s balance with enforcement, and that’s balance with community involvement.” McCutchen said even though policing in a college town is subject to a unique set of difficulties, college students in the community are generally cooperative and receptive to the police department.
MCKENZIE RICHMOND
THEDMNEWS@GMAIL.COM
PHOTO: KATHERINE BUTLER
Interim police chief Jeff McCutchen is working to build relationships between the Oxford Police Department and students as well as Oxford residents. “I want (students) to know that we aren’t perfect and we realize that,” McCutchen said. “But we can have a better relationship by communicating more and working better together.” During this past year,
many community members had questions about how to best cooperate with OPD when going to bars on the Square because of the passage of the Alcohol and Safety ordinance in September which requires alcohol-serv-
ing establishments to scan patrons’ IDs. The city and the police department pushed for the passage of the ordinance because they believed it would
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Journalists win 21 awards at conference HADLEY HITSON
THEDMNEWS@GMAIL.COM
Assistant Dean of the School of Journalism and New Media Patricia Thompson was honored as Educator of the Year at the 33rd annual Southeast Journalism Conference last weekend. “I had no idea I was even nominated for the award, so it was a complete surprise to me,” Thompson said. “I’m still pretty emotional about it. Journalism has been my passion since I was elected editor of my school newsletter when I was 11 years old. I’ve been teaching here and
in charge of student media for almost 10 years, and it has truly been a dream job.” Middle Tennessee State University hosted the 2019 conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with over 300 students and advisers in attendance. Thompson was nominated for the honor by current and former students, and she was chosen by a committee of the three most recent recipients of the award. After graduating from the University of Missouri, Thompson worked for The Washington Post PHOTO COURTESY: ETHEL MWEDZIWENDIRA and taught at Northwestern Members of Ole Miss student media attended the Southeast Journalism SEE SEJC PAGE 4 Conference last weekend.
Mary McDaniel, a sophomore psychology major, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was three years old and has been prescribed insulin most of her life. McDaniel is reliant on insulin, so there’s no choice but to pay the price, even as costs drastically increase. “It’s a dire-need medication. It’s a necessity,” she said. According to a congressional report released last fall by the Congressional Diabetes Caucus, the price of insulin across the country has more than doubled since 2012 after a nearly 300-percent increase from 2002 to 2013. “Diabetes care is so profitable that it makes sense to quadruple (the price of) the one thing you need,” McDaniel said. “You can’t find a cheaper version of insulin. You just have to have insulin.” While type 2 diabetes can often be controlled by diet and exercise, type 1 diabetes is a result of the pancreas being unable to produce sufficient insulin. Therefore, people with type 1 diabetes have to rely on an insulin pump or insulin shots to lower their blood sugar. “It’s like water,” McDaniel said. “We can go a certain amount (of time) without it, but we’ll end up in the hospital. And we can’t live long without it.” People with type 1 diabetes reported average annual insulin costs of $5,705 in 2016. The average cost was roughly half that, at $2,864 per patient, in 2012, according to a Health Care Cost Institute report released in January. “For a three month supply, (insulin is) generally
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