Volume 89 • Issue 17
FSUgatepost.com
March 5, 2021
COVID-19 campus safety guidelines undergo changes By Leighah Beausoleil News Editor
Donald Halsing / THE GATEPOST
Tau Sigma President Abby Monique handed out bags with positive messages and more in the Game Room March 4.
News FSU COAT EXCHANGE pg. 3 COVID-19 BY THE NUMBERS pg. 6-7
Opinions
NOT A FAD DIET pg. 9 NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO REOPEN pg. 8
Sports
VOLLEYBALL pg. 11
Arts & Features ATHLETIC TRAINERS pg. 12 ‘THE DIG:’ I TOTALLY DIG IT pg. 14
Changes to COVID-19 testing frequency and directions as well as to quarantine and isolation protocols were enacted for the spring 2021 semester. According to a Jan. 21 email from President F. Javier Cevallos, commuters with two or more in-person classes and all resident students are required to test weekly. Commuters with only one in-person class are to test bi-weekly with the week determined by the first letter of their last name. “We have increased the frequency of testing due to the continued surge of COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts and in compliance with state requirements, as well as the emergence of a new strain of the virus that is more contagious,” Cevallos stated in the email. Testing times for the spring semester have been extended, with appointments available Mondays 12:00
See TESTING UPDATE page 4
Center for Inclusive Excellence finds new ways to interact with the Framingham community By Maia Almeida Staff Writer As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Inclusive Excellence (CIE) has been closed to the Framingham State community. Patricia Birch, director of inclusive excellence initiatives, said she is meeting with students individually, including club presidents and leaders, and trying to help them in whatever ways she can. “A lot of the student groups are doing a lot of different things, and I said, ‘Well, let me know how I can
help you.’ Of course, I would love for them to collaborate with me and do collaborative programming with the CIE,” Birch said, “but it doesn’t always have to be that way.” Birch said she is sending out a lot of emails to student leaders. “I wish that I could communicate in a different way, i.e. flyers. Now, we don’t have those opportunities to advertise in that way, and I miss that,” she said. When the CIE receives off campus information, Birch said she always conveys it to the students. “I just sent something to the Career Services Center about a company that is look-
ing for interns. So that they [Career Services] can push it out to students looking for internships,” Birch said. This year at orientation, Birch said she presented a “narrated PowerPoint” on Zoom so she could engage with those incoming students. She said because she wasn’t available for spring orientation, having the Zoom recording for students would allow them to know that they could go see her as a contact on campus. Birch said she has learned one
See CIE AND THE COMMUNITY page 5
Teresa Fazio chronicles her life as a woman Veteran in ‘Fidelis’ By Emily Rosenberg Asst. Opinions Editor Teresa Fazio was only 23 years old when she was deployed to be a United States Marine Corps communications officer in the Iraq war. She said she remembers sitting at a bar with her friends after the summer of ROTC Candidate school. It was the night of the 9/11 attack and they looked at each other “like yep this is happening,” Fazio said. “To be honest, I was never so glad to be a Marine or on my way to that commission as I was on September 12,” she said. “It made me feel like I was going to do something about it even if I didn’t know what that some-
thing was.” Fazio added, “It was definitely a watershed moment. I certainly hadn’t expected to be called to be on my way to war.” Twenty years later, Fazio has now earned a Columbia University Ph.D. and a Bennington Writing Seminar MFA, and she has journaled her experiences across all different mediums including The New York Times and the anthology Retire the Colors. On March 1, she sat down with History Professor Joseph Adelman over Zoom to discuss her memoir “Fidelis” in which she details her journey as a woman in the Marines as part of the Arts & Ideas Women’s History Month Virtual Event series.
Adelman kicked off the discussion by asking what led her to want to take an MIT ROTC scholarship and join the Marines so early in her career. “I wanted to do the hardest possible thing,” she responded. “I was 16. It was pre-September 11, 2001. It seemed like a way to get a free college education in terms of tuition paid for, books paid for, guaranteed job after graduation, and along the way, learning to blow stuff up which in the late ’90s really seemed cool before many other things started blowing up.”
See ‘FIDELIS’ LECTURE page 13
INSIDE: OP/ED 8 • SPORTS 11 • ARTS & FEATURES 12
