IDS Thursday, December 5, 2024
INSIDE
COULD THE STATE CUT IU FUNDING OVER THE IDS?
A doctor doubted a Black woman’s pain. FAFSA 4 years after her death, an IU student mourns his mom is open By Isabella Vesperini
isvesp@iu.edu | @IVesperini
At sunset Henry Moore sits down on his bed at Willkie South. After a long day of classes, the gym and his church group, he needs quiet. Then he remembers. It’s Oct. 2. Today would’ve been his mom’s 56th birthday. The 23-year-old IU senior closes his eyes. He sits in silence for two minutes. Behind him, the air conditioning drones. Henry’s mom used to bake cakes for her friends and family. Some years she made vanilla or chocolate cake. Other years she made lemon merengue pie. Sometimes, Henry and his mom worked together in their kitchen to make Jamaican rum cake. An involved process, yes — the recipe took two days — but the feeling of getting coconut, cherry and cinnamon all in one bite was worth it. He opens his eyes. He can still taste the coconut and the cherry and the cinnamon. “Happy birthday, mom,” he whispers. *** Henry Moore’s mother, Dr. Susan Moore, died from COVID-19 five days before Christmas in 2020. She was only 52 years old. In a Facebook video and subsequent posts throughout the month of December, Moore said she received inadequate healthcare from her doctor at Indiana University Health North Hospital in Carmel. Even though she was a physician, she said the doctor didn’t believe her when she told him she was in pain and needed medication to treat COVID-19. “He made me feel like I was a drug addict,” Moore said from her hospital bed in the video. In her account, she blamed her poor care on the fact she was Black. “I put forward and I maintain that if I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that,” she said. Racial disparities in
COURTESY PHOTO | IDS
Henry Moore and his mother, Dr. Susan Moore, pose for a photo. Susan Moore documented the poor care she received while she battled COVID-19 in the hospital.
fever of 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. She would call Henry late at night crying. “I can't sleep, I can't do this,” Henry recalled her saying. He encouraged his mom to document her poor care in the hospital. So, she posted a seven-minute Facebook video. “(The doctor) wanted to send me home,” she said in the video. “At that time, I’d only received two treatments of the Remdesivir. He said, ‘ah you don’t need it, you’re not even short of breath.’” Moore's eyes widened. “I said, 'yes I am.'” Moore started tearing up in the video. “I was in so much pain from my neck. My neck hurt so bad,” she said. “I was crushed. He made me feel like I was a drug addict, and he knew I was a physician.” She asked to be sent to another hospital for better care. But soon after, she got her results back from a scan of her neck. They found something wrong: the lymph nodes in her lungs were inflamed, and there was excess fluid. Suddenly, she said, the doctor was ready to treat her pain. ***
American health care have been extensively documented, dating back to slavery; doctors rarely visited enslaved people, and when they did, they provided little to no information about the patients’ condition. The outbreak of COVID-19 further exposed the prevalence of these racial disparities. Infection and mortality rates during the pandemic were significantly higher for Black people than for white people. Black people often receive poorer care compared to other patients. Doctors sometimes don’t believe a patient when they say they’re in pain and make inaccurate assumptions about Black patients. Black women are even more likely than Black men to receive unfair treatment from a healthcare provider. Doctors also didn’t believe Henry’s mom when she said she was in pain.
Now, sitting in his dorm room, Henry suddenly finds himself without his mother there to lean on. “Who am I without my mom?” *** Before contracting COVID-19, Moore worked as a primary care physician at a women’s prison in Indianapolis. It was there she may have encountered an agent, like dust or a virus, that triggered sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease that attacks the lungs, causing fatigue and shortness of breath, Henry said. At one point, she was taking 14 different pills. She was stressed. Her immune system became compromised. She became increasingly isolated and didn’t want to leave her room. Her dad tested positive
for COVID-19 on Thanksgiving in 2020. She then tested positive for COVID-19 three days later. That's when things got worse. Her neck became stiff, and she couldn’t breathe enough to sleep well. She felt very weak; she could barely walk. So she decided to go to the hospital closest to her house at the time, IU Health North. In her Facebook video, Moore said when she asked for Remdesivir, a medication commonly used to treat COVID-19, the doctor was hesitant to give it to her. “It wasn't enough,” Henry said. “My mom said it was like giving a Tic Tac to a whale. That was her exact analogy; it was so small, so miniscule for the amount she needed, and she just didn't feel like her authority as a physician was noted.” Moore’s heart rate sometimes broke 150. She had a
Henry and his mom moved 21 times before high school: Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Florida. Minnesota, Colorado, Texas. The one constant throughout it all was his mom. “We were two peas in a pod,” he said. When Henry was in elementary school, he and his mom would read books together after school to help him catch up with his classmates’ reading levels, such as “The Time Machine,” by H.G. Wells or “Gulliver’s Travels,” by Jonathan Swift. After reading the books, they’d also watch the movies and compare. Outside of school, they would cook together. The last Thanksgiving they spent together, they stayed up all night cooking. SEE HENRY, PAGE 4
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Emails reveal provost pressure to cut IDS costs
T
he provost office reportedly preferred an immediate reduction in the print edition despite The Media School dean’s pitch for a longer timeline, according to emails the IDS obtained in a public records request. The IDS made the requests in September and October to better understand the conversations surrounding the student media plan, and has decided to release highlights of its findings to the public to ensure transparency. In an email Sept. 24, Dean David Tolchinsky wrote that “something has to happen this year re print (a move to special editions)” citing his conversation with “folks in the provost’s office.” His email was prompted by a separate email from Director of Student Media Jim
Rodenbush, who expressed concern over how an abrupt ceasing of print would cause damage to advertiser relationships. Tolchinsky wrote that he tried to pitch a longer timeline to no avail and advised they stay on course. “(My worry is if we don’t offer up print as a cost savings, we might be asked to find savings elsewhere. We’re prioritizing staff.)” Tolchinsky wrote. Projected cost savings from cutting print are expected to be a little over $20,000 during the spring semester, a figure that relies on the IDS’ ability to increase revenue from special editions to cover lost revenues from weekly editions. In an email to the IDS on Wednesday, Tolchinsky characterized the decision to cut print immediately as
a “consensus” among multiple people at the school and campus level “to start realizing savings sooner rather than later to reduce the deficit.” Though the emails reveal more about the decision to reduce the IDS’ print edition, efforts to reverse the decision have so far been unsuccessful. We have offered alternative ways to save money, potential initiatives that, if successful, could bring the IDS to a profitable position next semester and asked for a way to draw direct donations for print from the community. All offers have either been ignored, delayed or rejected. Barring a last-minute change of course, the IDS will be forced to only print seven editions next semester. We are grateful to still have print as a platform, but in an environment where our rev-
enue-generation initiatives are slowed through layers of bureaucracy and secrecy, subject to final approval from university administration, we fear the future only holds further reductions in our print edition or other costcutting measures. The Media School’s most recent budget conference over the summer indicated the school was open to cutting further. “While we continue to explore the potential for generating advertising revenue, including new opportunities via a converged student media model, we will prioritize a transitional implementation of cost-saving measures. This could include a potential further reduction in the print schedule of the Indiana Daily Student in the current fiscal year with additional adjustments made in the
years ahead,” the document read. As we navigate these changes and work toward increasing revenue and enhancing the quality of our coverage, our very dedicated staff will continue to report freely and fairly. We appreciate The Media School’s quiet advocacy for the IDS but hope future decisions of such magnitude are done with more transparency and close collaboration with stakeholders.
MARISSA MEADOR CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
JACOB SPUDICH CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Bloomington's 7 Day Forecast
Here’s how to apply for financial aid By Natalia Nelson nelsonnb@iu.edu
The Department of Education released the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid form on Nov. 21, 2024, 10 days before its initial goal of Dec. 1. The form must be submitted by June 30, 2025. The FAFSA is a free form that allows students to be eligible to receive federal financial aid in the form of grants, loans and scholarships for college or career schools. Last year, the Department of Education faced numerous problems with the delayed rollout of the form, releasing it on Dec. 30 instead of Oct. 1 as it had in past years. Since then, it’s revamped its contact center for students and families. It has increased staffing by nearly 80% and will continue to add agents to its contact center, which now offers evening and weekend hours. Contact center hours will extend until March 2 and can be found on the Federal Student Aid website. A newly passed bill authored by Rep. Erin Houchin of Indiana, the FAFSA Deadline Act, will require the Department of Education to make the FAFSA available by Oct. 1 in future years.
The priority deadline for Indiana residents is April 15. To fill out the FAFSA form, both the student and the contributor(s) — the student’s parent, spouse or legal guardian — will first need to create a StudentAid account. Students and contributors will need their Social Security Numbers (or A-Numbers for non-U.S. citizens), tax returns, balances in current checking and savings accounts and other general financial information. Forms can be printed and mailed or filled out online through the FASFA website. After the student’s dependency status is confirmed, they can invite contributors by providing the contributor’s name, date of birth, email address and SSN. While filling out the form, students can expect to answer questions about their circumstances, demographics and financials. They have the option to send the form to up to 20 schools. Once both the student and the contributor fill out the FAFSA, it will be submitted for processing. The priority deadline for Indiana residents is April 15, though those who do not meet the deadline should still submit the form.
SOURCE: ETHAN CHOO | EHCHOO@IU.EDU GRAPHICS BY: ALAYNA WILKENING
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