Monday, February 13, 2023 I Vol. 119 Iss. 20
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INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904
What’s inside Opinions
With the MFA raking in $200 million in loans, the editorial board questions GW’s financial priorities. Page 6
Culture
Get to know these three current and former student bands rocking out around D.C. Page 7
Sports
Tennis hopes a victory over Bucknell will be a sign of things to come this season. Page 8
GW awarded $50M to research diabetes’ link to Alzheimer’s MAGGIE O’NEILL REPORTER
SOPHIA GOEDERT
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
COURTESY OF VOA UNDER WIKIMEDIA COMMONS PUBLIC DOMAIN Onlookers gaze upon a mound of rubble, the result of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated Turkey Monday, killing more than 34,000 to date.
Students mobilize relief efforts to support earthquake survivors in Turkey, Syria FAITH WARDWELL
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
NIKKI GHAEMI
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
Student leaders are supporting victims of an earthquake that struck a border region of Turkey and Syria last week through fundraisers like clothing drives to mobilize GW community members around the issue. The catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake that shook Turkey, Syria and neighboring countries like Iraq and Jordan last Monday killed at least 34,000 people as of Sunday. This number continues to climb as rescue teams continue to dig through the rubble to locate survivors. Student organizations like the Turkish Student Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and the International Student Association have shared links to earthquake relief funds, accepted donations and collected items like over-the-counter medicines and tents to ship to displaced civilians in Turkey and Syria. Berk Gorgen, a junior and the president of TSA, said the student organization sprang into action after hearing news of the earthquake last Monday morning, launching relief efforts by advertising fundraisers in Kogan Plaza and offering ways for people to contribute money on the group’s Instagram page. He said the organization has raised about $1,000 as of Friday across three days of tabling in Kogan, which will be donated to funds like Bridge to Turkiye and Turkish Philanthropy to provide hot meals and warm
clothes to citizens harmed by the earthquake. “They’re still living under the debris of the buildings, which is amazing, without food, without water or anything, and people are trying to save them still,” Gorgen said. “So even the little amount of money would help them.” Gorgen said his family members living in Adana, a city in southern Turkey impacted by the earthquake, survived the earthquake and are safe, but he wants to help other families in the country who remain displaced or separated from loved ones. “There are people who could not save their families, which is sad,” Gorgen said. Gorgen said other student organizations, like the Azerbaijani Student Association, helped TSA promote their fundraising efforts in Kogan Plaza and the state of rescue efforts in Turkey and Syria via Instagram. He said various Turkish professors across the University have also supported the fundraising efforts. “Mostly right now, we are trying to raise awareness to the situation because I think many people are still not really sure how big of a deal this is,” he said. Gorgen said in addition to accepting contributions through Venmo, TSA is circulating links on Instagram to a selection of funds providing aid for civilians in Turkey and Syria impacted by the earthquake, allowing students to access reputable relief efforts. “We are providing links to different funds as well as to Syrian ones as well, so people can choose what fund they want to donate or just contact
us from Venmo and we will separate donations,” Gorgen said. Lance Lokas, a sophomore and coordinating committee member of Students for Justice in Palestine, said SJP has collected more than $1,000 since Friday for Molham, a volunteer humanitarian organization based in northwest Syria, after sharing the group’s Venmo on Instagram and tabling in Kogan Plaza. He said SJP recognized the need for donations toward parts of Syria that “aid typically can’t get to,” which spurred their fundraising efforts for Molham. “Obviously these conditions are exacerbated by U.S. sanctions on Syria right now,” he said. “But we hope that the donations we’re collecting and the work we’re doing will provide at least some semblance of relief for these people.” The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced Thursday that it would exempt earthquake relief aid sent to Syria from economic sanctions that the U.S. government has imposed. Some have criticized the U.S. placement of sanctions on the country following the 2011 Syrian Revolution for allegedly causing disproportionate amounts of harm to people living in Syria. Lokas said the situation is particularly dire since it is winter and the weather creates especially harsh conditions for those who have been displaced. “There’s so many people who need help right now,” he said. “Any small bit counts.” Sophomore Sare Arpaci, the president of the Interna-
tional Student Association, said she was with fellow ISA members when she received “shocking” news of the earthquake. She said members have leaned on each other for support and decided to start collecting relief funds. She said the organization has collected about $200 for a fundraising campaign to support victims in Turkey and Syria, with proceeds going to the official emergency relief government institution in Turkey and the Syrian American Medical Society. Arpaci, who is originally from Istanbul, said some of ISA’s members are from Turkey, Syria and neighboring countries, but members and their families are safe. “It was a shock hearing from others about something that happened in your own country, but also it felt like there was support since I was with the members of my org,” Arpaci said. Arpaci said ISA is planning to host a professor panel in the coming weeks to discuss the importance of access to media during natural disasters and international crises in light of Turkey’s Twitter restriction shortly after the earthquake, which has since been restored. She said she hopes students recognize the natural disaster as a humanitarian crisis and give what they can to support survivors. “I think what we would want people to know is that this is a crisis for humans and it’s not related to anything political, or it’s not related to an idea,” Arpaci said. “And right now, what people need is support so that they can find shelter.”
GW’s Biostatistics Center is advancing a nearly 30-year study on the connection between diabetes and Alzheimer’s with more than $51 million from the National Institutes of Health for the research. Marinella Temprosa, the principal investigator of the study and an associate research professor in the Milken Institute School of Public Health, said 25 clinics across the country will evaluate potential signs of Alzheimer’s disease in participants with diabetes or prediabetes in hopes of stopping, preventing and reversing the disease. People with Type 2 diabetes, which affects more than 30 million Americans, have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s, but the connection between cognitive decline and diabetes is still unknown, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Temprosa said the research is a continuation of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study that began in 1994, which observed how lifestyle interventions like diet changes, increased exercise and treatment with the diabetes drug metformin can delay the disease in people who have a higher risk of contracting it. She said in the new study, which will take about four years to complete, researchers from the 25 clinics will observe the original 1,976 participants of the DPPOS study and
see if they are showing signs of Alzheimer’s. “The main goal is really to understand what are the determinants of Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias in prediabetes and diabetes,” Temprosa said in an interview. She said the application process for the grant from the NIH – which was fi nalized in September 2022 – took two years, and the funding will last until 2027, adding up to almost $89 million. GW received $51 million of the grant, and the rest was split up between the 25 clinics. Temprosa said the study employs about 200 researchers nationwide who will evaluate the participants while the Biostatistics Center – housed under Milken and based in Rockville, Maryland – acts as the study’s coordinating center, a facility for managing and storing data for the study. Pamela Norris, GW’s vice provost for research, said in an email that the grant is the largest NIH-funded grant that the University has received “to date.” Temprosa said the research team is currently enrolling willing participants from the fi rst study and assessing their memory, language, brain and metabolic health. She said they expect about 15 to 30 percent of the original cohort to have mild cognitive impairment and about 10 percent to have dementia, which Alzheimer’s could have caused, based on national estimates. See STUDY Page 2
COURTESY OF MARINELLA TEMPROSA Marinella Temprosa, the principal investigator of the study, said 25 clinics will evaluate potential signs of Alzheimer’s disease in participants with diabetes or prediabetes in hopes of stopping, preventing and reversing Alzheimer’s.
Professor receives backlash for commentary bashing US pandemic response SOPHIA GOEDERT
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Milken Institute School of Public Health professor Leana Wen holds a coveted seat as a CNN medical analyst and contributing Washington Post columnist, but her views on COVID have generated backlash from public health experts throughout the pandemic. Wen – a research professor of health policy and management – has argued that U.S. hospitals are overcounting COVID deaths, claimed masks can cause speech development delays among children and prioritized individual responsibility, despite backlash from public health professionals, while providing expert commentary on the pandemic. Experts in medicine and public health said Wen supports an “individualistic” approach to the pandemic as an alternative to community health policy and “abandons” immunocompromised people
in her columns, but some medical professionals call Wen’s individualism a “refreshing” point of view. Wen did not return a request for comment. Wen said in a column last month that the United States is overcounting COVID hospitalizations and deaths by adding patients to the respective tallies if they are positive for COVID, despite being treated for other reasons. Public health researchers argue that COVID deaths are undercounted because they can be misclassified as other causes. Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore from 2014 to 2018, was scheduled to speak at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting last November about receiving backlash while in the public eye, but she stepped down before the speech due to fears for her personal safety. A petition to remove Wen as a speaker at the
meeting started circulating last August and amassed 629 signatures from public health professionals. The petition demanded the organization publicly condemn “rhetoric of inevitable mass infection” after Wen allegedly promoted “unscientific, unsafe, ableist, fatphobic and unethical practices” on her platform and diminished the work of APHA members. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board defended Wen last August against backlash for withdrawing support for the “left’s overreaching policies,” like mask mandates. The editorial board said Wen is “enduring the wrath” of public health professionals for suggesting that Americans need to learn to live with COVID. Dabney Evans, an associate professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said she signed the petition last August to remove Wen as a speaker at the
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY AUDEN YURMAN | SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR Experts said Leana Wen’s opinions on COVID policies don’t acknowledge individuals who are at high risk of contracting the coronavirus, while others said the media needs more voices that represent the views of the general population.
APHA meeting because Wen characterized COVID measures as a responsibil-
ity placed on an individual, a policy approach that public professionals have wide-
ly rebuked. See PROFESSOR Page 5