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Boston Globe: Childhood home built on creative arts
The Lexington, Mass., 1920s bungalow-style home that Micki Taylor-Pinney, coordinator of the dance program in the Department of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, grew up in and now lives in with her husband, Markus, has for decades housed dance programs, classes, and camps run by her parents, as well as a distribution center for international folk records, says the September 18 Boston Globe. Taylor-Pinney, who has directed BU’s dance program for 18 years and is the artistic director of the Dance Collective, a nonprofit contemporary dance organization, says she remembers their home filled with activities and projects. “My parents had an open-door policy, with people helping out on different projects,” she says. “Guest teachers stayed here, as did ‘transient’ folk dancers. I recall people camped out in the living room and in the yard in tents and campers.”
Kansas City Star: NFL’s medical records policy denies basic rights
The National Football League’s collective bargaining agreement limits players’ access to their medical and training records, reports the September 21 Kansas City Star. During the regular season, players are not allowed to see the medical records kept by their teams, and have access only twice a year — once during preseason, and once after the regular season. “This surprises me,” says George Annas, an SPH professor of health law and a leading authority on medical ethics. “It’s so behind the times. The whole country has been moving to open access to your own records, whether they’re medical, police, credit, or education records. No one would argue with that anymore. The problem with secret records is people are making decisions about you, and you don’t know why. In this case, when you’re talking about professional football players, [teams] could be making decisions about whether they should play or not. Their livelihood and future health could be at stake.” Annas says he would recommend that NFL players do the same thing he advises in his book The Rights of Patients: “Raise hell.”
Milford Daily News (Milford, Mass.): Caution still advisable for soldiers in Iraq
After President Bush’s declaration of the end of combat operations
in Iraq in May, much heavy armor, including tanks and personnel carriers,
was sent home to the United States. Some soldiers started living in buildings
in Baghdad and spending their days rebuilding schools and hospitals and
training police officers. But an uneasy trust has ensued between American
soldiers and the Iraqi people, reports the September 21 Milford Daily
News (Milford, Mass.), leading many observers and veterans to question
how soldiers ought to deal with the situation. “What we have today
on the ground in Iraq is an army of occupation,” says Joachim
Maitre,
a professor and the director of BU’s Center for Defense Journalism. “We
have pledged to the public that a government is in the making, but we
have made it clear it will take a long time. The element of distrust
can mature into something quite violent.” Maitre believes that
letting their guard down is the greatest danger to U.S. troops. “I
think the main danger is boredom,” he says. “You can be on
patrol three days in a row . . . even if you’re walking on a patrol
with a gun at the ready, and nothing ever happens to you, you tend to
relax.”
26
September 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations