Residence Life should have later hall check-out date

The semester is coming to an end, and to many, this refers to the start of finals. Finals are two weeks away. Starting Dec. 11 and ending Dec. 18, students are hitting the books and class notes to pass or maintain their grades. Many students become stressed trying to keep a 3.0 GPA or higher to sustain the scholarships they currently have.

As a student I’m aware of my testing dates and also worried about my grades not being adequate. I also am aware that as an out-of-state student I will be traveling home to spend the holidays with my family during the winter break. 

My concern is with Resident Life and the terms of moving out of the dorms on Dec. 19 at noon. From what I heard from many students, some of these finals run till 7 or 8 p.m. on Dec. 18. This gives out-of-state students, and any other student for that matter, difficulties to make traveling arrangements. With being stressed about passing our courses, we also have to worry about getting plane tickets, renting cars, hitching rides or being picked up by parents who might have to travel hours to get here.

This creates problems and issues that could be easily modified by switching the moving date to a later time. It will be accommodating to students that have finals that last day and will provide more time for those who need to pack for the long break.    

Theater arts freshman

Wildcat advertisement misleading, incites fear

I am writing to vehemently decry the one-quarter page ad you published (for likely a tidy sum) on page seven in the Daily Wildcat yesterday.

The bold print sounds the alarm for women or their relatives to jump on the band wagon for a hopefully big payout if they sign up to file a lawsuit against the manufacturers of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella (generic equivalent of Yasmin) oral contraceptives if they have suffered any of the following “”side effects””: death, blood clots in the legs or lungs, stroke, heart attack, etc.

This likely follows some medical research that continues to investigate the incidence of complications from all varieties of birth control pills. Recently published data from the European Active Surveillance Study confirms that the incidence of venous thromboembolism, more commonly known as blood clots, is comparable among a wide variety of birth control pills studied.

This risk averages eight per 10,00 women, to 9.9 per 10,00 women. Therefore there is no confirming evidence that the above mentioned birth control pills are any more likely to cause illness or death than other pills. Many women feel best on these birth control pills and this ad will unduly alarm them.

Any birth control pill can have the side effects listed above. However, serious life threatening side effects are extremely rare in healthy, young, non-smoking women. All of medicine, and life, is a risk-benefit ratio assessment. Thousands of people are killed in car accidents each year, but most of us decide that the benefit of riding in an auto, far outweighs the risk.

The risk of all contraceptive methods combined does not equal the risk to a woman of conceiving and carrying a baby to term — quite safe in the developed world, but still not without risk.

So, I respectfully request that in the future you decline to accept payment to publish this sort of fear-mongering, greed-inciting and misinformed “”advertisement.”” 

Eileen Devlin, RN

Supervisor of women’s health deptartment, Campus Health Services