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The holidays are a time to look inward and reflect. Winter weather and travel warnings encouraged GBU to stay around New Haven this month and report on some sweet home cooking—the adventures of Yale’s own talent. The Good Charles J. Lockwood, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN), may finally have come up with a solution to the dangers posed by mounting malpractice insurance costs. Excessively high malpractice premium payments in departments such as OB/GYN and Neurosurgery have forced assistant professors to stop performing clinical work, which could cripple reproductive research to prevent premature births, birth defects, and ovarian cancer. Hopefully, Lockwood will take advantage of the Professional Liability Premium Support Program to overcome prohibitive medical liability costs, free up more funds for research, and move scientific investigation forward. Otherwise, litigators may have to begin sporting warning labels: “Caution: May Be Hazardous to Pregnant Women.” The Bad Yale-New Haven Hospital faces a lawsuit from a mentally ill man who claims three security guards assaulted him with pepper spray. Deron Elliot, who suffers from E C O N O M Y bipolar disorder, wanted to have his medication adjusted after an incident at an outlet mall. The lawsuit claims that the Yale-New Haven Hospital security guards used excessive force by spraying Elliot at close range without using proper de-escalation techniques first. (The YFP speculates that they intended strategic arms limitation talks or attempts at diplomacy.) A clarification of the facts will hopefully clear the Hospital’s name as well; rumor has it that in lieu of an apology, Yale-New Haven may allow Elliot to use pepper spray on an assistant OB/GYN professor. The Ugly On Tuesday, December 16th, 60 percent of Yale Graduate Teaching Assistants voted to unionize in a GESO-organized vote. This move was strongly supported by Representative Rosa DeLauro, who claims some graduate students are poor and thus have a right to fight for larger stipends. Mary Reynolds, co-Chair of GESO, is frustrated that the University will not recognize the union. She claims GESO will continue to reach out to the 40,000 other unionized grad students across the country and will build a coalition with TAs from Columbia and UPenn. The Yale Free Press is proud to be first up against the wall should GESO’s revolution of the oppressed proletariat succeed. | ||||||||||||
