On Monday, February 3rd, 2025, TheDailyBookworm and cosmicvibe discussed the various local, national, and global stories:
After a deadly 2023 car crash, a victim’s parents are suing Pi Beta Chi and 37 members of the fraternity for 150 million dollars in a wrongful death lawsuit. The three JMU students were killed in the accident following a recruitment event involving drugs and alcohol after the driver of the vehicle crashed while under the influence. Richmond 6 News states that the driver will face seven misdemeanor charges, including three counts of negligent homicide, reckless driving with injury, and underage possession of beer. Though many people still recognize Pi Beta Chi (PBX) as a JMU affiliated fraternity, JMU states on their website that the chapter lost recognition in Fall 2013 due to hazing, forced calisthenics, and underage drinking ten years before the incident took place. WHSV3 has made it known that the chapter continued to operate at the university “underground” free of oversight while recruiting and growing their fraternity with students from the school. This brought up a conversation about James Madison University’s involvement in the lawsuit. Some believe that JMU should take partial responsibility for the incident since there were three JMU students in the fatal accident. Our conversation centered around the ways in which JMU unrecognizing the organization made it difficult to hold people accountable, as well as a discussion on the ways in which fraternities are treated differently from sororities on campus, and how hazing incidents in sororities are much less common. Some ways JMU has shown their support for the families was the making of a memorial for the victims in the arboretum located on campus. The local JMU paper The Breeze did an emotional article from that day as well as what went on. The situation was a devastating loss for the university and with the lawsuit underway, there may finally be justice for the victims’ families.
On January 27th, a White House memo was sent out ordering a freeze on federal grants and loans causing chaos and panic around the country. With there being uncertainty towards this memo, many news outlets such as CBS have assured individuals that programs including Medicare, Social Security, SNAP, Medicaid, and most financial aid programs are not affected by this bill. Soon after this memo went public, a federal judge “temporarily blocked” President Trump’s attempt and shortly after, the memo was rescinded by the White House. This topic brings up another source of debate that has been seen in many presidencies: an executive order. One of the main sources of discussion in class was the ethics of presidential executive orders and how almost all presidents have used them in order to circumvent the democratic process of creating a law, and if they had become a loophole to fulfill promises made while campaigning without having to pass through any checks and balances. We discussed how this can be seen as an abuse of power and if it indicated that presidents can use their influence to dominate news cycles and what the public sees as a potential threat to their well-being. While many people were sent into a confusion driven panic, Ezra Klein suggests that this has been the strategy of the Trump administration so far, and that democratic processes will still remain in place.
As of late 2024, there has been news of a new global outbreak of the Bird Flu labeled H5N1. According to the CDC, there is a current number of 67 total reported human cases in the United States as well as 1 death associated with the H5N1 Bird Flu infection. The CDC wants people to know that person-to-person spread is almost nonexistent and the current public health risk is considered low. It is best to know that the main entities being affected are wild birds, poultry flocks, and mammals. Many of us were only aware that something was going on when realizing the rise in price for eggs everywhere. We learned from Fingerlakes that egg prices in the United States had jumped 50% over the past year and nearly 13 million hens were wiped out. One of the biggest discussions was the differences between the reactions from society to this outbreak and how people compared it to the former COVID-19 pandemic. Knowing how much the pandemic changed everyone’s lives brought up some concerns about society’s health regarding the Bird Flu, and our discussion turned to how media coverage, especially when it is not completely informed, can fuel fear reactions that are not proportional to the situation. As we talked, we realized that the Bird Flu has been present in society for decades now and with that, health agencies are already on top of the situation.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 