Left Handed Struggles

By Kay Riley

A recent study found that right-handed people live six to 11 years longer than those who are left-handed.

Psychology professor Diane Halpern and researcher Stanley Coren conducted the study comparing death and accident rates of left and right-handed people last year to determine why there is a smaller left-handed elderly population.

The study found left-handed people were more likely to die from accidents than right-handed people. This could possibly be explained by how engineering has built cars and many other things to use one’s right hand and foot, Halpern said.

Justine Long, a left-handed freshman studying communications at Stonehill, said she has issues in the classroom.

“I can’t do whiteboards, pencils are a struggle because of the smudging,” she said.

Some coaches don’t know how to teach their left-handed players skills, several said.

They are often told to just do the opposite or mirror the coaches with their left hand, senior Gabby Damico, studying Marketing from Syracuse, New York, said.

Senior Megan Lutinski, a psychology and education double major, learned how to play softball with her right hand because that is the way her dad taught her because he is right-handed.

This raises a possible struggle for left-handed players in not getting the right foundations for their sports early on in life; as right-handed people do.

Some lefties have prevailed in sports.

“All the great sports legends are left-handed; Ted Williams and Wayne Gretzky just to name a few,” Michael Wackle, a left-handed freshman studying graphic design, said.

In some sports, like fencing, lefties have an advantage against right-handed opponents Alyssa Manfredi, a freshman studying Psychology at Stonehill, said.

Just how lefties can still use their right hand in some aspects of life, righties also can sometimes do everyday tasks with their left hand naturally.

Senior Ben Clark, a right-handed health science major from New Bedford, Massachusetts, finds himself using his left hand to pick up drinks while eating.

He said that may be because he sees his father, who is left handed, picking up drinks with his left hand.

Junior Jessy Iwuala, a political science major, said she never realized how stressful being left-handed could potentially be, especially when finding a desk.

“I’m just looking for an open seat; not even considering if its left or right handed.”

Some left handed disadvantages, other than daily struggles, is their statistics on age of death. The study said “the researchers found that the average age at death for right-handed people was 75 and for left-handed people, 66.”

Halpern said her study “should not, of course, be used to predict the lifespan of any one individual. It does not take into account the fitness of any individual.”

ALICE Training at Stonehill College

By Maya Graham


Alexis DaSilva, a freshman at Stonehill College, remembers the chill she felt when the “gunman” pointed the “gun” at her head and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

“I felt so helpless and it made me realize how easy it is for these people to kill,” DaSilva said.

It was all part of ALICE training (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) where the Stonehill Police Department members acted as shooters during different scenarios, using nerf guns to stimulate real life events.

Stonehill College had adopted the training in 2016 to prepare students and staff in the case of an emergency.

The trainings are coordinated by the Stonehill College Police Department.

This year the training started at the beginning of September and is running until the end of the semester.

For the first time, the class of 2022 was required to participate in one training as part of their First Year Experience class.

The trainings involved three hours of preparation including powerpoints, lectures and hands on scenarios where students practiced techniques they had learned.

ALICE is unique to other trainings because it teaches specific techniques like distractions and swarming methods, Stonehill Police David Wordell said.

“ALICE allows the instructors to show exactly what methods can be used to lockdown a room. We don’t just say lockdown...we show what goes into locking down a room,” Wordell said.

DaSilva recently underwent the training and believes that it would make it harder for a shooter to accomplish their goal of killing as many people as possible.

“I believe that this way is 100 percent more effective because the old way makes you feel helpless and as if you are just sitting ducks hoping that the shooter doesn’t come in and plow through the whole classroom,” DaSilva said.

This training is an alternative to the traditional and not as effective lockdown only approach, Wordell said.

“There are still places that teach the traditional method of lock the room, turn off the lights, and hide in a corner,” Wordell said.

There are other active shooter response models that are options for different organizations.

According to the ALICE Training Institute, 950 higher education institutions use ALICE training. There is over 4,000 colleges in the United States.

Wordell said he feels ALICE training is perfect for Stonehill College and works well with the students and faculty.

“I genuinely feel like I’m better prepared than I was before because now I know how to barricade a door. In high school we had to just sit down and wait but all I wanted to do was get out and in ALICE training you can escape and that’s what I wanted to hear and what makes most sense” Kay Riley, a freshman who underwent the training, said.

Riley said the most important takeaway from ALICE training was to never give up and to keep fighting.

DaSilva and Riley said they felt empowered after completing the training.

Wordell said empowering people is the point.

“Don’t become a flat squirrel. Make a decision. It’s a reference to the fact that squirrels have a tendency when crossing a roadway and coming upon a vehicle will run back and forth, never picking a side of the road to go to and eventually they get run over. Any decision is better than no decision,”  Wordell said.

Stonehill College Hears from Holocaust Survivor

By Gabrielle Damico

Stonehill College is Condemned to Remember as Holocaust survivor, Tomi Reichental, 83, from Slovakia, shares his new film and how it relates to modern day problems around the world.

Reichental was accompanied by film director and friend, Gerry Gregg. Sitting onstage with Reichental and Gregg was Stonehill’s own Vice President for Academic Affairs, Joe Favazza who moderated the event.

Favazza began the discussion asking Reichental about filming Condemned to Remember.

“While we were in Europe at the time, three years ago, the influx of refugees suddenly coming to Slovakia…it reminded me of late 1939 when the Jewish people wanted to escape Europe from the Nazis,” Reichental said.

“There were young Slovaks taunting Jews…saying, ‘Slovakia for Slovaks.’ They sound like the coos in the 40’s,” Reichental said with a disappointed tone.

Because of these modern day refugees and what Reichental and Gregg encountered while shooting this film, it was decided that the film would change course. The film now ties in the Holocaust and today’s problems with refugees, like those in Slovakia.

“The past is not even the past,” Reichental and Gregg both said on different occasions.

They explained this is to remind us that even though the Holocaust happened, we cannot let the memories pass with the passing of the last few survivors.

Reichental encouraged the audience to come to terms with the past, but not forget what happened.

“The best example of this I can think of is the genocide of 8,300 Muslim men. I recited prayers in Hebrew over the Muslim grave,” Reichental said.

Reichental segued into how these issues are still surrounding gender phobia, sexism, and racism.

He looked sternly at his audience and said, “Do not become a bystander, be an upstander.”

Gregg said an upstander is someone who “gets involved and tells people what’s wrong in their actions.”

“At the time it was happening to the Jews in the late 30’s and 40’s no one said it was wrong,” Reichental said.

He stressed that people need to stand up for others with hushed voices.

“The Holocaust started with whispers, abuse, and then finally murder,” Reichental said.

Gregg nodded as Reichental recounted the event.

“Like the San Andreas Fault, there are tremors in Europe,” Gregg said. He supported Reichental as he mentioned that it’s important to warn young people that this is what’s happening and to make sure it doesn’t spread.

The most overwhelming experience Reichental had while filming Condemned to Remember was meeting the 19-year-old granddaughter of Officer Hans Leiden of the Nazi party.

                                                                                                                                        

“I am worried about Holocaust denial and what will happen when this generation dies out,” Reichental said to Leiden’s granddaughter.

“I will tell my children and their children so it will never die out. I will tell succeeding generations of the Holocaust to honor your memory,” she tells to Reichental.

As Tomi Reichental became emotional over this message, he felt reassured that the memory of his family and fellow Jewish community will be honored.

Stonehill Student Finds New Outlook After Major Surgery

By Shannon Gorsky

Marianne Kenney will never find it easy to make it through airport security thanks to the metal rods and screws inside her back.

Kenney, a sophomore computer science major at Stonehill College from Sudbury, Massachusetts, underwent major spine surgery last August that has not only made security checks interesting but helped her begin a long road to recovery toward a better life.

At age 14, Kenney was diagnosed with minor scoliosis in the shape of an S-curve where the top and bottom of the spine were curved like the letter S. From there, the scoliosis progressively worsened.

“When I was diagnosed, there was a fifteen-degree curve on the top section of my spine and a five degree curve on the bottom. By the time I had my surgery, the top curve was approximately 60.3 degrees and the bottom was 48.2 degrees,” Kenney said.

As a result of the scoliosis, Kenney struggled with basic tasks such as sitting, standing, walking, or riding her horse for long periods.

The pain and scoliosis was going to keep getting worse, so Kenney made the decision to get surgery to fix it.

The surgery was called spinal fusion, and it involved placing rods and screws next to her spine in order to support it into a straight position. The goal of the surgery was to reduce pain in the long-term and reduce the curvature, so it wouldn’t get worse.

“They had to cut open my back from my T2 vertebrae [just below the base of the neck] all the way down to my L3 vertebrae [the 3rd to last vertebrae from the bottom of the spine], which left only two or three vertebrae un-fused,” Kenney said.

It was a high risk surgery with a two-to-five percent chance of paralysis, a one percent chance of death, a 20 percent risk of infection, and a 30 percent risk of additional surgery.

“They placed sensors in my calf, thigh, foot, and a few other places that would check and make sure I wasn’t paralyzed throughout the surgery,” Kenney said.

On August 2, 2018, Kenney walked into surgery being 5’4” tall. Eight hours later, she was 5’7”, and her back was nearly straight.

Kenney spent the next five days in the hospital in intense pain.

Kenney spent the first day after surgery sleeping, and the second day after was when the recovery process began.

“The only part of my body I could move was my arms since everything else hurt so bad. When I woke up, I was terrified because I couldn’t feel my foot and thought it was paralyzed,” Kenney said.

As soon as they started giving her less medication, the pain was intense, Kenney said.

“There was lots and lots of crying because I was in so much pain. Nothing was comfortable anymore - I couldn’t even sit down or move without constant pain,” Kenney said.

Kenney also had to relearn how to walk after surgery because of the different weight distribution.

“I had to retrain my body and the muscles to put one foot in front of the other, so I didn’t fall down. I had to have people with me at all times,” Kenney said.

The majority of the rehab at the hospital consisted of practicing standing up, walking, and getting in and out of bed, Kenney said.

“I didn’t really have physical therapy. It was mostly just seeing what I could do and taking things slow,” Kenney said.

After the five days in the hospital, Kenney returned home, and it took about three weeks for her to be able to do normal tasks such as brushing her teeth on her own.

Kenney was told that she couldn’t lift, bend, or twist for six weeks after surgery and to get up and move as often as possible without pain. She was not given a specific rehab or physical therapy program.

“The absolute hardest part of the recovery was the limitation. I couldn’t pet my dogs or go downstairs to get a drink. I was completely reliant on my mother to give me my medications every two hours. It was hard to be so reliant,” Kenney said.

For Kenney, every bit of pain will be worth it in the end.

“Three weeks after the surgery, I knew it was the best decision of my life. I knew the pain was less, and I knew that I’d be so much happier. I knew the pain of the metal in my back would go away, but the original back pain would’ve never gone away no matter how much physical therapy or treatment I would’ve had,” Kenney said.

While she won’t be able to twist her back very much at all, Kenney said she is looking forward to being able to run, stand, ride, and do other things that she wasn’t able to do much of before.

“Sometimes going through more pain is worth it when in the long run, you’re capable of so much more,” Kenney said.

The Changing Tides of Youth Voting

By Hannah Lennon

Youths are voting now more than ever, said Peter Lennon, former Plainville, Connecticut Town Clerk.

 “There weren’t many young voters back then, because the age was 21,” said Lennon.

Lennon, town clerk for 35 years before retiring in 2002, said he believes that many more young people vote now because of social media.

“They are more aware of politics because they see it on their social medias every day,” said Lennon.

Voting-age students from Plainville are voting in the 2018 midterms, either by absentee ballot or in person, even though many of them are away at college.

“The timing of Election Day can be difficult, as it is during the school week and polls are only open until 8 p.m.,” said Abigail Leander, a freshman at the University of Connecticut.

“However, its timing is no excuse not to vote as it is a very feasible task whether done in person or through an absentee ballot,” said Leander.

Leander is not the only college student from Plainville who believes voting is an easy task that should not be excused.

Nicholas Costantini, another freshman at UConn, is having a relative pick him up from the college and drive him home to vote.

“I believe that while there may be some obstacles involving transportation and the timing of elections, it is not too difficult to cast a ballot in whatever way one chooses to do so,” said Costantini.

 “I’m voting because I believe it is my civil duty to help choose the best people suited to guide our country in the right direction,” said Costantini.

Leander agreed.

“I think it is the best way for ordinary citizens to actively participate in our democracy,” said Leander.

They said voting is a privilege, and they do not plan on wasting it.

Dominika Mis, a graduate of Plainville High School and now at Fairfield University, will be using an absentee ballot this Election Day.

“I’m voting because it’s a right I have and I finally get the chance to utilize it and have a voice,” said Mis.

Elona Tanski, a freshman at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will also be using an absentee ballot this November.

“It’s important to vote,” said Tanski, “for our voices to be heard.”

In a Tufts University CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning and Engagement) study, in 2016, approximately 50 percent of eligible youth– about 24 million, ages 18 to 29 – voted in the 2016 general election.

Youth voting matters, because young people are a majority of voters, the Tufts University study noted.

Only 6 million youths are eligible to vote, while 39 million seniors are eligible, the study found.

Many youths believe that voting will bring about change in America.

 “Especially as the youngest generation, I believe our opinions are vital to shaping the America that we will soon inherit,” Leander said.