Commentary

In a recent announcement that should not be overlooked, the U.S. Department of Education recently laid the foundation for a monumental, generation-defining shift that will help people in prison successfully re-enter society. On July 30, the department announced it will expand the Second Chance Pell experiment for the 2022-23 award year. Launched in 2015, the Second Chance Pell experiment provides Pell Grants to incarcerated men and women for enrollment in post-secondary education programs provided in state and federal prisons.

The first mandatory vaccination case to reach the Supreme Court comes from Indiana University, which is requiring students to get COVID shots before enrolling for the fall semester unless they have a medical or religious exemption. The lower courts have upheld the requirement under the authority of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 case in which the court upheld a smallpox vaccine requirement in my hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since the May 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, much of the attention on police reform has been directed at municipal police departments. But there has also been a noticeable uptick in protests against the practices of campus police. Protests have occurred at, among other schools, Yale University, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Minnesota and various campuses of the University of California system.

We’re a little over six months away from the filing deadline for the 2022 elections here in Maryland. Men and women from around the state will be running for offices up and down the ballot at the federal, state, and local level. You can be one of those people too. One of the biggest complaints I hear from people about politicians and elected officials is that politicians and elected officials “aren’t like me.”

As the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus spreads, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have warned “the war has changed.” We in the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) community must be nimble so students can continue safely learning in person this fall. The greatest risk for viral transmission for students is likely when they are unmasked for lunch.

Many in the Washington area who have long enjoyed Maryland’s Sugarloaf Mountain will be concerned about a Frederick County plan under consideration that falls short of adequate protection of this treasured region. Originally included in the draft preservation plan for the region but later removed from the protected area is a 350-acre property owned by a local developer. It is at Interstate 270 Exit 26 and is zoned “agricultural or conservation.” Its development, whether for residential, commercial or light industrial use, would negatively impact the immediate area, currently a gateway to the nearby Sugarloaf Mountain.

Maryland has embarked on a transformative course toward a world that runs on green energy. With the recent announcement that a prominent wind energy developer will expand its operations in southeastern Baltimore County, home of the iconic Bethlehem Steel Corp, the project has the potential to not only deliver on a clean energy economy, but also to correct a multitude of generational injustice. At this critical inflection point for America, in the post-George Floyd era, lies the opportunity to create equity in wind energy jobs and to achieve a rebirth of the steel industry in Sparrows Point.

The Aug. 3 Health & Science article “Is medicine a threat to horseshoe crabs?” focused on the threat to these ancient mariners from their capture, bleeding and release for use of their processed blood cells to assure the purity of injectable drugs and implants. A greater source of mortality affecting horseshoe crab populations are the 832,755 crabs landed and killed for bait coastwide in 2019 alone. The crabs are mostly cut up and used in conch pots and for catching catfish and eels. The mortality count was up 25 percent from 665,278 in 2018.

Amid the aroma of deep fried Oreo cookies caked in powdered sugar and the shrieks of middle schoolers on carnival rides, there is no better place to learn about the opioid crisis than from the first responders working the county fairs this summer. Public health officials, law enforcement and addiction counselors all tell the same story: Opioids are killing rural communities in Maryland. The COVID-19 pandemic, social isolation, widespread job loss and increasing supplies of illicit drugs are fueling the already raging fires of opioid addiction and death.