The Sunday Subject – November 21, 2021

Subject Media Photo Department

Welcome to Subject’s weekly news roundup. We present you the essential headlines, local and beyond.

Happy belated birthday to the University at Buffalo’s campus newspaper, The Spectrum, which published its first issue on November 17th, 1950.

  • The issue includes articles about McCarthyism, plaid shirts and dungarees, sports and fraternities, and a slight decline in enrollment leading to only 10,066 enrolled students for that year. Equally as interesting, its advertisements feature shoe repair shops and diners that charge 75 cents for dinner. 

12-year-old Marcell Yanders was killed Monday after being hit by a speeding truck while walking home from school on York and Hampshire on Buffalo’s West Side.

  • Community organizations like the Fair Fines and Fees Coalition say the tragedy could have been easily avoided with basic roadway improvements.

Adele and Taylor Swift both released albums this week and fans across the globe took mental health days to prepare.

  • Is anyone ever ready to be ’30’? Wouldn’t we all love the chance for our own ‘Taylor’s Version’ redo?

In their last home game of the season, the Bulls football team suffered a tough overtime loss to Northern Illinois University, with a final score of 33 – 27. They’ll play their last game this year on Tuesday at Ball State at 7pm.

Transgender Awareness Week this year focused on normalizing gender affirming surgeries and gender diversity.

  • Many surveys report grim statistics of over half of trans teens contemplating suicide, and as many as 1 in 4 succumbing. Organizations and LGBTQIA media outlets like Outsports.com are trying to spread hope with their motto “Courage Is Contagious”.

‘Party Down’, the sardonic-yet-earnest look at private event catering through the eyes of 6 of your favorite comedians before they were famous, has inked a revival deal with Starz. Aging Millennials rejoiced, then opened spreadsheets to calculate how to afford yet another streaming service.

Kyle Rittenhouse was found Not Guilty on charges of First-Degree Intentional Homicide and four other felony charges for his acts of gun violence during the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020.

  • Much of the media coverage about the trial focused on Judge Bruce Schoeder’s sympathetic attitudes toward the defendant, public opinion on  armed self-defense in the United States, and systemic biases that are proven to favor young, white, and male U.S. citizens. For many Americans, the verdict raised uncomfortable questions about the scope of self-defense laws, with many  expressing concern about the message it sent, believing it may perpetuate distrust in the justice system and further normalize gun violence and vigilantism.

The only pharmacy on UB’s isolated North Campus, operated by CVS, is slated to close in January 2022.

The Spectrum and WGRZ both report contacting a CVS spokesperson who confirmed the closure. Uproar over the decision left students feeling overlooked and underserved. A CVS employee willing to risk their job to share remarks on the news urged students to reach out to CVS and The Commons, both private companies, to ask them to reconsider the closure.

Jack Porcari for The Spectrum, 11/16/2021 and Business First/Bizjournals.com, Lian Bunny, 11/19/2021

This Friday the House passed Biden’s ambitious social spending package.

  • The centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda, the Build Back Better Act outlined $2.2 trillion in spending over the next decade, over the unanimous opposition of Republicans. If passed by the Senate, it would be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation enacted in recent decades, going further than any government intervention in half a century – and could prove to be potentially as transformative as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Among other things, the bill offers universal preschool, generous subsidies for child care, expanded financial aid for college, hundreds of billions of dollars in housing support, worker training programs, a new hearing benefit for Medicare, and price controls for prescription drugs. Additionally, more than half a trillion dollars would go toward shifting the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electric cars.