Mirror - Vol. 39, No. 07 - October 16, 2013

              MIRROR Student newspaper Week of October 16,2013 Vol. 39, Iss. 7
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The Fairfield Mirror
(From left to right) Seniors Grace Leoning, Elizabeth Girgenti, Allie DeLuca and Brittanie Milang at the Inn. Salvatore Trifilio/The Mirror
'SoCo' last to recover from Sandy
By Robert Joyce
Crime Beat Reporter
Six Fairfield students have
finally moved into the beach house
of their dreams.
For the past month and a half,
seniors Brittanie Millang, Allie De-
Luca, Elizabeth Girgenti, Grace
Leonnig, Pierelle Eppie and Jaz-min
Maldonado have been living at
the Inn at Fairfield Beach on Reef
Road, awaiting the reconstruction of
"Southern Comfort," the ocean front
home located at 705 Fairfield Beach
Road.The house received extensive
damage from Hurricane Sandy.
The students originally made
the decision to live in Southern
Comfort during late September of
2012, signing the lease and mak-ing
their first down payment. One
month later, the home was nearly
destroyed beyond repair by Sandy.
Despite the damage and the option
to back out of the lease, they elected
Landlord Sue Gould stands at the doorstep of "Southern Comfort."
Salvatore Trifilio/The Mirror
to remain as the eventual tenants
of the property after being assured
by their landlords that the recon-struction
of the home would be
completed by the beginning of the
school year. Unfortunately, because
of numerous unexpected delays, the
home has just now become livable
again.
According to the students, they
received inconsistent timetables
from landlords Sue Gould and her
husband regarding the reconstruc-tion
process. They said that the
landlords first informed them the
project would be completed by May
1, which soon became June 1, then
July 1, then Aug. 1, etc.
"We really weren't concerned
until we fi nished school," said Gir-genti.
They even attempted to find
another home to rent, but were un-successful.
When the six girls found out
that their home was not going to be
ready by Sept. 1, they made the de-cision
to temporarily live at the Inn
for what they believed was going to
be two weeks at most. A month and
a half later, they finally were able
to move out of the Inn, and they
couldn't be happier.
All of the six girls agree that
living at the Inn has been a struggle.
Due to obvious space constraints,
READ STORY ON PAGE 2
Gay
atheist kicks
offLGBTQ
history month
By Angela Sammarone
Contributing Writer
Apart from the common con-troversial
conversation of homosexu-ality
and religion, LGBTQ history
month's keynote speaker encouraged
students to talk about the subjects in
dialogue, not in debate.
On Oct. 10, the eve of National
Coming Out Day, Fairfield's gay ad-vocacy
club, Alliance, hosted famed
author and self-proclaimed "faithe-ist"
Chris Stedman, who spoke on his
lifelong struggles.
Stedman, who also titled his
book "Faitheist: How an Atheist
Found Common Ground with the
Religious," talks about his story as
an ex-evangelical Christian turned
gay atheist and his goal to bridge the
gap that divides religious and non-religious
voices through interfaith
dialogue.
Stedman grew up in a family
that didn't practice religion. He be-came
a born-again Christian at age
llvafter reading accounts on indi-viduals'
suffering, like in "The Diary
of Anne Frank."
Soon after, Stedman came out as
gay — the only openly gay student in
his high school — and was bullied.
"I realized I became a Christian
because I was looking for a commu-nity
that cared about justice and suf-fering,"
Stedman said. "I didn't believe
in the doctrine; I just accepted God as
part of the package deal."
From then on, Stedman identi-fied
as atheist.
As students waited for the talk
to begin, Stedman looked out at the
audience inside of Gonzaga's audito-rium
and asked for everyone to shake
the hand of a student they did not
READ STORY ON PAGE 3
Bridgeport hospital now digital What you should know about
electronic medical records
By Salvatore Trifilio
News Editor
While students struggle to see
the immediate effects of the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act,
Bridgeport Hospital Yale New Ha-ven
Health has already finished the
"huge undertaking" of transferring
paper to electronic medical records.
On Oct. 10, Associate Profes-sor
of Philosophy Curt Naser, Ph.D.,
and Michael Werdmann, M.D. of
Bridgeport Hospital, gave a talk on
the ethics behind electronic medi-cal
records to a crowd of about 30
Fairfield residents at the downtown
bookstore.
"[Electronic medical records],
it's like your credit cards," said Nas-er,
"how that [information] gets used
and who's using it, are pharmaceuti-cal
companies perusing your medi-cal
records to sell more drugs to you
through your doctor?"
While both Werdmann and
Naser discussed the many advantages
and disadvantages of transferring to
electronic medical records through
the incentive program established
through the Affordable Care Act, or
Obamacare, Naser believes consum-ers
must be most aware of how their
newly digitized information is used
in the public and political domain.
Hospitals and other medical
centers are eligible for up to $44,000
in government funding to con-vert
records to digital copies under
Obamacare.
According to Director of the
Student Health Center, Julia Duffy,
Fairfield's medical facility, which
still uses paper records, is not eli-gible
for the Medicare incentive.
Although the medical center doesn't
READ STORY ON PAGE 2
Benefit
EMRs make the transaction between the caregiver and insurer faster and more efficient.
They notify doctors of possible allergic reactions that may be caused as a result of a new pre-scription,
safeguarding against inconsistencies in an existing medical record.
Allows software, such as Epic's, to create large databases allowing researchers to expedite
projects and grab large sample sizes of specific information.
The sharing of information between doctors will no longer be of issue as medical records
require doctors to type their charts rather than hand-write them.
Disadvantages
EMRs are now available on multiple private devices like smartphones, laptops and tablets, which
are often misplaced.
EMRs are stored on database servers, which can possibly be hacked, as does any electronically
stored information.
Private information can be released in certain situations without the patients' consent.
NEWS:
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OPINION:
iinicni
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SPORTS:
Page 15