May 6: Next Up After Obamacare. Plus Other Lettters To The Editor

Following weeks of pro-Palestine protests and unrest on campus, Columbia University has canceled its university-wide commencement, but will continue ahead with smaller, school-wide celebrations. In the absence of the ceremony scheduled for May 15, the university says it will center celebrations around pre-planned, smaller scale “Class Days” and school-wide ceremonies, “where students are honored individually alongside their peers.” Columbia claims that the decision was made in consultation with student leaders. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families,” the University said in an announcement on May 6.

On Monday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will host its annual Met Gala, a world-renowned fundraiser that assembles luminaries from the aesthetic, athletic, music, business, and political worlds to support the museum’s Costume Institute, an establishment with a collection of nearly 33,000 sartorial pieces that span seven centuries. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The gala originated in 1948 as a midnight supper called the Costume Institute Benefit and has burgeoned over time into a major cultural event that uses clothing as an intellectual marker of historical epochs, social and political movements, and evolving perspectives on good taste and beauty. Each year, guests of the Met Gala are required to dress according to a theme that corresponds with the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition.

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says the company’s leaders should spend more time in stores and focus on coffee drinks as they work to turn around flagging sales. In a LinkedIn post published over the weekend, Schultz said many people had reached out to him after Starbucks reported weaker-than-expected quarterly sales and earnings last week. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The Seattle coffee giant said revenue dropped 2% in the January-March period as store traffic slowed around the world.

With a limited amount of allotted time and a pressing health matter to discuss, a trip to the doctor’s office can sometimes feel like a high-stakes event. Even the most routine visits can leave you feeling dissatisfied if there’s a communication barrier, too many items on the agenda, or a personality clash. Research shows that people who are able to vocalize their medical needs tend to be happier with their health care experiences and are even more likely to see improvements in symptoms and other important outcomes.

If you ask the class of 2024, they will tell you: college was nothing like the movies made it out to be. It was during some of the hardest days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 that they said goodbye to their high school classmates at social-distanced graduations before embarking to college—on Zoom. Even after they were able to move into dorm rooms and attend classes in lecture halls, many say that the impact of a virtual freshman year still lingered.

(JERUSALEM) — Hamas announced Monday it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but there was no immediate word from Israel, leaving it uncertain whether a deal had been sealed to bring a halt to the seven-month-long war in Gaza. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] It was the first glimmer of hope that a deal might avert further bloodshed.