Author: milimansaray

By Mili Mansaray, The Beacon.

The end of the Jackson County, Missouri, eviction moratorium in response to COVID-19 has highlighted issues around access to low-income housing in Kansas City, Missouri. Meanwhile, Kansans on the other side of the state line have more protections.

When 22-year-old Mars Smith moved to Kansas City, Missouri, from Topeka, Kansas, in 2019, she secured an apartment through a housing program called Shelter Plus Care, which pays the rent for those who are homeless and disabled. Now she’s facing eviction. 

“He says that I was tampering with the plumbing and I didn’t let him know of an excess leak,” Smith said of her landlord.

Smith is one of many tenants in the Kansas City area facing the threat of eviction in the middle of a worsening coronavirus pandemic. At a time when access to stable and safe housing is becoming even more crucial, millions of families nationwide could face the reality of eviction in the coming months. 

New York City is a ghost town. The empire state is the country’s epicenter for covid-19, the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 (one of many coronaviruses), with a total of 335,000 infections as of May 9, according to Intelligencer. The Big Apple alone is enduring 178,776 cases, according to The City. Now, sidewalks once littered with pedestrians are barren in the wake of the novel coronavirus. It is this gray shell of the city that never sleeps that Ayomide Falola, who requested her name be altered for confidentiality reasons, must travel through to get to work. As a cashier at CVS, her job is what the current health pandemic has determined to be essential to the continuation of society.

Nationwide, but in New York especially, the novel coronavirus is disproportionately impacting black communities, killing black people at a much higher rate than others. Issues of structural racism within various facets of society, such as socioeconomic statuses, the healthcare system, and law enforcement create the grounds for the virus to mushroom among the country’s most vulnerable populations.

Accepting and validating different kinds of grief is a necessary step to dealing with this pandemic.

By: Mili Mansaray, Washington Square News.

This situation is unprecedented. Since December 2019, the coronavirus has devastated the globe, rampaging country after country at an exponential rate and bringing life as we know it to a standstill. Globally, drastic measures have been taken to combat the spread of the virus. Major concerts, sporting events and festivals have been cancelled or postponed. Many have transitioned to working from home and making social distancing the new norm. Still, COVID-19 has managed to strain healthcare systems and shut down the city that never sleeps. This discontinuation of everyday life has resulted in loss for all kinds of people and it is essential to grieve all of them in order to move on.

Being a senior near graduation can be hard. Hear one writer’s take on why you shouldn’t worry.

By: Mili Mansaray, Washington Square News.

Senior year of college, for many reasons, is a gruelling experience. Most likely, this isn’t the first time that seniors have heard that the final stretch of undergrad is taxing. Difficult, nerve-wracking, unparalleled, heartbreaking, insightful; the list goes on, and all are true.

The projection of college students into the real world is a journey that is often accompanied by various mental hardships. Balancing multiple demanding classes, having a job, seeking a job and extracurriculars all while on very little sleep and coasting by while financially unstable is already an everyday process for many. In fact, one in five college students battle anxiety or depression and over 40% of students said they felt too depressed to properly function day-to-day.

An onslaught of people awaits anyone that steps off the elevator into the fifth floor of NYU’s Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life. To the left of the entrance a line spills out of the main room and into the corridor. Just before the entrance is a space lined with racks of shoes on the walls and floor. Muslims must be clean when they pray, therefore it is commonplace to take shoes off before entering any space in which prayer will take place, according to Islam Question and Answer.  

Inside, about 25 people squeeze together on each side of four long blue plastic sheets, with two people on each end. Men laugh, women, many with their heads covered and many without, hug,children chatter and babies crawl. All discuss in comradery over their plates, smiling, nodding and chewing. Two lines for food  wrap along the room, encasing the festivities in the middle. On the menu is rice, baked chicken, lentils, naan bread, chopped fruit and salad. This is iftar, the meal Muslim eat to break fast, hosted by NYU’s Islamic Center, or ICNYU.

As an institution, New York University has taken many steps in order to be more Muslim inclusive, Lipton dining hall was certified fully halal last year, but both the university and its Muslim community can further themselves in terms of inclusion, according to students and Islamic Center faculty alike.