Jessica Ng
MHC250 Haberman
Soda Ban

The proposal of Bloomberg’s ban on sugary drinks over 16 oz brought up two questions when it was passed by the NYC Board of Health and then rejected by the NYS Board of Appeals. First, whether or not the city has the right to put such a ban into effect, and second, whether or not it should have such power.

Looking at past policies that were enacted, such as the ban on smoking in restaurants and parks, and the ban of trans fat, I would argue that based on precedence, New York City has the power to enact bans on certain substances that are considered risks to public health. For example, the smoking ban has generally been seen as effective as the smoking by-products in the air of restaurants and bar has decreased, and there has been an increase in the health of bar workers as a result. The trans fat ban has been extraordinary effective in reducing the usage of trans fat in foods, but it is still unclear whether this has an impact on general health. So what makes limiting soda consumption so different? The issue here is proving that sugary drinks are a risk to public health and that enacting the soda ban would be effective. People know that soda is a sugary drink, but it’s not linked to the public conscious that soda is “bad thing” the way trans fat or smoking is.

Some people argue that the ban is excessive “nannyism” by the government. It’s always tricky when people see policies that may infringe on the people’s rights to make their own choices, whether to smoke, carry arms, or eat junk food. After all, America is based on the idea of freedom and individual rights, not the control of the government. However, rather than seeing these bans as infringements of the right to smoke, carry arms, or eat junk food, one could consider them to enforce the rights of people to breathe clean air, to be safe at school or other spaces, and to have a healthy diet.

America is known to have a problem with obesity. As such, there have been efforts made to promote healthy living, one of which was a regulation on the size of certain sugary drinks that could be sold in New York. This was controversial not only because of the question of if the Board of Health was overstepping its boundaries, but also because it only limited certain businesses and beverages. Although the ban was an admirable step at attacking obesity, I believe it was a step that went over the jurisdiction of the city’s authority.

Obesity may be a public health threat, but it is one that cannot be dealt with through direct limits on the public’s behavior. As Judge Pigott of the New York State Court of Appeals wrote, the Board of Health had “exceeded the scope of its regulatory authority” through the regulation. The Board of Health is responsible for protecting, improving, and promoting the health, productivity, and well being of all New Yorkers, but this only goes insofar before infringing upon personal freedoms. Judge Pigott wrote that the proposal’s reach into the everyday lives of the public was to the extent that it should be addressed by the City Council instead. Adding on to this debate, similar businesses were treated in an unequal manner, which hints at discrimination between them. While fast-food franchises, delis, and movie theaters were affected, convenience stores and supermarkets were not. The American Beverage Association stated that it “would have created an uneven playing field…and limited New Yorkers’ freedom of choice.” Thus while the intentions were good, the regulation was not the solution.

Soft drinks are carbonated bottles of sugar that hold little to no benefits to consumers. While I use to be one of the many people who would select a soft drink rather than drink a glass of water, I have come to see the error in my ways. I know no longer agree with the production of soft drinks, as they tend to do more harm than anything else. Regular soft drinks, contain an unhealthy amount of sugar. Diet versions of these drinks tend to have unnatural sweeteners and chemicals that have made them even more harmful in terms of what you are actually putting in your body. I no longer drink either of the two, and instead find myself drinking half a gallon of water on a daily basis. Making this switch has not only made me feel a whole lot healthier, but it has also given me the water that my body needs in order to perform strenuous activities such as going to the gym. In a day and age were obesity is still a large factor in the general population, I would say that banning soft drinks is not a horrible idea. There are many other healthier options that can be chosen over a soft drink, and yet very few people make the decision to go the healthier route. So why not ban soft drinks not just certain sizes, but all together.

Although Hurricane Sandy was one of the costliest hurricanes in U.S history, second only to Hurricane Katrina, I was fortunate to have lived in a neighborhood that did not suffer any extensive damage. I remember that the first night the storm arrived in New York, it felt like a normal weekday, save for the fact that school was canceled the next day. My friends and I were chatting on Skype, aware of the howling winds and heavy rain but oblivious to the damage it was causing in other parts of the city. At one point, we even facetiously complained that our Internet had become slow and unreliable because of the storm.

The next morning, my parents’ friends and our relatives called to see if we were okay. My mom raved about how glad she was to be living in Flushing; we still had our electricity, heat, and water, and not a single tree had fallen down, although a few big branches did. As we watched the news coverage of all the damage that had been done in the more coastal areas, we realized how extremely lucky we had been. In the Rockaways, people’s houses were on fire; the subway tunnels were horribly flooded; the stock market was closed for the day. I later found out that many of my friends who lived in Bayside/Little Neck area had lost electricity, and that my high school’s basement had flooded (we were right by the Hudson River in Tribeca).

Though we, the students, were ecstatic that school was canceled for the week, it was a difficult time for many more New Yorkers who had been uprooted from their homes. In retrospect, I don’t think I fully understood how dire the situation was at the time, especially because my neighborhood was not impacted as heavily as many others. Looking back at the news stories from four years ago, I’m reminded of how damaging natural disasters can be, even when you try your best to prepare for them. The next time a hurricane hits, I’ll definitely think twice before complaining about the WiFi again.

Hurricane Sandy
My memory is a little foggy when it comes to recalling my experience with Hurricane Sandy. I blame my forgetfulness on the premise that my encounter with the storm wasn’t worth remembering; not much happened. As any tired high school student at the time, I was beyond pleased to learn every morning for an entire week that NYC public schools were canceled. Even though I didn’t have to worry about new assignments and exams for five days, I was extremely bored during that time.(However, I later regretted this unexpected vacation when the DOE decided to truncate our spring break to compensate for the school days lost.) With no electricity for most of the time, I couldn’t watch TV and nearly every radio station was covering the conditions of the storm. Unlike my friends who live within the five boroughs, I reside in Westchester County. In my neighborhood there were many fallen trees, overturned road signs, and broken traffic and street lights. The heavy rainfall I saw was very unfamiliar to my friends in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Luckily, my house didn’t flood due to being positioned on an incline, but I can’t say the same for other people I know in the area. My parents never over prepare before inclement weather, so my sister and I didn’t have a lifetime supply of snacks to help us pass the time. Overall, I was blessed to not have had experienced the worst. A temporary loss of power and inescapable boredom is nothing to rant about in comparison to other people’s experiences.

Hurricane Sandy Writing Assignment

Jessica Ng

I remember about a week before the storm hit, I was at a library, gossiping with friends about the so-called “Frankenstorm”. Hurricane Sandy, which was due to hit New York City a few days before Halloween, was a point of concern for many people. For me, it was basically the first natural disaster that I remember experiencing.

I was one of the lucky ones.

My house is both inland in Queens and on a hill. When Hurricane Sandy hit, my family and I managed to escape flooding, damages from the wind, and even the blackouts that affected houses not more than a block away. I remember that it was a sunny day, and if it wasn’t for the winds outside that were blowing down trees, I would have called it a “nice day”. We stayed inside the entire time, and for my family, Hurricane Sandy passed by uneventfully. I remember peacefully doing math homework by the light of the day. And yet, the loud, raging winds reminded me that we were only an accident away from experiencing disaster. Luckily, the only interesting thing that happened was a branch on the tree on the sidewalk outside our front yard fell on a car.

Outside was another matter. Even in Queens, farther away from the coast, the winds had caused many trees to fall. Some were tangled in the power lines, others laid on the roads, forcing drivers to drive around them. I remember a lane where all the drivers were forced to drive onto the sidewalk to get around a fallen tree. Public transportation was heavily affected, and even today some of the damage done by Hurricane Sandy to the subway are still in repair. From the news, I knew that there had been flooding and even deaths caused by Sandy. And yet, the Monday after, I had to go back to school.

My Experience during Hurricane Sandy:

by Juliana Maronilla 

Someone might call me superstitious, but at least a week before Sandy I was praying that some phenomenon would wreck my boring little town, canceling school. Little did I know that such a wish was possible. Before Sandy hit New York, I found myself worrying heavily about completing my honors math homework and the capacity of the storm. During Sandy, those worries faded quickly. I went on several weather stations frequently in obsession on the storm’s magnitude, fascinated with the idea of a hurricane hitting New York. But the news came out eventually, that the storm was a tropical storm in my area. My hopes died down a bit, although the wreck clearly devastated my town, Scarsdale. First, the most horrible news that I learned later was the death of two boys because a tree fell on a house. Second, was the week-long closing of school and power-outages. I remember asking a friend when school reopened how she dealt with her house’s lacks of power. She told me that she went to stay at her sister’s house in Long Island (ironically) in a location where there was no flooding. The hysteria because of Sandy became real to me that week as my dad shared news of very long lines of cars at gas stations. As for my family and our house, we survived with little trouble. A tree fell in our backyard from the neighbors and my parents spoke with them later to remove it. Tree branches, leaves and rain surely wrecked the yard and the unfamiliar moving of the trees due to the wind chilled my soul. Moreover, the stories of people in my town going to other houses made me appreciate my own house having power. Besides these, my family was fine. Even if we had lost power, we were still fine. And, I was strangely calm, even as trees moved in my backyard.

One day during that week, I decided to visit my high school. I was fully aware that the storm was going on, and some might say it was stupid, but I was dearly curious as to how the rest of the town looked like, the part that wasn’t my yard or my neighbor’s yard. I don’t remember what the walk there was like. I do remember that when I got to the high school, I suddenly became aware of the intensity of the wind because things high up, like power lines, were rattling. At the high school, sections were yellow-taped off due to the flooding and I could see several trees had fallen down. The weather closely resembled “tropical storm”. Looking at the sideways falling rain, hearing the heavy wind, seeing the flooding, left me feeling as though the high school had been abandoned.

In general, my suburban, upper middle class town in Northern Westchester was lucky. We had experienced mostly high winds, but nothing extremely serious. I am aware that entire neighborhoods were flooded and landscapes erased. I am aware that people lost their lives and suffered long before receiving help. So I am grateful, to say the least that my family and house were okay.

My experience with Hurricane Sandy is somewhat unconventional compared with what I’ve heard from my friends’ stories.

For one thing, I was barely affected by the storm. The lights never flickered, and the water was unaffected by the storm. The electricity worked, so I had no issue with watching the TV or using the internet. The only real indication that a hurricane existed was the howling of the wind, especially since we lived on the 20th floor of our building. Although I do indeed live in Manhattan, I suppose geography played a part in why nothing inconvenient happened. I live in Inwood, on a hill, where the ground floor of my building is between 150 and 200 feet above sea level.

Since my brother and I had no school due to the hurricane, we invited some of our friends to come up to our apartment. Thankfully, we had a lot of food in our pantry and our stove and oven were working. We made pie, strawberry pie to be exact. We also found the time to make homemade pizza and Oreo cheesecake. They were quite delicious. My friends and I also played both video games and board games to stave off the boredom. Monopoly was one such board game that we actually spent several hours playing. My brother won the game of course, as per usual. He always wins at Monopoly…

As for the rest of the week, since school was closed, my brother and I ended up lazing about, doing nothing except for eating, sleeping, and surfing the internet. We were quite lucky in that nothing horrible happened to us.

When Hurricane Sandy happened in 2012, I was still in high school and had an average commute of an hour and a half by train. The most memorable thing for me about that time is that my school, as well as many others, was closed for a week. Subway stations and homes were flooded, phone and electric lines were knocked down, and New York was in need of repair. However, in the little corner of Elmhurst where I live, after a night of strong winds and rain, the neighborhood was again serene.

I remember venturing out of my house to meet with several friends who lived in my neighborhood the day after the hurricane hit. We met up in front of my house and walked around several blocks to see if there had been any destruction in the area. The most exciting thing we saw was a fallen tree. Besides this and several branches on the streets, we could barely tell that anything had occurred the night before and I assumed that life would go back to normal the next day. Then I turned the television on and saw the extent of devastation on the news. Some areas were missing power for days, and others were uninhabitable. Some schools became temporary shelters for those who could not live in their own homes. Later some friends would tell me about how they had to go stay with relatives while repairing their own homes. For me at that time though, it was hard to comprehend the bizarre juxtaposition between my barely touched neighborhood and the other hard hit neighborhoods.