Laurel: To a new school. There is nothing like a global medical crisis to make everyone realize exactly how crucial careers in medicine are.

Thus it isn’t surprising to see Slippery Rock University taking the opportunity to better augment the workforce needs in those areas that were increasing even before the coronavirus pandemic — especially in the Southwestern Pennsylvania area, where health systems like UPMC and Allegheny Health Network literally dominate the Pittsburgh landscape.

The university is creating a new College of Health Professions that will be the central hub for 12 graduate and undergraduate degree programs that have been distributed across other colleges within the institution. These include bachelor programs like nursing and physical therapy, as well as master’s degree programs for public health, health informatics and physician assistants and doctoral work in occupational health.

Creating a better and more structured way for the programs to work side-by-side and create relationships will benefit students, who will work in similar fashion between departments when they are in the field. Ultimately, that benefits the patients.

Lance: To rats. No metaphor there. Just the very idea of rats.

East Vandergrift has been dealing with a terrible rat problem for months. Not an occasional rat. Lots of rats. Rats that chewed through engine wires in cars. Rats that get into living rooms. Rats that troop up and down the steps during a family cookout.

Rats can just be part of life when living near a river, but it escalated to the point where the borough council hired an exterminator to try to keep the rodent problem under control. For $1,525, Terminix put 45 edible poison bait stations around the borough for a 10-week treatment program.

It has made a difference, but residents say it is too early to give up on the control measures. They are right. Rats are more than just a nuisance. They are disease carriers and the worst possible advertisement for a community. Nine-inch-long rodents aren’t exactly the welcome wagon you want when looking to buy a house.

Laurel: To a gun ruling that makes perfect sense. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a case Tuesday, tossing out a decision that would have restricted operations at a Western Pennsylvania gun range.

William Drummond wants to reopen a gun club that closed in 2008 in Robinson, but township residents pushed to limit activities and the board adopted zoning rules that would prevent use of center-fire rifles and would only have allowed a sportsmen’s club to be operated by a nonprofit organization.

Both of those rules seem contradictory to established legal concepts, including the Second Amendment and free enterprise. Hospitals aren’t required to be nonprofits. Why would a shooting range have to be?

Judge Cheryl Ann Krause (an Obama appointee, for the record) struck a solid blow for common sense and constitutional rights.

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