FROM OTHER SOURCES: NEWS AND FEATURES FOR AND ABOUT AMHERST (#21)
Editor’s Note: “From Other Sources” offers links to selected articles that might be of interest to Amherst readers. While so much of the news has focused lately on the COVID-19 emergency, there are lots of other things going on that might be of interest to Amherst readers and there is plenty of good writing out there to describe them. While we will continue to provide a daily rundown of pandemic news here, we will also present this roundup of other news and features, as well as a listing of our top four COVID-19 articles from the previous week.
CLIMATE/ENERGY
UCAL Becomes Nation’s Largest University To Divest Fully From Fossil Fuels by Teresa Watanabe (5/19/20). The UCAL milestone capped a five-year effort to move the public research university system’s $126-billion portfolio into more environmentally sustainable investments, such as wind and solar energy. UC officials say their strategy is grounded in concerns about the planet’s future and in what makes financial sense. (LA Times)
Life After Warming: Welcome To The End Of The Human Climate Niche by David Wallace-Wells (5/19/20). It has become commonplace to say that the coronavirus pandemic is the latest preview of the climate-change future. We have been shown repeatedly, and yet do not learn, that we live within nature, subject to its laws and limits and brutality, and that many of the fortresslike features of modern life that we once assumed were unshakable and unmovable turn out to be very fragile and vulnerable indeed. But it is not just metaphorically true that the pandemic is showing us a preview of the climate-change future, it is also literally true, because the global economic slowdown has meant a reduction of air pollution, which, in general, cools the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space — perhaps, in total, by as much as a half-degree or even full degree Celsius. Less air pollution means, as a result, warmer temperatures. And though the decline in pollution produced by the coronavirus is not total (meaning we won’t be leaping forward a full degree of warming this year), the reduction may well be enough to make 2020 the warmest year on record and produce a summer defined by extreme heat. In other words, we will be living through climate conditions we wouldn’t have otherwise encountered for at least a few more years — living through something like the summer of 2025 in 2020. (New York Magazine)
COMMUNITY SERVICES
Family Outreach of Amherst Enters Its 30th Year by Michele Miller (5/20/20). Family Outreach, a program of the Center for Human Development, is celebrating 30 years serving the Valley and the need is greater than ever. For community members in Amherst and surrounding areas, FOA provides one-on-one support, for as long as they need the help. Over the years FOA has helped thousands of families with matters ranging from immigration, housing and employment to mental health, parenting, and substance abuse. FOA understands there is a spectrum of challenges a family can face and that even the smallest one can lead to a domino effect, if neglected. (Amherst Bulletin)
CORONAVIRUS – THE WEEK’S TOP FOUR STORIES
America’s Patchwork Pandemic: Different Manifestations in Different Parts Of The US Makes The Pandemic Harder to Predict, Control And Understand by Ed Yong. (5/2020). There was supposed to be a peak. But the stark turning point, when the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. finally crested and began descending sharply, never happened. Instead, America spent much of April on a disquieting plateau, with every day bringing about 30,000 new cases and about 2,000 new deaths. The graphs were more mesa than Matterhorn—flat-topped, not sharp-peaked. Only this month has the slope started gently heading downward.This pattern exists because different states have experienced the coronavirus pandemic in very different ways. In the most severely pummeled places, like New York and New Jersey, COVID-19 is waning. In Texas and North Carolina, it is still taking off. In Oregon and South Carolina, it is holding steady. These trends average into a national plateau, but each state’s pattern is distinct. Currently, Hawaii’s looks like a child’s drawing of a mountain. Minnesota’s looks like the tip of a hockey stick. Maine’s looks like a (two-humped) camel. The U.S. is dealing with a patchwork pandemic. (The Atlantic)
New Zealand Edges Back To Normal After Crushing Coronavirus in 49 Days by Anna Fifield (5/16/20). New Zealand had been in almost complete lockdown for 46 days, a step the government mandated when the country had only 100 coronavirus cases but modeling showed it was on a trajectory similar to Italy’s. The stringent measures — only essential work and grocery store and medical trips for the first five weeks, then two weeks when noncontact businesses could open — had worked. Just 21 people, all of them over 60, had died. A couple of cases, at most, were being detected each day, and all were linked to known clusters. (Washington Post)
There’s A Right Way to Reopen The Country And This Isn’t It by Haley Sweetland Edwards (5/14/20). As the death toll has rung out against a crescendo of economic despair, Americans have had no time to mourn. Instead, we have been pulled into an increasingly heated debate that pits those twin tragedies against each other. In exchange for our jobs, our livelihoods, the ability to pay our rent, how much death are we willing to bear? How many tens of thousands of lives are we willing to sacrifice so that the rest of us can work and live outside our homes? Eager to juice the economy before the November election, President Donald Trump is pushing hard for businesses to reopen. But public-health officials are raising the alarm. On May 12, infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of Trump’s own coronavirus task force, told a Senate panel that easing social-distancing restrictions too swiftly risks “multiple outbreaks throughout the country” that will “result in needless suffering and death.” (Time)
The President Is Taking It. What You Need To Know About Hydroxychloroquine by The Guardian Staff. (5/20/20). Donald Trump has reignited a controversy over the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after telling reporters he was taking the latter to protect himself against coronavirus. What do we know about these drugs?(The Guardian)
ECONOMY
2.4 Million Americans Filed Jobless Claims Last Week Bringing Nine Week Total To 38.6 Million by Tony Romm, Jeff Stein, and Erica Werner (5/21/20). The Trump administration, top Republicans and powerful corporate lobbyists mounted fresh opposition Thursday to extending enhanced unemployment benefits to the growing number of Americans who are out of work, raising the prospect of significant cuts to their weekly checks unless lawmakers act by the end of July. The latest round of threats came hours after the U.S. government released dour new jobless figures showing an additional 2.4 million Americans sought unemployment aid just last week, further compounding an economic crisis that already rivals the Great Depression in its severity. Over the span of nine weeks, more than 38 million Americans have filed unemployment claims across the country because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. (Washington Post)
60 Million People Could Be Driven Into Extreme Poverty As A Result of Pandemic by Prakash Singh (5/21/20). “The pandemic and shutdown of advanced economies could push as many as 60 million people into extreme poverty — erasing much of the recent progress made in poverty alleviation,” World Bank Group President David Malpass explained in a statement Tuesday. To combat this anticipated poverty epidemic, the World Bank has sent emergency relief operations into 100 developing countries, which happen to be home to more than 70 percent of the world population. Thirty-nine of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa while more than one-third are “in fragile and conflict-affected situations, such as Afghanistan, Chad, Haiti, and Niger.” (Truthout)
Home Mortgage Delinquencies Soar To Most On Record For April. by John Gittelson (5/21/20). Missed home loan payments jump by 1.6 million in April. Mortgages 30 days or more in arrears almost doubled to 6.45%. (Bloomberg)
EDUCATION/CAMPUS
The Hard Truth About The Fall. Opening Too Soon Is Not Just Foolish, It’s Reckless. by Michael J. Sorrell(5/15/20). The inconvenient reality is that colleges, no matter what we do, are ideal settings for accelerating the spread of Covid-19. A recently published paper by Kim Weeden and Benjamin Cornwell from Cornell University focused on mapping the network that connects students through course enrollments. The paper’s conclusion is simple: There is no way that colleges can offer instruction in person and not increase the likelihood of spreading the disease. Put another way, because Covid-19 is transmitted mainly through close contact, it would be unwise to bring students and staff back to campuses until we have a vaccine and can do widespread testing. To do so without either constitutes unsafe and potentially deadly behavior. (Chronicle of Higher Education)
A Reality Check From Dr. Fauchi as Students Look Toward Fall by Deirdre Fernandes (5/12/20). The nation’s top infectious disease expert on Tuesday offered a blunt reality check to college presidents who have been bullish about reopening their campuses to a flood of students this fall.During a Senate hearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told Congress that there are unlikely to be vaccines or treatments widely available by this fall to help assure students worried about returning to campus life. Asked, for instance, by a Tennessee senator what he would tell the chancellor of the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Fauci offered a stark answer.“I would be very realistic with the chancellor and tell her that in this case, that the idea of having treatments available, or a vaccine, to facilitate the reentry of students into the fall term would be something of a bit of a bridge too far,” Fauci said. (Boston Globe)
The Nightmare That Colleges Face This Fall by Adam Harris. (5/20/20).
This spring’s university closures have bought school leaders time to figure out how to introduce social distance into spaces designed to bring people together—classrooms, dining facilities, study lounges, and campus housing, to name a few. And although pivoting to online learning has likely helped slow the spread of the coronavirus in college towns, a meaningful solution to the crisis appears far off. Colleges cannot keep students away forever; their bottom lines can’t handle that financial pressure. Residence halls are scheduled to reopen for the fall semester three months from now. Nearly everyone with an eye on higher education is asking one question: How can schools pull this off? (The Atlantic)
UMASS Announces “Voluntary Separation Program” And Unpaid Five Day Furloughs. by Benjamin Kall (5/18/20). According to the agreements, UMass Amherst staff must take five furlough days without pay between May 31 and June 20. Members of the Professional Staff Union, the University Staff Association Affiliate of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as benefited non-union personnel, are impacted. Faculty will not be impacted, as the Massachusetts Society of Professors, which represents faculty and librarians at the university, was not part of the agreements. (MassLive)
Audit Flags UMass For Possibly Not Meeting Prevailing Wage Guidelines by Scott Merzbach (5/21/20). Some workers handling public projects overseen by the University of Massachusetts Building Authority, including construction at the Isenberg School of Management on the UMass Amherst campus, may not have received the required prevailing wage, according to a state audit released Thursday. In the audit conducted by State Auditor Suzanne M. Bump, almost half of the more than 3,000 employees who worked on 83 projects on the five UMass campuses between July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2018 could have received compensation below prevailing wage, while 90 employees were definitely underpaid for their work. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)
The Single Most Essential Requirement in Designing a Fall Online Course by Cathy Davidson (5/11/20). Before we begin to design our fall syllabus, before we make clever instructional videos, we all need to think from a student’s point of view. We need to try to understand what it means to be studying for a future you don’t know that you will have. No one knows what lies ahead in the best of times. Now, all the predictions seem like some dystopian futuristic novel. Total social breakdown? Total economic collapse? A health emergency in which millions die over the next three or four years? (HASTAC -Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory)
ELECTIONS
Trump Threatens To Retaliate Against States That Make It Easier to Vote by Ian Millhiser (5/20/20). President Trump sent two tweets Wednesday morning threatening financial retaliation against states that are trying to make it easier to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic, saying he will “hold up” funds for two swing states encouraging people to vote absentee. (Vox)
Three Pathologies of American Voting Rights Illuminated by the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Treat and Cure Them by Richard L. Hasen, (5/19/20). The pandemic has illuminated three pathologies of American voting rights that existed before the pandemic and are sure to outlast it. First, the United States election system features deep fragmentation of authority over elections. Second, protection of voting rights in the United States is marked by polarized and judicialized decisionmaking. Third, constitutional protections for voting rights remain weak. (UC Irvine Law School Research Papers)
ZOOM
Humanizing Online Meetings by Mary Ragoza, Raina J. Leon, Aminah Norris and Chris Junsay (2020). When the shelter in place began in the San Francisco Bay Area, Drs. Raygoza, León, and Norris co-authored Humanizing Online Teaching. In a similar spirit, we offer this document, Humanizing Online Meetings. As we joined more and more online meetings and heard stories of other folx’ online meeting experiences over the last couple months, we reflected on the art of facilitating meetings, and particularly the humanizing practices we have sought to establish in our Single Subject Teacher Education program meetings at Saint Mary’s College of California. We offer the ideas below- which are also applicable for in-person meetings- but may be especially helpful in this time to honor all colleagues’ humanity. (St. Mary’s College, CA, Digital Commons)