Month: March 2020

Making Face Shields in the Crisis

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This morning I was directed to the following by Professor Francis Starr, who heads up our initiative in Design and Engineering (IDEAS).

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'” -Fred Rogers

At a certain point, it’s not enough to look for the helpers. We need to be the helpers. It has been difficult for many to sit idly in quarantine while watching this tragedy unfold. When the call came out for all makers to mobilize their capacity in an effort to protect our medical personnel, we were compelled to respond.

In partnership with the Digital Design Studio, our 3D printers have been running at full speed. We are producing copies of the Verkstan Protective Visor, linked below, and are ready to ship our first 200 pieces to New York Presbyterian Hospital in Queens on Tuesday night. After that, it’s on to the next one.

While on-site volunteer opportunities are scarce due to the social distancing measures in place, there’s no reason you can’t help too. Below is a list of PPE that you can produce at home. Whether you have access to a printer, a sewing machine, a laser cutter or a simple pair of scissors, you can make a difference too. At the end of the page is a list of Connecticut hospitals that are advertising for donations. If you’re not in CT, chances are very high that you can locate gaps close to home.

On this same webpage you’ll see different designs and various hospitals that are accepting donations. Check first: “Some places won’t take equipment that is not from a reputable manufacturer, while others are actively seeking anything they can get, from hand-sewn to 3D printed.”

So proud to be among colleagues and friends who are also helpers!

Remote Classes and a Quiet Campus

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There is an active discussion among faculty members about their first week of classes teaching remotely. Some are finding it very challenging to manage a series of discussions in real time with “breakout sessions” and the like, while others miss the immediate cues a teacher gets from watching the reactions of students right there, face-to-face, in a classroom. Many of my colleagues express concern about students who live in places where it’s inconvenient to join at regular class times, and we all worry about those whose internet connections aren’t robust enough for the material one wants to present. But after one week, I am very pleased to say that most of the folks I’ve heard from are feeling more optimistic than when we started. That includes the students who have been surveyed already in a few of the classes. There will be bumps in the road, to be sure, and there will also be happy surprises that increase learning beyond what we would have thought possible.

Yesterday I chatted with some students on Foss Hill on what was a beautiful spring day.

People were keeping their distance, but still we managed to commiserate about our lonely campus during what should be a very exciting time of year. We dreamed of better days to come and urged one another to stay healthy.

Yesterday, I was down at the boathouse, but the crew teams are scattered around the country. Athletes accustomed to perfect timing together must wait until it’s safe to be in the same boat. The river was beautiful, but the quiet was sad. We are all in the same boat, one of hunkering down.

 

A Quiet Citrin Field from Pine Street
Sunrise as seen from in front of Boger Hall

 

Early morning, College Row

Today, Kari and I walked by the tennis courts, into Indian Hill cemetery, and then around the athletic fields, the farm and back toward campus. We saw just a few other walkers, and we waved and kept our distance. I wished I could hear the chanting of the softball and lacrosse teams as they celebrated teammates, could marvel at frisbee players leaping in air, or could watch baseball in good company just behind the library. Instead, I was at my computer writing to all the spring Wesleyan athletes. We must be patient. And we will be.

Stay safe, stay healthy. And, please, stay in touch!

 

 

 

 

 

Classes Online Begin

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I conducted my first class yesterday since moving to an online format for the rest of the semester. I have to admit that I was pretty nervous about the transition to Zoom, even though I’ve offered lectures online before. My class, The Modern and the Postmodern, is available on Coursera for free, and more than a hundred thousand people have participated in it over the last few years. I’ve asked my Wesleyan students (52 of them) to sign up for those recorded lectures.

But this morning at 10:50 (Eastern time) we were all online together, and I have to say I found it moving to see all those familiar faces — even if they were in little boxes on my screen. And they seemed glad to be together, even if their togetherness was merely virtual.  At first, I tried to reassure them that we were all aware of the stress of the moment, that we would try our best to learn together, that deadlines were flexible and anyone could choose to switch to a Pass/Fail mode. I saw nod and smiles…and then we got started with the text of the week, Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. I wish I had a more optimistic text for them, but perhaps reading about recurrent patterns of conflict, guilt and aggression will put our current predicament into a broader perspective. In any case, next week we look forward to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

I’ve heard from other Wesleyan professors that their classes also started out well. A colleague in the languages told me that her students, too, were so happy to be re-connected. She reported that “various pets that might walk in front of the camera or bark at inopportune times” were introduced to the group.   “We shared their names and a fun fact about them. Again, in the target language.” A relatively new member of our teaching corps wrote me to say that he found the online meeting with students “wonderfully therapeutic for my own soul.” Another long-term faculty member wrote (with some surprise, I think) that a department meeting via Zoom went smoothly, and that he was in touch with students all over the world. “This is going to work out,” he said.

Like the students in my class, these colleagues and students all expressed the desire to be back home at Wesleyan — back in their classrooms, Usdan, the gym, their libraries, houses, labs and dorms. We are all looking forward to that. Meanwhile, here’s a picture I took yesterday as an early spring snow began to fall on Foss Hill.

Early spring snow on a lonely Foss Hill

 

Working Ever More Closely Together

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We need to physically isolate from one another; that much is very clear in these uncertain times. And in uncertain, stressful times many of us crave connecting with one another. We crave a friend’s embrace, a colleague’s pat on the back, a warm introduction to someone we are eager to get to know. Stopping the spread of this virus is hard because we must stop doing some of those things that really enhance our lives. These things are core to why we believe a residential educational experience is so enriching. They are the things that our students are already missing as almost all of them depart from campus, often tearfully.

They will also miss the kinds of activities that offer deep learning through physical practice. I’m not just talking about sports (which folks already miss), but also about playing in the gamelan orchestra or raising one’s voice along with the Ebony Singers. We are working hard on finding virtual ways to provide learning experiences that usually come from physical practice – whether with instruments, lab equipment, bodies or voices – and we are excited about the prospects. I have been so impressed by (and grateful to) my colleagues on the faculty who are figuring out how to match online learning pedagogies to the content of the courses and their own pedagogical practices. Teachers and students will learn a lot about what can (and cannot) be done at a distance – and things to be grateful for (once taken for granted) when normal classes resume.

It’s only been about a week since we announced that Wesleyan would suspend normal operations, and already so much has happened. After the initial shock and disappointment, there followed daily examples of sacrifice, cooperation and mutual understanding. Our friends and colleagues across the University have been stepping up in a big way. The Student Life and Equity and Inclusion teams have gone so far beyond the call of duty as they support students from an extraordinary range of circumstances. Public Safety officers, Investment staff, and Bon Appetit workers, Physical Plant, Technology, Library and Advancement and Finance colleagues…so many have found ways to contribute to student well-being while also planning for the future. Communications folks are working overtime to keep all our constituencies informed, and HR is looking after the welfare of all our employees. Admission and Financial Aid staff members, on top of everything else, are crafting the class of 2024 and planning a virtual WesFest!

Wesleyan University has weathered crises before, and we have done so by coming together to support one another. We begin with our most vulnerable students. We will ensure that work-study funds and other forms of financial aid are distributed for the remainder of the semester, and we have raised significant monies for the Emergency Fund. There is an application process for this support, but it is simple and straightforward. We are already distributing money. And for those who can, it’s easy to make a donation! (Kari and I just did.)

I feel the sadness of those whose college experience has been so rudely interrupted. I see some of those students on Foss Hill (6 feet apart) early in the morning, catching a last sunrise over the Connecticut River. I see others getting a grab-and-go meal at Usdan, or having one more WesWings delight, before sorrowfully waving goodbye to friends. We’ll do our best to keep the students safe who must remain on campus. Seniors, we’ll figure out how to celebrate your accomplishments, whether as planned in May or, if need be, at some later date.

We’ll miss all who had to leave, but we’ll be ready to welcome students back when the threat of the pandemic recedes. What a joy that will be! Meanwhile, be safe and stay well!!

Students Heading to Physical Isolation, Faculty Re-Tooling Classes

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These are strange times, indeed. It’s the middle of spring break, but the campus is emptying out for the rest of the semester. Friends are saying goodbye in Middletown, or expressing sadness at already being so far apart. Anxiety hovers over us all as we deal with the disappointment of finishing our school year through distance learning while we yearn for connections with one another. But it’s the connections that put us at risk.

Well, it’s physical connections that put us at risk. We can — we must — connect with one another in other ways. In the coming weeks, we will share academic work through various platforms online, and we will talk to our friends, share music, photos and stories through our lively networks. In addition to the new materials we will generate, there are many videos, works of art and music already available through the Wesleyan website. We can watch them together, and we can find ways to talk about them — even at a great distance. It won’t be the same as sitting around Usdan, or chatting by the gym, or hanging in a wood frame, but it will preserve some of our connectivity. We don’t have to be isolated from one another in spirit.

Many of you will keep journals during this period — some in notebooks, others in podcast form, while others in videos. We will find ways to connect people registering their experiences. We want to hear from you. More on this soon.

Students are stepping up in big ways to help one another, and faculty and staff are finding ways to support those who need it the most. There are various efforts underway to give assistance to those at risk. No surprise, I prefer using official channels to ad hoc, if well-meaning, private projects.  Students who need emergency funding are asked to contact Dean Mike Whaley (mwhaley@wesleyan.edu). Members of the extended Wesleyan family who want to donate to the fund can do so here.

It’s a frightening time, to be sure. But we will depend on one another, deepen our connections with one another, so that when we come back to campus, we will be the stronger for having gone through all this.

 

Working Together in Anxious Times

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Yesterday I sent the following note to all faculty and staff at Wesleyan. These folks have been working tirelessly to help our students through this crisis while also dealing with the threats posed by the epidemic. I am so grateful for their efforts!

 

Dear friends,

As you prepare for a weekend of ‘socially distanced’ activities, I wanted to thank everyone for their extraordinary efforts at making Wesleyan’s response to the current crisis as humane and responsible as possible. Many faculty members have been actively sharing information about how to move their classes into distant learning modes. Along with many others, I have learned much that will be relevant to my own class. Students, too, are preparing for learning in an uncertain future. Of course, many of them are deeply saddened to be torn away from friends and teachers, classmates and coaches. Yet, most are already figuring out how to continue to learn, and, eventually, to thrive. Countless staff members have been working with an intensity that is truly heroic as they prepare the campus and our students for the weeks ahead. The complexities of a diverse student body are everywhere apparent – from varieties of learning styles to a complex range of personal circumstances that require us always to customize. We have a framework of principles for making decisions, but I am so proud of the ways that we’ve tailored that framework for the specificity of individual students.

Faculty, students and staff – we are all educators at Wesleyan, and we are all especially attentive to the most vulnerable members of our community in this time of anxious planning and generous caring. I don’t want to overuse this phrase, but this seems to me ‘compassionate solidarity’ at work.

So, thank you for exemplifying the “independence of mind and generosity of spirit” signaled in the university’s mission statement. I am proud and grateful to be your colleague.

Yours ever,

Michael

Wesleyan Moves Classes Online and Asks Students to Leave Campus

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This week we posted this video and sent the following message to all Wesleyans. We have been dealing with individual questions over the last couple of days, and we are trying our best to provide support for those who most need it. A couple of things have come up often: 1. why do I have to come back to campus now to retrieve my stuff; 2. why did the university not just suspend school for 2 weeks at a time (as some other schools have done).

In answer to the first question, we do not encourage students to fly back to campus to retrieve their belongings. We will work with students and their families to make alternative arrangements. In answer to the second question: I carefully considered this approach, but the public health experts I consulted found it unrealistic, at best. The consensus of professional opinion is that conditions will only worsen, and I believe it will be least disruptive to our community to have a clear and consistent plan to complete the semester remotely. That said, I find it immensely sad to see our students deprived of the chance to thrive together on this campus we love. 

This is the kind of event that has happened once in a century. We must keep our community safe and our mission clear.

Here’s my message.

Dear friends,

This is a message I was hoping not to have to write.

With the CDC today reporting nearly 1,000 known cases of COVID-19 nationwide (having doubled since Monday) and Governor Ned Lamont declaring a public health emergency in Connecticut, it has become clear just how rapidly this potentially deadly virus is spreading. As hard as we work to make the on-campus Wesleyan experience the best it can be, we must apply that same diligence and care to protecting our community’s well-being in light of this growing threat.

After consulting with a variety of public health experts and other higher education institutions around the country, we are announcing the following preventive measures:

  • In-person classes have been suspended for the remainder of the spring semester; we will be transitioning all classes to distance learning models.
  • Undergraduate students who are able should return to campus through March 23 to gather their belongings; all students without University-approved alternate arrangements must depart campus by that time.
  • We know that there are students for whom Wesleyan is their only home. We have set up an online petition to work with them to make sure that access continues, as well as for students who would like to request an extension for picking up their belongings.
  • Students who cannot return to campus for their belongings should contact reslife@wesleyan.edu and staff will work directly with them on packing, storage or shipping solutions.

I am enormously grateful to staff for continuing their regular work schedules on campus to support these transitions and care for students for whom leaving is not an option. I also want to express the trust I have in our faculty and students to adapt to teaching and learning in this new mode. I have always known Wesleyan to be an inventive place that rises to new challenges, and I have every confidence that the remainder of the semester, while taking a much different form than in the past, will be successful.

While it may not diminish any sadness and frustration, it’s important to note that my colleagues and I have searched far and wide for ways to avoid this suspension of in-person classes and campus activities. Realizing that the closeness of our richly interactive community is what makes us more vulnerable to this disease has led us to this unhappy decision. And now, we are determined to find ways to empower student learning while most are away from campus.

We continue to update the central coronavirus/COVID-19 webpage with the latest available information, including a video message I have recorded explaining our rationale behind these decisions. Additionally, I would encourage everyone to review the list of Frequently Asked Questions we have compiled in anticipation of the many inquiries these decisions will understandably raise. Should you have further questions, please direct them to Covid-19Info@wesleyan.edu or call us at 1-888-675-2011 and we will respond as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

With thanks for your patience and understanding,

Spring Break but No Rest from our Anxious Times

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It’s usually the most chill part of the year – two weeks away from classes just as winter turns to spring. Wesleyan has a generous two-week break, though truth be told many faculty and students work hard during the change of season. Athletes are training or competing right through the time away from classes (how about that Men’s Hockey NESCAC Championship!); thesis writers are intensely moving their projects toward completion; professors often count on this period to make progress on their research. And the staff continues to labor away, planning everything from graduation to how to repair parts of campus strained by the first two-thirds of the academic year.

BUT THIS YEAR! This year we have a world seriously shaken by a pandemic, with repercussions ranging from a reeling global economy to changing how we casually greet one another. We are bombarded continuously with information, some of it very suspect. Authorities in Washington try to reassure, but conflicting (and sometimes nonsensical) pronouncements breed further confusion. State and local officials are scrambling to get current information, but the shortage of tests for Covid-19 has made this very difficult. Some schools are closing, and many organizations have canceled travel. Here at Wesleyan, hundreds of students—many of whom felt unsafe returning home—have stayed on campus for spring break, and we are asking everyone to contribute to a supportive community. We are also asking for social distancing. Oy.

To reiterate what we do know:

Similar to the flu, symptoms of coronavirus are mild to severe respiratory illness including:

  • Fever
  • Cough
  • Shortness of breath

At this time, the CDC reports that symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as long as 14 days after exposure.

The CDC recommends preventative actions to reduce the risk of developing the flu or other respiratory diseases, including:

  • Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol if soap and water are not available.
  • Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
  • Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
  • When you are sick, stay home.
  • Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
  • Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.

More information can be found here, and we will update this page frequently.

If you feel sick, please get assistance from the Davison Health Center. If you need help managing your anxiety and emotions in this stressful time, the folks at CAPS are there for you.

And wash your hands.

We have a good team working on contingency plans for classes and other events. We’ll get through this by relying on what we at Wesleyan call compassionate solidarity. We may be instructed in new forms of “social distancing,” but we’ll also take care of each other. Reach out. Help is nearby.

On Testimonies from Student Athletes

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Today, I read the powerful, devastating accounts of the awful experiences that several of alumnae members of the Wesleyan women’s cross-country team published in Wesleying. The Director of Athletics has asked for an investigation by the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and this will begin immediately. I apologize for the profoundly negative experiences that the women recount in their moving testimonies. As I await the results of the investigation, I promise that we will take all necessary steps to fix any systemic issues and to ensure the health and well-being of our student-athletes.

Michael Roth

Reviewing Susan Stewart’s “The Ruins Lesson”

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Recently The Washington Post published my review of Susan Stewart’s excellent The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture. As we contemplate the renovation of some of our historical buildings, the lessons of the built environment are much on my mind. I repost the review here.

 

How to explain our taste for ruins? Are we attracted to their echoes of transience and decay, and perhaps of our own mortality? Or are we moved by traces of a past that has not quite disappeared — messages from an era otherwise inaccessible? “We are so often drawn to the sight of what is broken, damaged and decayed,” notes Susan Stewart in her admirably researched and beautifully produced volume, “The Ruins Lesson.” Ruins excite our imagination with the lesson that our greatest structures will one day return to the ground, while reminding us that in their fallen states these sites are endowed with beauty, even redemption.

(University of Chicago Press)
(University of Chicago Press)

Stewart, a distinguished poet, a former MacArthur fellow and a Princeton professor of the humanities, charts the West’s fascination with decayed remains, from Egyptian relics to contemporary monuments of destruction and trauma. “The Ruins Lesson” is a sweeping cultural history that draws in Renaissance humanism, 18th-century changes in representing the past and the Romantic reconfiguration of memory. Our buildings, no matter how grand, are bound to fall. This is a lesson of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel; we are fated to live in a fallen, scattered state. God does not, Stewart notes, strike the builders mute, but they are condemned to a confusion of tongues, to the ruins of communication. For Western traditions, only the divine is preserved from decay; human achievement will always be marked by the inevitability of a fall.

Ruins are ripe for allegory, but they are also very material. Old stuff, even ancient stuff, can just get in the way, or it can be reused for new buildings. A classical pagan temple can be repurposed as a church; stones used to mark the advance of a historic empire can come in handy when you have to build a new wall. But sometime in the Renaissance, writers and artists began to see ruins, particularly Roman ruins, as having intrinsic value. Their antiquity was taken to be both beautiful and meaningful. Poets rhapsodized about the excavation of traces of the mighty empire more than 1,000 years after its fall. The corpse of the great city still breathes warnings, wrote the 18th-century Welsh poet and painter John Dyer. It’s often the poets, Stewart emphasizes, who “dream of making artworks that will not be vulnerable to the erosion that weather and time can wreak upon even the greatest of built human structures. Even so, the anxiety that their words, too, might not endure is palpable.”

At the center of Stewart’s study is the mid-18th-century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The son of a Venetian stonemason, his effort to preserve ruins forever through printmaking illustrates the paradox implicit in the representation of decay. We are attracted to slowly falling buildings because they embody the effects of time passing, yet the artist attempts to defy time by creating a representation aimed at permanence. Piranesi strove for scientific rigor in his depiction of Roman ruins; he was determined to represent the exact proportions of architectural achievements from the past. Yet he was also determined to create art that would itself stand the test of time. He wanted to be at once faithful to the material artifacts and unbounded in his creative practice. As Stewart puts it, “Rarely has an artist been able to combine rationality, measure, and science with a near-melodramatic theatrical sense of presentation as Piranesi.” The artist’s many depictions of Roman ruins were so powerful that they came to define the experience of the past for those visiting the ancient sites — with some visitors afterward recalling Piranesi’s prints even more vividly than the ruins themselves.

In the 20th century, culture came to be seen as a ruin, a troubled witness to human violence. We are struck less by nature’s sublime powers than by the enormity of our capacity for ruination. The sentimental attachment to the ruin, the contemplative gaze that finds signs of renewal in mossy growth on broken stones, has been deconstructed. In our age of climate crisis, we might ask: When humans cause mass extinction, what does it mean to find beauty in decay?

“The Ruins Lesson” is in many respects a scholarly tome, with hundreds of footnotes and an extensive bibliography. But Stewart writes with poetic grace and a nonspecialist’s appreciation of printmaking, painting, literature and architecture. Readers outside the academy will find much to value in this lovely book. It takes no scholarly preparation to appreciate the ways in which culture-makers grappled with the lessons of decay even as they strove to create works of lasting value. The book is copiously illustrated, and the color prints powerfully illuminate the detailed descriptions of prints and paintings.

As part of the opening of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1997, I co-curated “Irresistible Decay,” an exhibition on ruins and their representations. It seemed worthwhile to recall the veneration of decay as we welcomed visitors to the beautiful new cultural center in the hills of Southern California. A museum can be like a monument, which Stewart reminds us “can be a temporary means of teaching the living about the past.” She goes on to conclude, though, that “it is only in the continual transmission of our values, in the life of thought, language, and critical reconsideration, that we can find any permanence.” With “The Ruins Lesson” she has made a critical and substantial contribution to that ongoing but fragile transmission.

The Ruins Lesson

Meaning and Material in Western Culture

By Susan Stewart

Chicago. 378 pp. $35