covid-19

A Sad Milestone for Remembrance

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We have seen today many acknowledgments of the losses that the Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted on our country. More than 500,000 deaths in the last year–a horrific number that is so difficult to put in any reasonable perspective. So many of those deaths occurred in isolation, and for those who mourn, the disruption of our rituals of grief only compounds the pain. President Biden urged us this evening to resist becoming numb to the sorrow and to find purpose in the work we have left to do to end this pandemic. Remember and heal.

Today at Wesleyan we ended our beginning of the semester quarantine. I was so pleased to meet with my students face-to-face, and to talk with them about enduring questions concerning values and ethics, reverence and love that were as relevant a thousand years ago as they are today. We turned our attention to history, even as we thought about tomorrow.

Let us all turn our attention to the losses so many have suffered over the last year, let us find comfort and bring solace where we can. While we pay our respects with remembrance, may we remain vigilant about preventing more losses in the future. May we find common purpose and even some joy in keeping our community safe.

 

Celebrate the Vaccine and Make Time to Grieve These Horrific Losses

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As I write this, vaccine shipments are being transported across the country. Soon, our health care workers will gain some basic protection, and then many of our friends and neighbors will have the opportunity to be vaccinated against this awful virus. This is certainly worth celebrating, and we should admire the scientific ingenuity and sheer hard work of those who have made this possible.

At the same time, we should acknowledge that in the coming weeks, in America alone, tens of thousands will die from the effects of Covid-19. Many already seemed to be inured to these horrific losses. Every day this country sets a new record for the number of deaths caused by the pandemic. Everyday, families and friends are dealing with loss and grief.

So, let’s celebrate the scientists, the health care workers, and those delivering the vaccines that should change the course of the pandemic. Let’s also be mindful of those around us  dealing with the losses of these last months and the losses to come.

And let us stay vigilant to get through this harsh winter. Masks, distance, hand washing.

 

Dedicated Gratitude

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As Kari, Lola and I walked around campus this weekend, we saw many students packing up. Since Wesleyan decided to transition to remote classes a few days early, and since it’s good to isolate before Thanksgiving, we were not surprised to see students preparing to leave, having, we hope, received a negative COVID test in the last day or two. Still, I felt a pang of sadness as I watched the cars fill up with suitcases and furniture. It is already quieter. Even during the pandemic, the energy students bring to campus – masked, distanced and all – has been so enlivening.

“Enlivening” is a fine word for Wesleyan – and by it I mean something more than making the campus “appealing” or “entertaining,” which the dictionary tells me are the primary meanings of the word. I mean that our students, in concert with staff and faculty, make our campus come alive. They make it sing, and I’ll miss the amplitude and resonance of that song over the coming break. Of course, there will be some students on campus over the break, and we’ll do our best to support them. I’ll listen attentively to their singing until our friends return to our chorus when the next semester begins.

Enlivening is a good word, too, because it reminds us of our responsibility to keep one another safe, to keep the most vulnerable members of our community – literally – alive. More than a quarter of a million people in this country alone have died due to COVID-19. We should never lose our ability to be shocked by this public health tragedy. We can do better.

As we remember our losses, we should also remember our achievements: how we at Wesleyan pulled together over the last months to provide a “safe enough” place for liberal education. I am so grateful for the dedication of our staff, faculty and students, because it’s that dedication that made it possible for us to have a campus on which we could navigate with confidence, make new discoveries and find joy with friends.

I feel enlivened by that dedication. Here we may be masked, but we are not anonymous to one another. We connect, despite the pandemic restrictions. With all the tumult around us, I am so thankful for the efforts, the exuberance, and the caring attentiveness of the Wesleyan community. My Thanksgiving will be smaller this year, but my heart is filled with gratitude.

Wishing you a safe and joyful holiday!

Towards a Healthy Thanksgiving and End of the Semester

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For those of us on campus, we have two weeks of classes and residential life before the Thanksgiving holiday and long winter break. Kari and I have been very impressed with the mask wearing on campus. When we walk around with puppy Lola, folks are keeping their distance, though we also see people exercising, eating meals, and generally hanging out in small groups. It’s seemed safe enough, though everyone is conscious that the safety is fragile, and that we must remain vigilant against the spread of Covid.

Of course, now we are in mid-November, and the spread of the pandemic is accelerating around the country. Even Connecticut, which had been very successful in keeping the virus more or less under control, has seen an increase in the number of cases over the last month. For that reason, we have restricted our students to campus for all but essential local travel, making sure we maximize our chances to keep contagion at bay. There has been a moderate increase in positive tests over the past week, and so we want to be especially vigilant for these last 10 days. Wear your masks, maintain social distance, and keep washing your hands thoroughly—wherever you are. And of course, avoid large groups and keep your testing schedule as long as you are on campus. We want everyone to have a healthy holiday, and the Connecticut Department of Public Health has issued a holiday gathering preparation guide with good advice to reduce risk associated with holiday celebrations.

The last weeks of every semester can be stressful, and they can also be rewarding. Let’s stay healthy and get the reward of a more relaxing, healthy, holiday break.

 

This is Our Home – Let’s Protect it Together!

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Today the Wesleyan Student Assembly sent out a final announcement before students start coming back to campus to begin their two-week quarantine and start classes. They forcefully and eloquently describe what’s at stake as we try to keep our campus safe during the pandemic. I’m grateful for the permission to cross-post.

Although what has happened at some universities across the country over the past week may be unnerving, we believe that Wesleyan is well-equipped for a safe residential experience on campus this Fall. Faculty and staff alike have been working extremely hard to make it possible. It is now up to us, the student body, to step up and start to do our part, too, as we begin to return to campus starting tomorrow.

The COVID 101 Moodle and the COVID Community Agreement have clearly outlined the set of guidelines and expectations for residential students this semester. Though they may be restrictive and inevitably make Fall 2020 an abnormal semester, they are necessary to maintain a safe campus for anyone who needs it. If you find those guidelines too restrictive and personally impossible to adhere to, we urge you to rethink your decision to return to campus this Fall. Having the ability to return to campus is a privilege within itself. For many students, Wesleyan has become a home and a safe haven. For many others, an on-campus experience and the community it brings, even at a 6 feet distance and with a mask on, is critical for their academic success. That is why Wesleyan staff have gone to great lengths and pains to set up appropriate health and safety protocols, reconfigure essential services in accordance to COVID guidelines, and invest in a robust testing technology.

However, frequent testing, as Prof. Cohan and Prof. Johnston have emphasized in their COVID101 lecture, will not be enough for us to think that we are automatically in a safe bubble. So make no mistake. This bubble does not magically build itself. It takes a village to build and takes even more to preserve, but it only takes one person, possibly with one urging idea to have one party with friends, however small, whether on campus or off campus, for that bubble to burst entirely and completely. So let’s not risk it. Too many people have worked too hard to set us up for success, and too much deliberation and planning have gone into all of your decision to return to campus already; too much is at stake for any of us to take such risks and be sent home 2 weeks into the semester. It is always better to err on the side of caution instead of being left with some residue of guilt. So keep your mask on even though it seems unbearably hot when you are outside of your residence, and make sure it covers both your mouth and your nose! Remember that it is 6 feet and not 5 feet and a half apart. This arrival season, show your love and care for friends, faculty and staff who you have dearly missed not by the kisses and the hugs, but by wearing a mask and keeping your distance. As Dr. McLarney has said in his last email to the campus on Wednesday, you may not be able to control what others do, but you can do your part. You can lead by example. You can help reinforce and strengthen those new norms of health guidelines on campus. It is possible.

Our return to campus this Fall will be abnormal, but it can also be phenomenal. A residential experience this Fall means that many students will have access to secure housing and several other important on-campus resources to fulfill their academic endeavor. Many people will get to keep their jobs. It will also mean Middletown can be lively again. Indeed, according to Mayor Ben Florsheim in a conversation between the WSA leadership and Middletown officials last month, local businesses have been longing for Wesleyan students to come and “bring the business back to town” since we left last March. Many will benefit from our students’ presence and care for the community at large. But please remember that those benefits can only be reaped if we all adhere to guidelines and practice our individual and collective responsibility that goes hand in hand together. In returning to campus this Fall, we all sign a community agreement. It is not a matter of legality or liability. Rather, it is a matter of life and death. It is a new social contract built upon the long-standing values of community and trust that should transcend all political, cultural or personal boundaries. It is a social contract that simply cannot afford a single rebel. We trust that cardinals care, because this is our community. This is our home. So let’s do our best to protect it.

Welcome back home, Cardinals!

Anna Nguyen, Student Life Committee Chair

Ben Garfield, Academic Affairs Committee Chair

Felicia Soderberg, President

We Miss the Campus Amplification of Liberal Learning

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I recently published this piece in the Hechinger Report.

“Nothing ever changes in academia,” the refrain goes. “Universities still teach the same way they did in the Middle Ages!” Usually I hear this tune from folks in the business world.

Trustees at Wesleyan University, where I am president, have for years been singing the siren’s song to professors about the benefits of online teaching, and usually the answer they get is: “It just doesn’t work.” Well, things in academia are changing now! The coronavirus has upended our plans and our prejudices. Students have left their campuses, and entire curricula have shifted into distance-learning mode.

“Things will never be the same in higher education!” is the refrain of the moment, and not just in the business world. Those who expected radical disruption in the wake of the Great Recession now seem to believe that it’s the coronavirus that will lead to a massive migration of students away from in-person learning and toward the promised land of tech-infused distance education.

Of course, millions of students had already moved to online courses over the last several years, in programs that were either aimed at specific skill-building or in programs that offered greater flexibility (and affordability) than can typically be found in on-campus settings. But despite growth in the numbers and sophistication of online options, high school seniors continue to apply for the opportunity to learn with one another on a college campus. Will the 2020 coronavirus pandemic change that?

I myself was teaching a class on campus, “The Modern and the Postmodern,” that I am now teaching remotely. I’d already adapted this class in 2013 as one of Coursera’s free online humanities offerings. In our current stay-at-home period, more than a thousand people have joined the pre-recorded version of this class each week. For me, it was pretty easy to imagine how I’d supplement the online pre-recorded lectures from my MOOC with discussions with Wesleyan students on the Zoom platform. Although we record these discussions, almost all of my 50+ undergraduates attend class together. We’ve been talking about Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf and Michel Foucault in our first weeks online, and the students have been as insightful as ever in connecting these texts to their own situations.

My colleagues report similarly positive experiences. Even those who used to chide me about leaving intimate education behind in offering MOOCs seem to be finding real value in teaching remotely on a platform that allows for discussion as well as lectures. Professors all over the country have been sharing tips on making their online educational environments as interactive and potent as possible.

I’ve been particularly impressed by suggestions that lead to more active learning (or project-based learning) among students who are scattered across great distances. I never found the right way to do that in my MOOCs because there were so many students enrolled and they were not moving through the material together. But I see now there are many more ways to do this than I’d imagined — from collaborations on science problems to coordinating music ensembles. I recently “attended” a fabulous pipe organ class recital, now displaced onto the various kinds of instruments student have at home. The problem wasn’t just the platform, it was my own limitations as a creative teacher.

At this point, undergraduates seem able to get hold of the material and address the tasks assigned on the syllabus. Seminar discussions on Zoom, Teams or Google Hangouts can be lively, lectures can be understood, and breakout sessions and team projects can be completed. Still, many students want nothing more than to be back on campus.

A cynic might say that the entitled young people miss their climbing walls and their beer pong, their lazy rivers and their bar-hopping, and surely some do miss the social bonds that form in the recreational dimensions of the college experience. But students are finding they miss a lot more than that. They miss the opportunities that campuses provide to amplify the straightforward instruction from classes via serendipitous encounters, informal discussion and collaborative discovery.

Sure, classes convey information about molecular biology or World War II, macroeconomics or social psychology, but the lessons are amplified and become resonant as students talk about them in the cafeteria, before sports events, in the library or in the dormitory lounge. Campuses provide homes for students, to be sure, but they also are environments in which the specifics that one learns are integrated into who one is as a person and into what one comes to think and believe as a member of a community.

On a campus, students encounter other people learning, and even when the subject of discussion isn’t a class, the lessons of a liberal education resonate into multiple dimensions of their lives. For faculty, too, the opportunity to talk with colleagues and with students outside of class amplifies the continuous learning that is their calling.

We are unlikely to see a massive migration away from campuses as a result of more students and teachers having “discovered” distance learning. But professors are likely to use a wider array of digital tools so as to make their in-person teaching on campus as compelling as possible. Tools in liberal education may be changing, but its essential mission — its core task of empowering the whole person — is not.

We Americans can sometimes gravitate toward efficient transactions, but education is impoverished — not made frictionless — when it is reduced to isolated exchanges among people in predetermined boxes (even when those boxes are on a computer screen).

Our goal as teachers should be to facilitate the amplification of what we teach so that what students learn resonates more fully in their lives. In this way, the skills that students build will strengthen them not just in building successful careers but also in searching for meaning and connection in their years beyond the university.

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.