Category: DHG Columns

Hey, did you notice that Add/Drop is now only ONE week long? When did that happen, and more importantly, WHY??

Let’s start with the more obvious of these questions: Yes, the Add/Drop period is now only one week long. That means for this semester you have until 11:59pm on Wednesday, September 8 to go into SPIRE and drop a class with no record of it on your transcript, or add a class without needing permission of your academic dean.

We know this is new and unusual for our returning UMass students who have typically had two whole weeks to make these changes to their schedule. However, after research by the Registrar’s Office, a review of other campuses, consideration by the Faculty Senate, and with input from actual UMass students, this process was changed.

I can imagine that for many of you this feels unfair and annoying. I get that. It can be difficult to get your schedule sorted in the first two weeks. That said, here’s what the Registrar’s Office learned about success rates for students who added classes at the end of add drop: Students who added classes on the final days of the Add/Drop period were TWICE as likely to earn a D or F, or to withdraw from the class as students who had added a class during registration or the first week of Add/Drop.

Maybe it feels paternalistic for University administrators to say, “We’re doing it for your own good.” But, we are. I never want students have to spend more money or time than they planned to finish their degree because they failed classes and got behind. That’s some of what we were seeing with the original Add/Drop period.

So what happens if you have a really good reason to add a class late? Students will still have the option to petition their academic dean for a late add. Yes, we will expect you to make a good case for why you need to add the class and what evidence you have that you’ll be successful. Late adds for research assistantships and internships are relatively straightforward and approved without much fuss.

You can speak with your academic advisor or an academic dean if you have questions. Academic deans are located in the SBS Pathways Center in 128 Thompson Hall. Stop by, call (413-755-1057) or email (sbsadvising@sbs.umass.edu) to set up an appointment.

Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, 11/17/2020

Over the weekend, I posed the following question to my friends on one of my social media accounts: “Can we agree to retire the word ‘unprecedented’ at the end of 2020?”

At the time, I was watching the news, and I groaned as the anchor used this word to describe something — I don’t even remember now what it was — maybe Trump’s refusal to concede? Or the number of new COVID infections? Our inability to keep each other safe during a pandemic?

All I remember now is the thought that went through my head: “This word no longer has meaning.”

The online version of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary reports that “unprecedented” is an adjective meaning “having no precedent; novel; unexampled.” Similar to the word “unique,” “unprecedented” is intended to be used sparingly. After all, once an unprecedented thing happens, there is precedent.

To find out if I was just imagining the increased use of this expression, I did a not-very-scientific experiment. I searched for the word “unprecedented” in my work email from Jan. 1, 2020 through Nov. 15, 2020. I filtered out headline updates from The New York Times and other messages that were not associated with my job. The result was that the word “unprecedented” appeared in 177 work-related email messages that I received.

Then I did a similar search for the entirety of 2019, which resulted in a mere 11 messages. In other words, the word “unprecedented” was used 16 times more frequently in 2020 than in the previous year — at least as far as my email is concerned.

The word appeared in an average of 18 emails per month. The highest frequency of its appearance was in March (36 messages) and April (43 messages). This correlates with the first surge of coronavirus cases in the United States, along with campus closures due to the pandemic.

It was unprecedented to send students home and ask all faculty and the majority of staff to work remotely to finish up the academic year. It was unprecedented for us to rethink the way we did most things so that we could stay away from each other and keep each other safe.

However, the coronavirus was not the only thing that made 2020 unusual. The term “unprecedented” has been used to describe so many things. Here is a sampling of them:

?Hospital ICUs filled to capacity and a shortage of ventilators

?Lack of PPE for first responders, nurses reused masks for days

?Sharp spike in job losses

?Close to 250,000 deaths of U.S. residents from COVID-19

?Wildfires raged across Australia and later the West Coast of the U.S.

?Ongoing protests for Black Lives Matter in the wake of George Floyd’s murder

?Increasing visibility and audacity of white supremacists in the U.S., including a plot to kidnap a sitting governor

?Toilet paper, cleaning and baking supply shortages (seriously?)

?Students of all ages expected to learn remotely

?A sitting U.S. president lying about the security of our elections

?Confirmation of a Supreme Court justice during an active presidential election

?An African American and South Asian American woman elected as vice president

?The U.S. president’s unwillingness to concede the presidential race

There are certainly events missing from this list that I’ve forgotten or that others would consider more “unprecedented” than these.

While I’m hoping 2021 will be a better year for the human race, there are some things that started in 2020 that I hope we can use to set new precedents. For example, people have been spending more time outside. In addition to common pursuits like walking, hiking and biking, I’ve enjoyed how activities such as dining and exercise classes continued to take place outdoors even into the cooler months. Doing yoga outside while watching the sunset was a highlight of the fall.

Looking after our neighbors is another habit that I hope will continue. Several communities set up official mutual aid groups to help each other. There were even more unofficial kindnesses happening among neighbors. People in my neighborhood seem more willing to stop to say hello and get to know each other.

Spending more time at home with family has had its high and low points. In my house, it’s been difficult for my teens to spend so much time on screens doing their schoolwork, and our house is too small for us to each have an office space. That said, I appreciate being able to work from my couch with my dog snuggled beside me. I recognize that I am one of the lucky ones who has a job when so many people are out of work.

Once we are beyond 2020, when we have some time and distance from it, we’ll be able to see more clearly what happened, how we got to this place — both the bad and the good, and how that set the precedent for the future.

Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, 10/16/2020

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic after many lost their jobs, the state instituted a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures so that residents who were already struggling with their finances wouldn’t also have to worry about losing their homes. The moratorium was set to expire on Aug. 18, but Gov. Baker extended that deadline for two months.

The end of this week will mark the end of the moratorium, and while the state Legislature has attempted to stall immediate evictions, there will not likely be another extension to the moratorium after the Oct. 17 deadline.

The commonwealth offers two programs that provide short-term funds to help residents with low incomes to stay in their homes. Way Finders in Springfield (wayfinders.org/apply-financial-assistance) is the local nonprofit that oversees both the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) and the Emergency Rental and Mortgage Assistance (ERMA) programs. RAFT funding is predominantly geared towards families earning less than 50% of the area’s median income. ERMA funds are used to help both renters and homeowners earning between 50-80% of the area’s median income.

In addition to the state programs, some local communities are using Community Preservation Act or Community Development Block Grant funds to provide short-term rental assistance. Amherst and Springfield have programs in place. Easthampton and Hadley are developing theirs.

It may sound as though there are many avenues for people who are struggling to pay their rent to get support, but each of these programs has capped the total amount that a household can access. What will happen once households have used all of their options?

Between March 15 and Aug. 22, a total of 1,208,132 Massachusetts residents filed for unemployment. Over the summer, unemployment in the state reached a high of 17.7%. These are people who are figuring out how to survive on much less income than they are used to. Sometimes this means choosing between paying bills or buying food and medicine.

The moratorium has helped stabilize both individual households as well as communities. However, when it is lifted and landlords begin eviction proceedings for their tenants, we will face new challenges. Evictions are costly to both landlords and tenants. There will likely be a backlog of cases; proceedings will take a long time. The legal costs will be high, and so will the emotional costs.

Eviction is damaging. In the short term, evicted individuals and families have to find somewhere to go. They may end up moving in with family or friends or end up living for a time in a homeless shelter. During this pandemic, either of these options may mean exposure to the virus and an increase in COVID cases. Studies have also shown that people who have been evicted suffer from higher rates of depression. Eviction can be particularly destabilizing for children, who lose the structure and sense of security they need to thrive.

In the long run, eviction can stop people from finding stable housing even when they have recovered financially. Evictions are included on credit reports and may be in rental histories for up to seven years. The fallout from an eviction can alter the course of a person’s life.

The Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA) and other housing advocates are calling on the governor to increase the RAFT funding from the Coronavirus Relief Fund. They estimate that approximately 17,000 households across the state are in danger of being evicted without this additional help. The proposal calls for a $175 million increase RAFT and $15 million for legal assistance and case management for low-income renters and property owners who may end up in housing court.

As of this writing, Gov. Baker had committed to some parts of the CHAPA proposal. He has added $100 million to the RAFT program and dedicated another $50 million to rehousing those who have been evicted. Even better would be to drastically reduce the number of evictions that happen.

At the federal level, the U. S. House of Representatives has proposed another stimulus bill that would help those who are in need, but the Senate has prioritized the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

If you are interested in learning more about housing and how you can be an advocate, you can become a member of the Citizens Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA) or you can join your community’s Affordable Housing Partnership.

Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, 8/19/2020

When I was a sophomore in college, I got a job waiting tables at a rib joint near my apartment. It was the first time I worked closely with Black people and poor people. Or, maybe I had worked with poor people but didn’t realize it because I thought of myself that way, too.

That year and the following summer, I worked long hours between the restaurant and my on-campus job so that I could bank enough money to support myself during my junior year when I planned to study abroad in Europe.

I was excited about my upcoming travels and was talking about them one day with the dishwasher, a young Black man, who I knew lived in public housing. He said, “Whoa, Jackie, you’re gonna go on a plane?” He said this in a way that told me flying was something he never expected to experience.

That conversation opened my inexperienced eyes to the differences among those around me. It sparked my curiosity to learn more about people, where they come from, and how they’ve had different experiences than I. I began this journey more than 30 years ago and I plan to keep learning.

That said, I still find myself saying awkward things, sometimes even offending people unintentionally. I know I have used microaggressions without intending to. For example, in the past I’ve described a person of color as “articulate” and later learned that this is not acceptable because it conveys my white surprise upon coming across a person of color who speaks well.

It’s mortifying when I realize that I’ve said something stupid, but I try to get over myself and apologize, knowing that my embarrassment is insignificant compared to the injury I’ve caused. I pledge to do better and make fewer mistakes as I continue to learn.

I had a new-learning experience after reading about Steve Locke, a professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, who in 2015 was detained by police in Jamaica Plain because they thought he fit the description of someone who attempted a break-in. Steve Locke is Black.

Professor Locke wrote a blog post that went viral and resurfaces from time to time after similar incidents make the news. In his account, Locke wrote about his intense fear as the police questioned him in the street. He described how grateful he was that an older Black woman stayed nearby the whole time, bearing witness to the scene.

Here’s what made me pause; the officers wanted to bring the white female victim to the scene to see if she could identify him. Professor Locke said he was not guilty and provided an alibi, but that didn’t matter because the police needed the word of the white woman to clear him. It dawned on me then that we are socialized to believe white people over people of color. I just hadn’t thought about it before even though it seems so obvious.

I write about this as the U.S. seems to be on the verge of creating deep and lasting change. There is momentum to build an equitable and just society, but we have to come to terms with the roots of racism in our country and how that racism exacerbates inequality and access to things like housing and education.

As a white person who advocates for social justice, it’s on me to do the work of understanding my privilege and the role it plays in systemic racism. It’s up to me to recognize that microaggressions are real and harmful and that if I choose not to speak up when I see racial injustice, it’s just as bad as the injustice itself. I’ve been learning this at my own pace over years but it’s critical to work on it now.

The movement needs white people to get up to speed quickly (seriously, these issues have been around for 400 years – so it’s kind of high time) so we can collectively take advantage of this moment to make the change that’s needed. This sense of urgency can lead some activists to be impatient with those who have good intentions and a desire to be an ally, but who sometimes say and do things that are harmful to people of color.

As I’ve described above, I’ve made these mistakes and they’re part of learning how to be an ally. We don’t know what we’ve done wrong until we’ve crossed a boundary.

I understand the urgency of the moment, but I have no patience for the “call out” culture that’s been emerging among some white activists. Calling someone out on Facebook for using the wrong word or expressing an uninformed opinion is not helpful. Shaming someone when they have good intentions but make a mistake does not encourage them to do better. In fact, this tactic often backfires and instead of helping people learn, it shames them into silence and the movement begins to splinter.

When I know someone has good intentions but they make a mistake, I try to take them aside and talk about the issues and offer another perspective. It doesn’t have to take long, it demonstrates respect, and it builds trust.

Calling someone in rather than calling them out is worth it. We need all the allies we can get in the fight for change.

Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, 7/28/2020

Just about two months ago, my mother walked unaided into the emergency department of a hospital in Rhode Island while my brother watched from his car. Because of the pandemic, he was not allowed to accompany her into the hospital. She had no idea why she was there.

My mom has advanced dementia from Alzheimer’s disease. She also has a number of other medical diagnoses: rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, anemia and other related complications.

Despite all these issues, my mom had been living pretty happily at an assisted living facility. Within the past year she moved to their memory care unit where she interacted well with her peers and was active and engaged with staff. She walked around on her own without the aid of a walker and she was adamant that she was not going to use one.

At her assisted living, Mom was known for her sunny disposition, sarcastic wit and willingness to help anyone who needed it. My family has felt lucky that she has had this quality of life for the past several years and we’re grateful to the staff at her residence as well as her primary care physician.

Not that there haven’t been difficult times. Mom has had her share of hospital visits over the past five years, and because of her Alzheimer’s disease, my siblings and I would take turns spending the day at her bedside when these occurred.

She isn’t able to serve as an accurate reporter of her condition, so we’d take on that role. Having us there also cut down on her confusion, which meant she’d call out for help from the staff less often. It’s a system that worked well for everyone.

So, when she was sent to the hospital in May because she was dealing with a medical issue, we weren’t ready for the quick deterioration that followed. None of us was allowed to go see her and while we tried to be in regular contact with the hospital staff, it often seemed like the history and information we gave them was not being used or passed to the next shift.

When my mom ended up at a skilled nursing facility for rehab, the communication problems worsened. My siblings and I tried to stay on top of what was happening with her treatment and tried to assess when she might be able to return to her assisted living, but we often felt like we weren’t getting the whole story of what was happening. When we’d talk to my mom, she was confused and angry. Her declining moods got worse. She’d ask when we were going to come get her and we’d fib and tell her we’d be there soon. Not being able to see her in person was so hard.

After 40 days at the nursing home, she was sent back to the hospital with a fever and infection. The staff didn’t know she was able to walk and assumed she couldn’t. Because she was verbally combative, they gave her tranquilizers to keep her from disrupting other patients. When we’d call to talk to her, her speech was slurred and she’d fall asleep during the call. By the end of two weeks in the hospital my mom had regressed even further and was barely eating.

On July 13, the visitation policy in Rhode Island changed and I was finally able to visit my mom. I was the first member of my family to see my mom’s face in two months.

Her first words to me were, “Why can’t you just let me die? I just want to die.” My heart broke. We ended up having a bittersweet visit. She told me she loved me and all of the family. I’m not sure she knew exactly who I was. She fell asleep after half an hour.

I can’t fully blame the hospital or nursing home for my mom’s decline. The U.S. health care system is in a terrible state; nurses and CNAs are asked to take on more than they can handle and it’s not fair to them. But I’m sure if we had been with my mom, things would not have gotten so bad.

The rules preventing visitation are also reasonable and intended to protect a vulnerable population from getting coronavirus. It makes complete sense but that doesn’t make it any less devastating for families who can’t see their loved ones.

I hesitated to write this deeply personal account but I consulted with my siblings and they agreed to share our story. It’s important to talk about the secondary effects of this pandemic because they are far-reaching.

For some families, this prolonged period of instability has exacerbated mental health challenges. Others have lost their jobs and are struggling to put food on the table and keep the lights on. There are reports of a higher incidence of domestic violence due to the stress of lost wages and everyone being stuck at home together.

For my family, the fallout from the pandemic will likely mean that we will have to say goodbye to my mother sooner than we had anticipated. My mom won’t die from COVID19 but she will probably die sooner because of it.

Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, 5/20/2020

Students tell me a lot about their lives and struggles. They talk about their anxiety and depression, their financial struggles, uninvolved parents, and overinvolved parents. I’ve heard accounts of physical and sexual abuse, drug addiction, chronic illness, homelessness and hospitalizations.

During this pandemic I’ve heard about sick parents and siblings, parents who are working in hospitals, and parents who have lost their jobs. At least one of my students had COVID-19 this semester and a few students have experienced the death of a parent.

Students who struggled to stay organized when they were on campus found that they struggled even more once they went home and had to figure out how to do schoolwork from their bedrooms. One of my students was taking care of his nephews, letting them use his tablet and laptop during the day, and saving his own work for nighttime or trying to do it on his phone. Some students who moved home and ended up working in essential jobs were trying to get their school work done on the side, making it very difficult to “attend classes” remotely (most classes were not held in real time but some were).

Part of my job is knowing how to respond to these students and connect them to the right resources while also helping them to plan their path forward to graduation. I speak words of reassurance to so many students in the course of a week. I listen carefully so they feel heard. I echo back to them the struggles they are going through and validate their feelings, assuring them that they are not alone. I absorb a bit of sadness from each of them and doing this via phone and Zoom meetings is somehow more exhausting than meeting with them in person. By the end of the week, I’m toast.

There is a name for this phenomenon. It’s called compassion fatigue or secondary traumatic stress. It happens to therapists and social workers who work with victims of abuse, violent crime, war, or disaster. You might not think of these students’ challenges as trauma, but I certainly do.

I am not alone in this work. I have many colleagues at UMass who work as academic advisors. Advisors help students make progress toward their degrees, they talk about opportunities like study abroad, scholarships and internships. They also serve a role similar to mine, listening when students tell them what is going on in their lives — the good, the bad, and the distressing.

We’ve all just come through the most challenging and unsettling semester any of us has ever experienced and now my advisor colleagues are preparing to advise new college students. They’ll help them understand their college requirements, choose classes for the fall and reassure them that they will be successful whether we are online or in person. All of us are trying to figure out how to continue our work remotely this summer and I’m guessing my colleagues are also feeling pretty burned out.

Unlike therapists and social workers, advisors and undergraduate deans don’t have supervision specific to our own emotional health. We certainly talk to each other and provide support but I’m not sure that’s enough.

I know it’s not only my colleagues and me who struggle with compassion fatigue. Anyone in a helping role might find themselves in this predicament. So, what can we do about it? According to Rogers Behavioral Health, we have to build “compassion resilience” by making sure we take care of ourselves as much (and before) we care for others. This may sound easy but it’s not.

Treating ourselves with the same compassion we reserve for others takes practice. One of the first steps is to recognize when we are having feelings of sadness, distress, or overwhelm. We have to make the decision to stop and acknowledge those emotions so we have the opportunity to pivot and take care of ourselves. This will help build resilience rather than dive into the abyss and end up feeling hopeless and ineffective.

Jen Metzger, adjustment counselor at Easthampton High School, has been doing a wonderful job of sharing resources with students and families that focus on dealing with stress during this pandemic.

The compassion resilience toolkit is one of those and it’s worth a look: compassionresiliencetoolkit.org/staying-resilient-during-covid-19/.

Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, 4/14/2020

At this point in our new normal, everyone I know has been affected personally by COVID-19. There are no longer 7 degrees of separation between “us” and those suffering from this virus. We are all in this together.

I feel remarkably fortunate. I still have a job. My kids, my husband, our parents and siblings are all healthy – for now. Every day, however, I talk to friends, students and colleagues who know someone who is sick or has died.

I am struck by the fact that it didn’t have to be this bad. There was evidence and information early on that should have led to quick and decisive action. The lack of leadership from the president has resulted in deaths that didn’t have to happen.

Rather than spending time and energy on how this crisis might influence the economy and the stock market, the administration should have been prioritizing how a public health crisis would impact actual human lives. The president’s impulse to put profits over people is devastating.

One of the biggest failures of this administration is a shortage of experts and a distrust of science and facts. It’s not reasonable for this president, who is a failed businessman with no background in science, public health, foreign affairs, civics, or even a general grasp of U.S. history, to propose solutions to problems he doesn’t understand. And yet, he does this all the time. President Trump declares himself the best knower of everything and now it’s literally killing us.

A recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists showed that President Trump has allowed 39 of 83 scientific leadership positions to go unfilled during his administration. Contrast this to the previous two presidents – there were no vacancies under President Obama and only three under President Bush. 

In a recent press briefing, Trump stated that he would use his own metrics to determine when to reopen the economy. In other words, instead of listening to public health experts who can advise on when it might be safer, he will rely on his “instincts” and the opinions of his corporate friends.

Meanwhile, Trump put his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has worked in real estate, in charge of determining who needs medical equipment and how to distribute it. Kushner believes he is qualified to do this because he has read some articles about pandemics and crowd-sourced the answers to questions like “how do you solve a pandemic?” via Facebook.

Kushner has no public health or scientific expertise and White House sources have reported that he has sidetracked actual health experts by asking them to look into baseless solutions. His attempts to address the situation by setting up a website to help people find testing sites have failed.

President Trump has appointed his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and Kushner, along with a handful of other financial advisors, to the “Council to Re-Open America.” There are no public health experts on this council. Keeping experts out of this process only ensures further spread of this deadly virus.

Public health experts are better suited to advise when it is safe for schools and non-essential businesses to reopen than the President’s Council. They actually know how to track the virus and its spread. They will see the peaks and the slowdown, and they will know what questions still need to be asked in order to determine when it’s safe to allow people to congregate again.

There is at least one actual expert on the president’s team. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has become the one trusted expert on the stage during the president’s daily press briefings (ahem, campaign rallies).

Dr. Fauci is in the unenviable position of sticking to a script approved by the president and his sycophants. On Monday, Dr. Fauci had to issue an apology for previously implying that the Trump administration did not act quickly enough to stop the spread of the virus. He is not allowed to voice opinions that conflict with statements made by the president.

One of the biggest problems with the administration’s mistrust and renunciation of experts is that there are now a lot of people who also believe that Trump’s intuition is more accurate than science. Unfortunately, this has resulted in some governors not enacting appropriate social distancing precautions. This will lead to more unnecessary deaths.

There is so much that we won’t know until we can look back at these events from a safe distance. We don’t know when the pandemic will end, how many lives will be lost, whether there will be a recurrence in the fall and beyond, or whether people can be reinfected with the virus once they’ve recovered from it.

Right now we don’t know the answers to these questions, but there are many scientists, doctors, and public health statisticians working on these issues. These are the experts that we need to answer the big questions. They need time, money and attention to find solutions that can help us. Most of all, they need our confidence in the accuracy and reliability of their work.

Believe the experts.