Mills Matters Adapting to the new status quo After a relatively uneventful fall semester, upcoming J-term
Mills community makes most of Convocation
and spring classes at Mills will continue with a pandemic-
As one of the earliest campus-wide events of the year,
era hybrid approach that incorporates both online and in-person learning. While the mix will still heavily lean toward the virtual, several more courses will meet on campus in 2021, including lab sciences and art studios. There were plenty of pitfalls to the first four months of a most unusual school year—for students and faculty members alike. Email and Zoom fatigue have plagued many in the Mills community, and at a faculty-staff town hall on October 27, 2020, Dean of Student Life Chicora Martin
Convocation followed its tradition of setting the tone for the new school year—though this one was already unlike any other. With classes online and many students spread out beyond the campus, Provost Chinyere Oparah and her staff made the decision to hold the event over Zoom. And rather than bring in an outside speaker—as per usual custom—students took charge and shared rousing speeches and poetry.
reported that students have diminished resources on both financial and emotional levels. Technology needs are up, while many of those learning off-campus don’t have the kind of privacy they need for online classes. The 180 or so students living on campus do have the opportunity to socialize, even as they occupy single rooms. “Students are able to establish social bubbles, and we encourage them to do that,” Martin said. “They have those two or three friends, and they eat together, so they’re interacting in small groups.” A new COVID-19 dashboard is available at mills.edu/covid-19/covid-dashboard.php, showing (as of press time) that there have been no positive cases on the Mills campus since September 2020. Additional signs of normal life are showing themselves as everyone learns how to adapt to the pandemic. Later in the fall, outdoor yoga sessions on Holmgren Meadow gave those on campus socially distanced time outside, and the area surrounding Mary Morse was reconfigured to allow student and faculty children the opportunity to roller skate. Martin said the Division of Student Life had found better virtual engagement among some populations, such as student parents, and that post-pandemic programming would be adjusted to accommodate those groups.
Coronavirus, climate change, and Black futurism were the prompts for these creative contributions, and Mills students responded in spades. Convocation kicked off with an indigenous blessing from Hiwa Grieg ’22, Zooming in from Maui, Hawaii, with her mother, Napua (pictured above). Student leaders Dylyn Turner-Keener ’21 (president of the Associated Students of Mills College) and Sophie Stauffer, MA ’22, followed with advice for the pandemic and intensely personal reflections on their experiences at Mills. Three other students—Jessica Hairston ’22, MFA ’23; Reilly Hirst, MPP ’21; and Sara Lahey ’22—shared poems they had written for the occasion. Hairston’s contribution is at right; visit quarterly.mills.edu/convocation-poetry to read the others and for links to videos of their readings.
Work continued apace at the Mills Community Farm over the summer into the fall, with students and Farm Manager Julia Dashe packaging harvested food for on-campus residents and the Mercy Brown Bag Program for the Elder Care Alliance. “The outdoor space, the resilience of the natural worlds, and the smells and sounds of the surrounding ecology have been truly healing for students, staff, and faculty who have been working, volunteering, and enjoying the farm’s bounty,” Dashe said. 4
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