News: Faculty share perspective on COVID-19 outbreak Page 5
Opinion: SARS situates police violence globally Page 10
Sports: Deacs edge out Virginia Tech 23-17 Page 11
Life: How to celebrate Halloween safely Page 17
Old Gold&Black
WAKE FOREST’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1916 VOL. 107, NO. 10
T H U R S DAY, O C TO B E R 2 9 , 2 0 2 0 “Cover s the campus like the magnolias”
wfuogb.com
COVID-19 case among contract workers surfaces The university will add contract workers to its COVID-19 dashboard, after a positive case on Tuesday BY RAFAEL LIMA News Editor limara17@wfu.edu
According to Adams, as of Monday 120,000 people in Forsyth County had already voted at one of the county’s 17 early voting sites, almost half of the county’s population. Emhoff began his 15-minute long speech assuring the crowd that the campaign is taking North Carolina very seriously, especially as the election grows nearer. “Let’s talk about Nov. 3. We win in North Carolina, this is game over people,” he said. “We know it’s going to be close here though, inexplicably.” The Democratic Coordinate Campaign, the combined efforts of the presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) worked to build the crowd for the outdoor event held at Campus Gas.
On Tuesday night, students hoping to find some Tex Mex food in Benson University Center came across an unexpected sight even during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Moe’s was the only restaurant in the Benson Food Court with its doors closed. The episode repeated itself again on Wednesday morning when Moe’s, usually open during lunchtime, only opened its doors at 1 p.m. The reason: a positive COVID-19 case among one of its workers. According to a Moe’s employee — who will be referred to using the gender-neutral alias Chandler to protect their identity — a worker from the morning shift tested positive at the beginning of the week, prompting the restaurant to temporarily close its doors and quarantine all of its morning staff. As of Wednesday, only one of Moe’s employee tested positive, while other workers from the morning period are waiting in quarantine for further testing before being cleared back to work. Since then the restaurant has been sanitized and all the workers who are still working are believed to not have been in contact with the individual who tested positive, as they work in an alternate shift. Moe’s will now be operating under reduced hours between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. for the upcoming weeks until most of its staff is cleared back to work, according to Chandler Yet, the positive case and its trickledown effect on the restaurant’s schedule serve as a reminder of how contract workers are at the forefront of social interactions on campus and how vulnerable that can make them sometimes. A week after Wake Forest switched to Orange operation status after its largest COVID-19 outbreak to date, the university has now decided to also include cases among contract workers to the dashboard. “You may see faculty and staff positive [cases] go up this week because we are adding contract employees to the dashboard,” said Associate Dean for Student Engagement Tim Wilkinson during the Student Government Senate meeting on Tuesday. “My understanding is that there will be no distinction between contract employees and exempt or non-exempt employees.”
See Election, Page 5
See COVID-19, Page 4
Elizabeth Maline/Old Gold & Black
Doug Emhoff, husband of vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, addresses supporters of the campaign at Campus Gas on Monday. The event was conducted entirely in accordance with COVID-19 guidelines.
Doug Emhoff campaigns for Biden-Harris ticket Emhoff hopes his wife will make history by becoming the first female vice president BY ELIZABETH MALINE Online Managing Editor malied17@wfu.edu With just a week left until the election, Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff paid a visit to Winston-Salem on Monday morning to get out the vote. This was Emhoff’s third trip to North Carolina campaigning on behalf of the Democratic presidential ticket, though he joked that he had visited the state “virtually” throughout the entire campaign. Harris made appearances in the western part of the state just last week, while both Joe and
Jill Biden have also made periodic campaign stops in North Carolina. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know that North Carolina is the tipping-point state of this election, and that’s why they’ve both visited the state several times,” Austin Cook, Communications Director for the North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP), said. “Our state can be the one that sends Donald Trump packing, so we’re excited to have a full slate of surrogates visiting in the final days to make sure we turn out every voter we can.” Sporting her converse sneakers, as is Harris’ signature look, Councilwoman and Mayor Pro Tem DD Adams introduced Emhoff in an impassioned speech pleading for voters to support the Biden-Harris ticket. “We have to elect them to bring back respect,” Adams said. “America has now got to move forward and heal.”