West Coast Wildfires

Emerson College’s student newspaper since 1947 • berkeleybeacon.com

Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020 • Volume 74, Issue 3

@berkeleybeacon // @beaconupdate

Staff worries for health, job safety

‘No matter where you stand, it’s scary, and it’s terrifying.’

Megan Rose on the West Coast wildfires

Ann E. Matica, Beacon Staff

The sky in Danville, California shone bright orange last week from the fires blazing miles away.

Courtesy Megan Rose

West Coast students cope with devastation in hometowns Diti Kohli

Beacon Staff More than 3,000 miles away from the flagship Emerson campus, the West Coast is on fire.

California, Oregon, and Washington are grappling with record-breaking fire seasons. At least 28 wildfires have decimated

three million acres of land in California alone. And thousands of residents remained indoors this last week to avoid choking on smoke and ash. Many more have evacuated altogether to avoid the hurtling threat inching closer to neighborhoods and cities.

“The whole west side of the United States is on fire,” said junior and California native Megan Rose. “And that’s not normal.”

Rose is one of hundreds of Emerson students who call the affected states home. Thirteen percent of the undergraduate student population hailed from the Golden State in the 2019-2020 academic year.

For those attending in-person classes from Boston this semester, the threat from the fires feels far away and terrifyingly close all at once.

Berkeley resident Jen Van Pelt said she’s been trailing the situation through

accounts from her family and friends.

Her best friend at University of California Berkeley even had to shelter in her dorm last week due to poor air quality and fears of excessive smoke inhalation.

“I see all these pictures—orange skies in San Francisco, bright lights, smog and smoke,” Van Pelt said. “It’s depressing to see what it looks like on my hometown friend’s Snapchats and Instagrams.”

Rose mirrored those sentiments.

Between classes, soccer practice, and socialization, it’s easy for her to momentarily forget the devastation surrounding her neighborhood in Danville.

Then minutes later, it hits her again.

“I’m experiencing a lot of different things,” she said. “But no matter where you stand, it’s scary, and it’s terrifying.”

Rose also worries for her father, a Fires, Pg. 4

College places ninth in regional rankings U.S. News & World Report dropped Emerson one rank since last year Charlie McKenna Beacon Staff

Emerson landed in a tie for ninth in the annual U.S. News and World Report ranking of top 10 regional universities in the north, marking the fifth year in a row the college has made the list.

The 2021 rankings, released Sept.

14, put Emerson in a tie with Ithaca College in New York. The report also ranked Emerson as the sixth most innovative school regionally and ninth on the top 10 list for undergraduate teaching in the region. Emerson is one of 176 schools in the rankings’ ‘Regional Universities North’ category.

“We are so pleased to again be recognized as a leader and innovator in the arts, communication, and liberal arts,” President M. Lee Pelton said in a statement posted to Emerson Today.

Emerson trailed behind Bentley University and Providence College,

who tied for first, along with eight other schools in the north.

U.S. News and World Report categorizes a regional university as an institution that offers a full suite of undergraduate programs, but few to no doctoral programs. The organization also ranks regional universities in the West, South, and Midwest.

The placement is a drop from previous years - Emerson landed at eighth place in the 2020 rankings; sixth in 2019; and seventh in 2018.

The college also ranked tenth on the most innovative list in the 2019 rankings, before climbing to fifth the following year.

The rankings come from academic data collected via U.S. News and World Report surveys, as well as “reliable” third-parties. Student outcomes—which include graduation rate, retention rate, and social mobility—are the highest weighted category for the rankings. The rest of the determining factors are faculty Rankings, Pg. 2

Emerson tied with Ithaca College in the rankings.

Jakob Menendez / Beacon Staff

Emerson staff members are grappling with safety risks and the threat of job insecurity, as the college proceeds with a reopening plan that brought much of the community back to Boston.

Hundreds of full or part-time staff returned to their jobs in the middle of August, with the majority working remotely. Most staffers now work from home to reduce the amount of people on campus at any given time. But those working in-person—service or maintenance employees, for example—face an exponentially greater risk of contracting the virus from close-contact interactions with students.

“Obviously, the big thing that staff are super concerned about is getting sick while being on campus,” Staff Union Chapter Chair Dennis Levine said in a Zoom interview.

Those concerns, so far, are not without merit. Total enrollment is up from last year, and around 83 percent of Emerson students attend hybrid classes today. Eleven COVID-19 test results have come back positive since testing began on Aug. 6.

Coordinator of Electronic Resources and Reference Librarian Daniel Crocker said he feels comfortable coming to work on campus despite the ongoing worries for his health.

‘The big thing that staff are super concerned about is getting sick while being on campus...’

Dennis Levine “I’m more concerned about making sure that everyone else stays safe,” Crocker said. “I’m hoping the plans are smart enough that we will be okay, but I am expecting at some point that there’s going to be a second wave.”

Staff that directly interact with students, like the Equipment Distribution Center, facilities management, and dining hall employees from Bon Appétit, work small, staggered shifts to prevent crowding in workspaces.

“One of the guiding principles that the administration is going by is they don’t want any more than 10 to 15 percent of all staff union and non-union [members] on campus,” Levine said. “They want to try and make it as much of a ghost town as possible.”

Some departments, however, are not able to function without staff on campus. The Media Technologies and Production Department, for example, requires more hands-on employees because they distribute equipment and supervise on-site studio spaces for students.

The college said they work with older and at-risk staff members on a case-by-case basis to establish proper accommodations. Some may be given permission to work remotely, while others could be scheduled for non-standard shifts that begin at unconventional hours to limit contact with other people.

“We’re all concerned, but I think the school has done some smart things,” Levine said. “Will it reduce [the spread of COVID-19] 100 percent? No, nothing will.”

Those working remotely for the semester will only be required to come to campus occasionally, though the frequency of these in-person visits depends on the responsibilities of the individual staff member. Still, some employees may not be mandated to step foot on campus until 2021.

If a remote staff member needs to come to campus, they must notify the department manager in advance and schedule a time to be in a workspace.

All faculty and staff underwent preliminary COVID-19 Staff, Pg. 3

INSIDE THIS EDITION

ArtsEmerson, Pg. 2

A breakdown of COVID-19 test results and quarantine totals to date Pg. 3 Voting by mail is easy and necessary during a pandemic Pg. 4

Emerson allows pronoun changes on Canvas Pg. 2 ArtsEmerson director duo seperated in newly announced transition Pg. 2 Incident Journal Pg. 4

News

The Berkeley Beacon

September 17, 2020

2

College now allows community members to choose pronouns on Canvas The feature changes students’ identifiers across the online learning platform Katie Redefer Beacon Staff A recent college update to Canvas, Emerson’s online learning platform, now allows for users to change and display pronouns on their profile.

Users can now choose from six different pronoun options—she/her, he/him, they/them, ze/zir, name only, or self describe—to be displayed next to the user’s name, a Sept. 8 email from Vice President and Dean of Campus Life Jim Hoppe said.

Emerson’s update comes months after Canvas added the pronoun feature to its website in January 2020, a change that Director of Instructional Technology Group Jenn Stevens said she has pushed for in recent years.

Stevens said users could always change their name on Canvas, but displaying pronouns was not an option until the new feature rolled out.

“I had been hassling Canvas,” she said. “Like ‘Hey, what about pronouns, we really need pronouns...for the love of god, please, pronouns.’”

The update has been met with mixed reaction from trans and gender non-binary students.

Junior Claire Rodenbush, who uses she/her and they/them pronouns, said they think the college doesn’t deserve praise for this change, as they feel it should’ve been implemented sooner.

“I won’t deny [that it’s] a good thing, but it does feel like it’s very low-hanging,” Rodenbush said. “It’s not worth congratulating the admin-

istration because it should have been there from the beginning.”

Stevens said the college could not immediately enable the pronouns feature after the January update because it would have required them to also allow name changes through Canvas.

Administrators were already in the process of implementing their own name change process through the Office of Intercultural Student Affairs when the January update was released. Canvas has since enabled the pronouns feature without requiring a change in the naming process.

At one point, students could update their name on Canvas at any time. Administrators disabled this name change setting in August because of logistical issues that interfered with the college’s official name change process through an administrative software application known as Banner. Now, when students request a name change, they must fill out a “self-service form,” as termed by Director of Intercultural Student Affairs tamia jordan, who prefers to lowercase her full name. The college then processes the request through Banner and makes a name change in all places where the student’s preferred name can be legally used.

Multiple students were disappointed that Canvas only allowed them to choose one pronoun option when the feature was first released, because some individuals use multiple pronoun series.

“It’s an oversight, but it’s a big oversight that forces people to choose,” Rodenbush said. “And...if they have to choose, [they] probably

Students can now change their pronouns on Canvas. Tomás González / Beacon Staff just aren’t going to, which then just defeats the point of enabling it.” jordan told the Beacon via email that the college will be adding a she/ they and he/they pronoun option to Canvas in the next few days.

Stevens and jordan said the college is also creating a similar process for handling pronouns in a potential Banner update set for 2021 that would allow students to update their pronouns on all platforms, including Canvas, automatically. When this Banner update becomes available, students will no longer be able to change their pronouns on Canvas, but will be able to request pronoun changes for any reason through Intercultural Student Affairs—just like they would request a name change.

Senior Jayse Matrishon, who uses he/him and they/them pronouns said he is happy to see the college try to be more inclusive, while acknowledging they often make mistakes in the process.

“It’s a fun double-edged sword of wanting more progress while what’s in place still needs work,” Matrishon said. “I definitely think Emerson’s trying. It just sometimes feels like they do a couple steps in one direction, have a big celebration, and then forget to check in on it.”

He also said he was pleased with the inclusion of ze/zir, a singular gender neutral pronoun.

“Most of the time, if there’s a pronoun option, it’s just he, she, or they,” Matrishon said. “I just hope that [col-

lege officials] don’t just stop there and think that everything is done.”

Jordan said that she thinks the new pronouns feature will put the college a step closer to fostering a more inclusive environment.

“Our unofficial motto in Intercultural Student Affairs is ‘Come be who you are,’” she said. “The idea is that we want to create a space so folks can come be who they are authentically and in all the ways that they are. And one of those ways is to affirm their various identities.”

kathryn_redefer@emerson.edu

ArtsEmerson leadership to change in new year Taina Millsap Beacon Staff

David Dower will step down from his leadership roles at Emerson’s Office of the Arts, ArtsEmerson and HowlRound at the end of 2020, according to a college announcement last week.

Current ArtsEmerson Executive Director David C. Howse is slated to take over as Vice President of Emerson’s Office of the Arts on Jan. 21, 2021. Dower and Howse jointly led a large portion of the college’s artistic ventures since 2015—so much so that they are sometimes referred to as “the Davids.”

“Under the joint leadership of [Dower and Howse], ArtsEmerson has joyfully become Boston’s leading presenter of contemporary world theatre and an organization that has strengthened the College’s expressed belief that arts can and should play a critical and leading role in civic transformation,” President Lee Pelton said in an email.

ArtsEmerson will begin searching for a new Director of Artistic Programming this January.

Dower will continue his professional journey in San Francisco as Executive Producer of the U.S. branch of The 7 Fingers, a Montreal-based artist collective.

“Through the years [Dower] and I have led together, ArtsEmerson supporters have commented often to us about what appears to be our deep friendship and capacity for effortless shared leadership,” Howse said in a

David Dower (left) and David C. Howse (right) have led ArtsEmerson together since 2015. Courtesy Emerson College statement. “Though there is a bittersweet tinge to this transition for both of us, there is also joy and a tremendous sense of accomplishment.”

The two worked together for the past five years and shared a passion for both the programming of ArtsEmerson and the culture shared between the employees on the team. Howse said now they work as a tight ensemble dedicated to unified vision and set of values.

“It’s this team that has created the success for which ArtsEmerson has been recognized locally, nationally, and internationally,” Howse said in a statement. “And I have complete confidence in the future of ArtsEmerson, and that this team will continue to evolve and elevate the organization going forward.”

The goal of ArtsEmerson remains to keep the company as one who

serves all of Boston, connecting audiences despite differences.

“Like a director who knows when the show is ready to open,” Dower said in a statement. “Institutional leaders have to be able to recognize the moment where it is time to transition from the energy of building out a vision to the energy of sustaining it … In every long-running show, the director leaves the process after opening night, so that the ensemble gathered around the vision can sustain, evolve, and deepen the performance as it goes on. A little over a year ago, recognizing that ArtsEmerson had ‘opened,’ I understood the moment had come for me to make plans to step aside.”

taina_millsap@emerson.edu

Tomás González / Beacon Staff

Emerson tied with Ithica in yearly rankings Cont. from Pg. 1 resources, expert opinion, financial resources, student excellence, and alumni giving.

U.S. News and World Report does not consider non-academic factors, like social life and extracurricular activities, in their rankings.

Several local schools landed in the top 50 of the national university rankings, with Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology both in the top five at number two and

number four respectively.

Boston University, Northeastern University, and Tufts University were ranked nationally at number 44, number 49, and number 30 respectively.

The data used for the rankings was collected in fall 2019, meaning the rankings will not reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic until next year. charles_mckenna@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

September 17, 2020

3

College reports 11 positive COVID-19 tests, inconsistent dashboard numbers Andrew Brinker, Tomás González, & Charlie McKenna Beacon Staff

Emerson’s cumulative positive COVID-19 test results have risen steadily each week, as seen in the graph to the right.

Each point on the graph represents the number of cumulative positive results the college reported at the end of each respective week. The lines in between the data points represent the number of positive tests reported each week.

While the college opted to provide the community with daily updates starting Sept. 8, those updates have come sporadically and appear two to three days after the tests are administered. The data included in the graph is the most complete picture of Emerson’s positive testing numbers available to The Beacon at the time of publication.

The college’s testing dashboard, which is intended to collect and display community testing data, has often temporarily displayed inaccurate or incomplete data. After testing updates are posted, the data listed on the tracker will change to numbers different from what was listed hours before. Sometimes the changes reflect new data from the Broad Institute; other times, it fixes previously made glitches, mathematical inconsistencies, and reporting errors. This graph has data points to reflect those discrepancies.

The red line represents the cumulative total of positive tests in the community on a week-toweek basis via the numbers on Emerson’s COVID-19

The blue and purple lines represent the data Emerson first reported for the week of Aug. 24 to 30. The dashboard’s archives now list five cases for that week.

Originally, the dashboard listed three cases for the week and later briefly listed eight.

The rise of positve test results among community members each week Tomás González / Beacon Staff contact@berkeleybeacon.com

Staff deterred by worry from virus Cont. from Pg. 1 testing at Tufts Medical Center before the start of the semester and are required to fill out the college’s daily symptom tracker before coming to campus. Staff members chose whether or not to opt-in to weekly testing at the time of receiving their initial mandatory baseline test.

Like all community members, staff that work on campus are required to wear face masks, unless an individual is in their own office space with a door. Employees must also sanitize their work stations at the beginning of every day and each time they leave their office or desk.

“We have very explicit instructions about when you arrive to work you have to wash your workstation, like the handles on your desk, chair, your keyboard, your mouse, and all that stuff, and then you have to do that again every time you get up and sit down,” Levine said.

Workspaces on campus have been outfitted with plexiglass partitions and rearranged to allow staff to be socially distanced.

If a staff member contracts COVID-19, they may use paid sick time while quarantining at home.

The work that staff member usually completes will be divided up among other employees in the department.

However, if a staffer remains sick for an extended period of time and the department cannot handle the workload, temporary workers may be hired to fill in, Levine said. It is unclear what would happen to a staff member’s pay if they run out of sick time.

Staffers who feel secure working on campus have filled in for positions that require an in-person presence.

“We have some staff who [are] training to work the Service Desk once or twice a week because they feel comfortable coming in, because they’ve read the Emerson plans and they either can drive or feel comfort-

able taking the T,” Executive Director of Library and Learning Cheryl McGrath said.

The underlying threat of layoffs serves as another source of anxiety for staff in the COVID-19 era.

After the campus closed abruptly when the virus first spread in March, Levine said staff members agreed to take benefit cuts and not receive raises for the rest of the year to offset the financial losses of the spring semester.

Staff members also sacrificed those benefits to prevent layoffs.

“We did this all in hopes of not losing any staff, or having to fall further into a financial deficit, but a lot of it is going to come down to what happens this upcoming semester,” Levine said.

Several local colleges and universities have made drastic layoff and furloughs to account for massive pandemic-related losses. Tufts University cut 20 percent of its dental program employees in August, and Boston University has planned to lay off or furlough more than 200 employees to make up for an estimated $96 million budget gap.

To date, no Emerson staff members have been laid off due to the financial repercussions of COVID-19. While the college made a commitment to keep on all staff members in the fall, many worry more losses could lead to job cuts come January, Levine said.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen then,” Administrative Associate to the Chair of the Journalism Department Christopher Wilson said in a Zoom interview. “Layoffs would be pretty tough for Emerson, because it’s such a lean staff that we have already.”

Administrators estimated in June that the college would experience between $33 and $76 million in virus-related losses in the 2020-21 fiscal year. A full year of online classes could result in a $100 million deficit, according to reports from the college.

Multiple staff members with chil-

dren told The Beacon they also have major concerns about juggling their work lives and childcare. The majority of Massachusetts school districts are using a hybrid or fully online learning model for the academic year, leaving parents to figure out how to maintain their job while their children attend classes from home.

Unlike some, Crocker jumped at the idea of working on campus because his daughter’s daycare is located close by.

“It is most convenient for me to be able to drop off my daughter and then go into the office,” he said in a phone interview. “I’ve been able to get my daughter into daycare five days a week [and I’ll be in] the library three days a week.”

At least a handful of staff members have been given the option from the college to work fewer hours with

‘It’s such a lean staff that we have already’ -Christopher Wilson reduced pay or take a partial leave.

These staff members are expected to return back to work fully once the risk of COVID-19 is severely reduced.

The college started a work share program for staff in March as a way to adjust to remote work. The program, which continued into the fall semester, allows staff on campus to complete the responsibilities of those who won’t have access to office spaces or who have a larger workload than usual due to the pandemic.

“If there are departments that have employees that are not as busy and they’re capable of handling some of the work, maybe it’s just transcribing notes or doing spreadsheets or whatever it is, then they could step in and take over some of the workload until the person comes back,” Wilson said.

Another common concern among staff members is the responsibility the reopening plan lays on on students to abide by safety guidelines in order to prevent staff, especially those in vulnerable populations, from contracting the virus.

“Honestly, the success of this semester comes down to the students and being responsible members of the community and unfortunately, having to change their philosophy of what college is about,” Levine said.

“I know we’re putting an awful lot of faith and trust into the students to do the right thing.”

Students have adapted to a new, altered college experience that stymies social interactions to prevent the illness’ spread.

“Emerson students are incredibly conscientious, and they also care a great deal about their community,” Wilson said. “There are some of us, myself included, as I said, who are really happy with what the college has done and feel that it’s done the best it could given the situation. I personally don’t think the college is going to have to shut down again. I think we have the ability and we have the capacity and we even have the leadership to make it through.”

With the restrictions of the hybrid model, staff departments worked diligently over the summer to supply students with the resources they’ve grown used to in normal semesters.

The IT department staff converted all classes online in the first two weeks of March, while Academic Affairs went over every student’s schedule twice—first to register students for normal classes and then again to adapt to the college’s hybrid model.

The Iwasaki Library staff spent several months adapting resources to be accessible for students attending remotely and also converting the on-campus library space to reduce occupancy levels.

And staff members in the EDC opened the center for equipment checkouts this fall while implementing adjusted hours and a new, intensive equipment cleaning regimen.

“The traffic through the EDC will be one way every day,” Associate Director of Media Technologies and

Production Timothy MacArthur said in a phone interview. “So it’s either things coming in or things going out, which is a big change.”

MacArthur, who is working both on campus and remotely, said that working from home during the summer was a challenge.

“I have an eight-year-old son in the small house, and I’m fortunate to have the space I have to work,” he said. “I am far more efficient working in the office…so it’s an adjustment to work from home.”

A college-run faculty and staff meeting with the three epidemiologists contracted to workshop reopening reassured Wilson about the plan’s safety.

“I was never that scared for what Emerson was doing, but in terms of my confidence in what the college was doing, that meeting was a turning point for me,” Wilson said. “Listening to what they had to say, these professionals, transmissible disease experts, medical-trained professional statisticians really gave me a lot of reassurance that the college was doing the right thing.”

However, communication between staff and the college has not always been strong. Multiple employees did not know who staff should contact with questions about reopening over the summer, Wilson said. “[The college’s] hands were completely full in terms of managing information for the students and maybe for the faculty, and I feel like staff might have been the third priority,” Wilson said. “There just wasn’t a consistent flow of information, and I feel like a lot of what I learned over this summer about what was happening came to me secondhand.”

The college told The Beacon they sent staff members eight notices from HR and 11 notices from Presidential Communication since March. Staff also received seven notices from the COVID-19 playbook team to staff since August.

ann_matica@emerson.edu

The Berkeley Beacon

September 17, 2020

4

Thoughts & News Mail-in voting is easy. Here’s why you should do it.

Robbie Shinder

Beacon Correspondent What does it mean to vote? When anyone casts their ballot in a normal year, they are fulfilling their civic responsibility as an American citizen.

But this November, for the first time in a long time, there is a pandemic plaguing the U.S. during a presidential election.

Voters will cast their ballots in either one of two ways: in-person or by mail. Unfortunately, voting has become politicized. As a third time voter, I want to set the record straight to give this community the full breakdown of why you should vote during a pandemic.

The predominant way to vote is in-person at your local polling location. But due to COVID-19, there is an increased risk of spreading the virus by touching voting materials and interacting face-to-face with poll workers. According to April research from the Pew Research Center, roughly 58 percent of poll workers in the U.S. are 61 years old or older.

And the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that the vast majority of COVID-related deaths in the U.S.—8 in 10, to be exact—were adults 65 and older.

If this isn’t enough to deter you from voting in-person, think about where you’ll be during election season. Since Emerson’s fall academic calendar does not end until Nov. 25, many Emerson students will not be able to physically go to a polling station in their hometown on Nov. 3. The most logical option then is to vote by mail.

It’s now easier than ever to vote without heading to the polls. But what does absentee and mail-in voting mean?

An absentee ballot is used nationwide to allow voters who cannot, for various reasons, physically make it to a polling location on Election Day. These are oftentimes used by out-ofstate college students, among other groups. A mail-in ballot is used more broadly to refer to ballots voluntarily sent through the mail, including in some states that vote entirely through mail.

There is no one-size-fits-all law or regulation about vote-by-mail.

In fact, the rules vary state by state,

The scenes at San Francisco (left) and Berkeley, CA (right) last week Courtesy Rory Grady, Jen Van Pelt

Students grapple with fires along coast Illustration by Laura King county by county, and city by city.

In Massachusetts, registered voters must complete a paper application and send it into their local election office. If you live in Boston, you will send the application via mail to: Elections Department, 1 City Hall Square, Room 241, Boston, MA 02201, or you can drop it off at 1 City Hall Square.

In New York state, registered voters can complete the application online. In California, all registered voters will automatically receive a ballot in the mail, but it will be sent to the voters’ California addresses. If a California resident is anywhere but that address, they need to fill out a paper application and mail it to your county elections office, which is listed at the end of the document.

In Florida, each registered voter must access their Supervisor of Elections website and fill out the online application. Depending on where you’re from, voting-by-mail can be simple, and it can be because of the political party that has the majority in your state’s legislature.

If you’re voting by mail, make sure that you’re registered to vote first.

You can do that by going to RockTheVote.org. Once that’s completed, simply Google search “[name of your county] vote by mail application” and follow the steps to complete the ap-

plication. Depending on when your application was submitted, you’ll receive your ballot to the address you specified around a month prior to the election. I recommend submitting your application early to ensure that your ballot has ample time to get to you, and you will have ample time to send it back to your County Election Official.

Voting-by-mail has been a passion project of mine for the past two years. I founded my own non-profit, AbsenteeBallotsNow, in 2018. And throughout that midterm election season, more than 40,000 users from all 50 states and five territories accessed my site as a tool for voteby-mail information.

This election season, I’ve decided to take a more hands-on approach to help voters individually register to vote-by-mail. When a potential voter reaches out to ask us how they can register to vote via the AbsenteeBallotsNow site, Instagram, or Facebook, we provide them with all the vote-by-mail application information they’ll need.

Voting by mail is safe, secure, easy—and it’s made for every American. Don’t let a pandemic or partisan politics stop you from voting. robert_shinder@emerson.edu

Cont. from Pg. 1 longtime firefighter routinely sent out to quell wildfires. He attended to a fire two hours away for nearly three weeks, she said, and only returned days ago.

“When fire season hits, he’s on call constantly,” Rose explained. “The call comes, and he’s gone within the hour. I’m used to it now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t concerning.”

Fire season is an annual occurrence in these dry states and a norm in the lives of West Coast residents.

The air becomes thicker and smokier every September, bringing growing concerns about safety and climate change. But senior Lucas Sickner said this year is far from business as usual.

Nearly three dozen people have died in the catastrophes, according to CBS News. And the states have clocked some of the worst air quality statistics globally this last month.

“In all my years, I’ve never seen massive fires all the way up and down the coast,” Sickner said from Los Angeles, where he remotely attends ELA classes. “It’s crazy.”

Several students also worry for the health of their hometowns as they jointly deal with the repercussions of the pandemic and the environmental catastrophe. Crowds who were slowly reentering public life after monthslong lockdown measures became housebound once again when the fires started.

Life in West Coast cities slowed down, if only a little bit, because of catastrophes.

Diego Villaroel, who is currently on a leave of absence in his Seattle

home, said very few people swung by the coffee shop he works at the day the sky turned orange.

“Four, maybe five, people came in during my entire shift,” he said. “It was eerily quiet...The fires feel like just another thing piling onto everything going on this year.”

One week later, Villaroel finally saw the sun shine through the layer of clouds and smoke again.

The widespread devastation has also reinvigorated students’ anxieties about global warming. Coupled with the increased frequency of hurricanes, typhoons, lightning strikes, and flash floods, the fires serve as another example of a suffering world.

Sickner said the state, the country, and the world need transformative climate change policies as soon as possible.

“Climate change reform has to be number one on the agenda,” he said.

“It needs to happen.”

The fires’ effects have made their way to New England skies as well.

Thanks to the jet stream and strong winds, smoke from California clouded the Massacshuetts atmosphere this week, according to the Boston Globe.

Still, nothing compares to the situations of those who have lost any semblance of normalcy to the catastrophe.

“All of this is so sad,” said Van Pelt. “People always said this would happen, and now it’s here. Some people have lost their homes, their neighborhoods.”

Charlie McKenna contributing reporting.

diti_kohli@emerson.edu

Incident Journal © 2020 The Berkeley Beacon. All rights reserved.

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Editor-in-Chief Diti Kohli Managing Editors Domenico Conte (Content) Tomás González (Visual) Dylan Rossiter (Operations) Section Editors Andrew Brinker (News) Taina Millsap (Living Arts) Jocelyn Yang (Opinion) Lizzie Heintz (Photo) Advisor Rachel Layne

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Wednesday, Sept. 2: An officer reported finding postings inside Walker Building elevators. The postings were removed as they appeared to violate college policy.

A student reported losing their wallet and said someone had attempted to use their bank cards. The bank cards were canceled before they could be used.

Friday, Sept. 4: An officer found an exterior door leading to a contractor’s area unlocked. The area was checked for signs of a break-in and then secured.

A college vendor was freed from inside the building’s freight elevator after being trapped.

Saturday, Sept. 5: ECPD assisted OHRE with a “disorderly” student inside the Colonial Building.

Monday, Sept. 7: Elevator contractors were dispatched after a vendor was trapped inside the Walker Building’s freight elevator for a second time. The elevator was temporarily taken out of service for repairs.

Tuesday, Sept. 8: ECPD and Facilities Management investigated a report of a burning smell inside the Walker Building. The cause of the smell was contractors welding in the basement of the building.

ECPD and Boston Fire responded to the Little Building for a fire alarm on the fifth floor. The cause of the fire alarm was determined to be a faulty smoke detector. There was no fire or injuries to report.

Friday, Sept. 11: ECPD and Boston Police investigated a report of a

person with a weapon. The suspect fled the area, and was not found after an investigation by both police departments.

Saturday, Sept. 12: A student reported being harassed by a “disorderly” person who was demanding money inside Blaze Pizza.

Sunday, Sept. 13: An anonymous person reported finding suspicious postings on a social media account for a former student.

The Emerson College Police Department provides the Incident Journal to The Beacon every week. Beacon staff edit the Incident Journal for style and clarity but not for content.