THE DAILY ILLINI
THURSDAY October 15, 2020
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Vol. 150 Issue 16
UI unveils plan to adjust spring semester Spring break was originally planned for March 13 to March 21. The new plan would be for the start of the spring semester to be on Jan. 25 instead of the original date Jan. 19. The plan was proposed at the Senate Executive Committee meeting on Monday. This plan would also add three noninstruction days where students would have no classes on Feb. 17, March 24 and April 13.
BY SAMANTHA BOYLE MANAGING EDITOR FOR REPORTING
Pending Senate approval, the University is planning to cancel spring break and push back the semester by one week, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The semester’s original end date and finals week would stay the same and commencement will still be scheduled for May 15.
Once the Senate votes on this proposed plan, public messages from University officials would go out to students, staff and faculty fairly quickly. “This is a change to the academic calendar, and it is the Senate that calls the shot on this so we have to wait for that vote and that approval before we do anything,” Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Andreas Cangellaris said at the
meeting on Monday. The plan will be proposed for approval at the next Senate meeting on Oct. 19. Senate Executive Committee chair Rob Kar said he does not think there will be any controversy in the idea where the University will eliminate a period of time where the students are away for a period of time and then come back in the middle of the semester.
“But I could imagine just more discussion about this issue in some way than is on the consent agenda,” Kar said. In addition, Linda Moorhouse, the Education Policy Committee chair, said the committee unanimously approved the proposed calendar changes on Monday. For the fall semester, inperson instruction will end after Thanksgiving break,
which is from Nov. 22 to Nov. 29. Canceling spring break and starting the semester later will hopefully reduce the amount of travel on and off campus and will give anyone arriving back to campus time for tests, isolation and quarantine, the News-Gazette reports. sjboyle2@dailyillini.com
Professors note problems with UI COVID-19 model BY SALEM ISAF ASSISTANT DAYTIME NEWS EDITOR
As COVID-19 cases on campus surge past the administration’s expectations, many have called into question the transmission and prediction models used by the University to set those expectations. As of Monday, the Illinois SHIELD Team reported 2,645 positive cases on campus since Aug. 15, when students began coming back to campus en masse, far higher than the 700 cases modelers projected across the entire semester. Before the fall semester began, the University’s Dr. Brent Roberts, professor in LAS and director of the Center for Social and Behavioral Science, had reservations about models predicting student behavior. “At the very least, I believe that we need to plan for the existence of the non-complying students and that they will make up a bigger chunk of our student body than we care to admit,” said Roberts in an article he published on Aug. 16, just before the beginning of the semester. “If we do, our models and prognostications will be far more realistic.” To a certain degree, modelers did factor in students not staying compliant with the University’s COVID-19 guidelines. Professor Ahmed Elbanna, one of the head modelers alongside professor Nigel Gold-
enfeld, explained they completely expected students to socialize and attend parties. “ W hat was at least assumed as a baseline scenario in the model is that if you are positive and aware that you are positive, you would isolate,” Elbanna said. “You would not host a party or go to a party.” The main issue that led to the large spike in cases seen a few weeks ago, he said, was students actively socializing after testing positive for the virus. “If a student is negative and is socializing there is no problem with that,” Elbanna said. “If a student is unknowingly positive, for example, his or her last test was negative … I cannot blame students for engaging in social activity while they think they are negative. The problem is when you are positive and knowingly positive.” Elbanna cited issues with students ignoring their test results or calls from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health Department, informing them that they were either positive with the virus or had come into contact with somebody who had tested positive. He further explained that the University’s testing program is only effective if infected community members isolate themselves after testing positive. “Testing doesn’t protect you from infection,” Elbanna said. “Testing just SEE PROFESSORS | 3A
ABE BAALI THE DAILY ILLINI
The interior of the G&R Hair Salon rests quietly on Monday afternoon. This business, along with other barber shops, have struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Travel restrictions sting CU barbershops BY CHIEH HSU CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Months after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a stay-at-home order on March 20, the majority of barbershops and salons reopened at the beginning of June. Nonetheless, their operations are by no means the same. Moreover, for barber-
shops that used to provide service primarily to international students, their customers’ absence proves to be a strike on their business. “We used to have five stylists in two different salons on Green Street,” said Steven Sun, owner of Top Hair Salon on campus. “Now that the Chinese
students are gone, we had to close one of our stores down and can only afford two stylists. This makes our business 20% compared to the same time last year.” Chinese international students make up oneninth of the student population at the University, but travel regulations issued by
the White House in February prohibited many of them from entering the U.S. G & R Salon, located on campus, also used to rely on serving Chinese international students. “Our business is one-seventh compared to a year SEE TRAVEL | 3A
Student heads effort to bring dictionaries to prisoners BY ALEXANDRA GERGOVA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
CAMERON KRASUCKI THE DAILY ILLINI
Student Mark Olgun spits into a test tube while taking a University COVID-19 test at State Farm Center on Oct. 8. Dr. Brent Roberts had doubts about UI’s COVID-19 model.
INSIDE
Features: Media center voices activism
Sports: James McCourt anticipates Wisconsin game
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Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the difference between the amount of dictionaries requested by incarcerated people and the amount received has been exacerbated severely. To combat this growing issue, Kate Shanks, sophomore in LAS and volunteer with UC Books to Prisoners, organized a community-wide dictionary drive running during October where individuals can donate new or slightly used paperback dictionaries to be sent to correctional facilities in Illinois. According to Shanks, individuals in the Champaign-Urbana community can become involved in three ways: purchasing a dictionary through the Amazon wish list located in the Dictionary Drive for U-C B2P Facebook page, donating at one of the five business locations that agreed to serve as drop-off sites or sharing the Facebook event on social media platforms. The five C-U locations that agreed to serve as sites for drop-off are Insomnia Cookies, Dancing Dog Eatery and Juicery, Common Ground Food Coop, Jane Addams Book Shop and the IDEA Store. The process to select these locations was quick and based on how progressive and small the organizations were.
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ABE BAALI THE DAILY ILLINI
A person deposits a dictionary into a dictionary drive box outside of the Dancing Dog Eatery & Juicery on Sunday afternoon. The Books to Prisoners drive hopes to provide dictionaries to prisoners in Illinois.
“I just reached out to a few that I thought would be receptive and that I knew had more progressive values, so we just popped the totes in, made a couple flyers to circulate, created the Facebook page and got launched in about a week,” Shanks said. “The businesses we selected are also small, not like Walmart where you’re going to have a higher likelihood of running into people, so there is a better opportunity to maintain social distancing.” Because many inmates are s i mu lt a n e ou s l y engaged in academic pursuits, such as studying for the GED, dictionaries are
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a valuable resource that allow them to strengthen linguistic skills. Through this, they are able to better communicate with and understand fellow inmates. Shanks is working alongside UC Books to Prisoners, an organization that provides books to Illinois inmates at no cost, to organize this event and attributes its creation to the impact COVID-19 has had on the organization. “I remembered that when I was there, they constantly had a shortage of dictionaries, and I knew that they couldn’t do their usual fundraising this year because of the pandemic,” Shanks said. “So I thought
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of this.” The events UC Books to Prisoners has been unable to host include its annual fall and spring used book sales, as well as its large public volunteering sessions because of the limited capacity of the UrbanaChampaign Independent Media Center basement, according to Rachel Rasmussen, volunteer coordinator of Books to Prisoners. The organization is no longer able to accept book donations from the public at their own location because it would pose a risk to elderly workers who organize the donations. SEE DICTIONARY | 3A
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