Dear Bereans,
This is the update for Thursday, May 13, 2021.
Quarantine, testing and vaccination update
The good news continues! I am pleased to announce that at this point there are no in-person students in any sort of quarantine because of approved travel, and likewise for our on-campus employees. Well done, Bereans!
Kentucky and Madison County update
The Madison County Health Department reported 11, 8, and 6 new cases for Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday. The number of current active cases is at 84. Our 7-day average of new cases per day has dropped to 7, keeping us in the Yellow Zone now at 7.1 new cases per day per 100,000 residents. The total number of deaths in the county attributable to COVID-19 as reported by the State remains at 109.
Gov. Beshear reported 758, 680, and 674 new COVID-19 cases and 23, 9, and 4 (10, 18, 8, and 9) new deaths for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and today, respectively, in Kentucky. The 7-day average of the number of new cases/day is down a bit at 519 and the average of numbers of deaths/day remains at 10. The latest test positivity rate is down a bit at 3.04%.
Both the Commonwealth and Madison County are seeing gradual improvement.
Reminder for Staff members- Extra Holidays
HR would like to remind staff members of the previously announced 2 additional holidays. Eligible staff members may take two additional paid holidays until June 30, 2021. We do ask that these extra days be scheduled with consideration to the importance of getting all of our necessary work done. Supervisors will do all they can to accommodate requests. For recordkeeping purposes, all of these days should be recorded on your time sheets as holidays similar to any other paid holiday. Use it or lose it, folks!
Exciting news from the CDC
Today the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced new guidance as to indoor mask wearing. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/health/cdc-masks-guidance.html. The AC will be evaluating what this means for our on-campus policies. We hope to have an announcement for you on this coming Monday.
Announcement – we need more videos from staff for our virtual commencement celebration:
Staff, please join us in celebrating our graduates by recording a 20-second video message to them as they move on beyond Berea. The deadline to submit a video has been extended to Tuesday, May 18. Here are a few reminders:
1—Avoid saying “Congratulations.” It gets monotonous after the third such message.
2—While we welcome group messages, we would prefer individual staff members sharing their well wishes
3—If recording a Zoom group message, DO NOT have everyone speak at once. The audio will not synch and it will sound awful. Zoom recordings are fine, as long as one person speaks at a time.
4—In addition to well-wishes, another option is to drop a piece of advice that will help these graduates as they begin the next chapter of their lives.
Please share your congratulatory message to the graduating class of 2021.
Thanks,
Kim Brown, CommunicationsP.S. We have several video from faculty but you are welcome to submit a message using the same link.
Vaccination policy at other colleges and universities
As of this morning, the Chronicle of Higher Education lists 346 schools that will require vaccination in the fall, a significant increase from last week. https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/live-coronavirus-updates/heres-a-list-of-colleges-that-will-require-students-to-be-vaccinated-against-covid-19. Regrettably I must correct an error from last week, when I stated that a second Kentucky college had announced, Union College. The error was due to a mistake in Chronicle of Higher Education listing. The next day they corrected their error: it was actually the Union College in Schenectady, NYthat had joined the list of schools, rather than our Union College in Barbourville, KY. We are back to being the only school listed in Kentucky.
Announcement regarding Berea Community School Graduation Ceremony
I wanted to make everyone aware that the Berea Community School will be holding their graduation ceremony on campus this Saturday in Seabury Arena. This larger space than their auditorium will allow them to hold their celebration indoors with appropriate masking and social distancing. We are restricting that use to a single day, so their practice and graduation activities are happening on the same day, after which the spaces will be cleaned.
Some Bereans may wonder why another school can use our space to graduate when we are not holding our own in-person celebration. The answer to that relates to the fact that about half of our students are studying remotely in the present term. An in-person graduation would have privileged those students who studied on campus in the present term, and we preferred not to do that. A second reason is that our largest indoor space, Seabury Arena, is not large enough to accommodate the usual crowd we draw for our Commencement, when we typically allow each graduate to have up to five guests. The available space and social distancing would have allowed a much smaller number of guests, probably a maximum of two per student. Finally with the uneven level of vaccination still extant, it is easily possible that commencement celebrations could lead to unfortunate spread of COVID-19. In light of those reasons, and I apologize for repeating them again, it seemed better to us to do a virtual celebration, allowing any graduate of 2020 or 2021 to attend a future in-person commencement of their choice.
Stay safe, stay negative, stay in touch,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College