Golden Gate Park: 150 Years of Memories

Published: San Francisco Weekly. July 31, 2020. View here.

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As is surely the case for so many other San Francisco natives, Stuart Watts’ earliest memories are set in Golden Gate Park. He remembers playing at the old Children’s Park, before its remodel, and getting to know the shaggy bovines at the Bison Paddock. He fondly recalls watching the Model Yacht Club’s miniature boats zip by on Spreckels Lake and the comfort he felt when the always-dependable afternoon fog rolled over the avenues during his soccer practices at Lindley Meadow.

“In each part of my life, I felt different about the park — I felt like the park and I almost communicated differently,” Watts said. “But all in a positive way, almost like we were growing together.”

A fifth-generation San Franciscan, Watts’ familial ties to the city predate the park’s creation. And in his lifetime alone, Watts has witnessed several significant transformations: the rebuilding of the Conservatory of Flowers after its wreckage in a 1995 windstorm, the reopening of the rebuilt de Young Museum in 2005, and the unveiling of the decade-long remodel of the Academy of Sciences in 2008.

This year is a particularly significant one for the park: 2020 marks its 150th anniversary. To honor the occasion, SF Weekly spoke to 13 individuals with special connections to the city’s 1,017 acre shared backyard.

Overwhelmingly, those who shared their stories of the park spoke less about the numerous concerts and events that attract tourists and visitors. Indeed, several of the San Francisco natives interviewed for this story criticized what they see as the corporatization of the park — pointing specifically to the price of admission for the annual Outside Lands music festival, which can run well north of $300 — saying they wished to preserve the sanctity of the park by keeping it as accessible as possible.

Photo courtesy of Dennis Minnick

Those who share this view are not mourning the pandemic-related cancellations of Outside Lands or the grand festivities planned for the park’s anniversary year. (Two San Francisco natives said long-time Golden Gate Park superintendent John McLaren would be turning in his grave at the sight of the gargantuan, nonoperational ferris wheel currently seated at the edge of the Music Concourse.)

In fact, San Francisco native and local historian Woody LaBounty observed that the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have allowed San Franciscans to rediscover the park’s original intent.

“I go to the park and I see families barbecuing and sitting under trees and picnicking and playing frisbee and using the park the way it was originally intended, as a refuge,” LaBounty said. “To escape from urbanity.”

Sands of Time

Had San Francisco city officials listened to Central Park landscape architect Frederick L. Olmsted, Golden Gate Park would be located in the eastern half of the city, under Sutro Tower. (Alternatively, had the “Big Four” millionaires gotten their way, San Francisco would now have a mile-long horse racetrack inside the park).

San Francisco city officials, however, were adamant that a park would be constructed on the western side of the city — despite serious concerns that the site was unsuitable for urban development. These doubts were not unfounded; after all, in the 1860s, the site was not the natural oasis it is today, but rather an expanse of windswept, rolling sand dunes known as the “Outside Lands.”

Though Olmsted was initially selected to head the project, he said building a park on sand dunes would never work. So city officials chose 24-year-old William Hammond Hall to design Golden Gate Park instead.

Landscape architect Doug Nelson, who has done extensive research and work on Golden Gate Park, says that Hall, who was not college educated, “was a brilliant, genius kind of person.”

And, of course, the park was a success, thanks in large part to its reliance on available resources and the use of existing topography instead of flattening the sand dunes.

The park was also immediately popular upon its opening in April of 1870, initially drawing hundreds of visitors during the weekdays and thousands on the weekends.

Though it was a feat of ingenuity, Hall’s original plan merely consisted of a sketch he had done of the park. Detailed construction documents recording how the park was built largely don’t exist.

So in the 1990s, Nelson acted as the primary author of the park’s first comprehensive master plan, created to guide the development and renovation of the park. The plan, which is still in use, solidified the park as a historic resource worthy of preservation.

Photo courtesy of Debbie Cooper

Nelson and others who have worked on the park, like architect Debbie Cooper, remember the experience fondly. Cooper, who led the 1995–2003 restoration of the Conservatory of Flowers, said she loved visiting the worksite, recalling that each time she went she would get an exclusive, gardener-led tour of all of the orchids in bloom.

Cooper recalled other fond memories: constructing a temporary greenhouse made of shrink wrap and fitted with built-in irrigation, lighting and heating to protect a century-old philodendron; watching the butterfly release in the west wing of the building upon the Conservatory’s reopening; and the the day the Conservatory’s dome, constructed at ground level, was lifted and reinstalled.

“Everything fit just right,” Cooper recalled. “It was like the crown being placed on top of the building.”

Child’s Play

For San Franciscans like LaBounty who grew up in the Sunset or the Richmond Districts, Golden Gate Park served as a 1,017 acre backyard. And in the ’70s, at a time when the city was darkened by the “Zebra” murders and the Zodiac Killer, the park served as a safe haven.

“I was probably the last generation of the free range children that sort of ran around without too much supervision,” LaBounty says.

Other San Francisco natives remember countless family outings in the park as well as times spent wandering the park without parental supervision.

San Francisco native Lorna Carroll recalls the time she followed a group of kids into the park when she was around four years old. At the time, her dad sold vacuum cleaners out of a utility truck that had a loudspeaker, and he drove it around the streets shouting her name until she was found.

Having adventures and getting in trouble was a common thread that wove together most childhoods spent in the park. There was the illegal rope swing that was removed by gardeners and then repeatedly rehung in defiance, and pennies thrown at live alligators at the Academy of Sciences.

There were also stories of shocking things that went on at Stow Lake and Speedway Meadow — stories which were not divulged on the record.

And then there was the de Young Museum back when it was completely free. Long-time museum educator Sheila Pressley says she’s heard countless tales from San Francisco natives who recall running through the museum and visiting each week just to see the museum’s mummy.

As a child, the park was just experienced differently. Watts remembers feeling like the park was endless, as if “you couldn’t even reach a corner if you tried.”

After spending much of her life in the city, Carroll moved out of San Francisco. A few years ago, while on a trip with friends, she returned to Golden Gate Park for the first time in several years.

“I still felt the same way — kind of a homesickness,” she recalls. “That could be childhood memories. It’s a place you love and you love it when you go back.”

Golden Gate Gardeners

Photo by Grace Z. Li

After years spent exploring the park, San Francisco natives can easily recount their favorite hidden treasures — from secret histories to tucked-away meadows. But perhaps no one has more behind-the-scenes knowledge than George Foehr, who was once a third-generation Golden Gate Park gardener.

The Foehr family’s green thumb is evident in the park. Just look at the rhododendron dell, a feature of the park for over 70 years, which was first planted by Max Foehr.

In a fated encounter, Max, a German immigrant, crossed paths with long-time park superintendent John McLaren. The two men shared an interest in horticulture (Foehr’s relatives were gardeners for German royals). So McLaren invited Max to work for him in Golden Gate Park.

Max Foehr would go on to work as a gardener in the park for 47 years. Over that time he maintained a close relationship with McLaren.

“He was one of the few gardeners in the park that would talk back to ‘the old man,’ which is what they called McLaren,” says George Foehr, Max’s grandson.

George, who grew up on stories of the park, says McLaren would monitor gardeners from the green Packard he drove. To reward employees for doing a good job, “he’d pull his car over and have you come over to the car and do a shot of scotch whisky,” George says.

McLaren was a nature purist with a very particular vision for the park, a vision that was free of buildings and definitely free of statues. When he was forced to put statues in the park, McLaren would hide them with strategically placed shrubs and vines. Ironically, a statue of McLaren now stands in the park, though it is appropriately tucked away.

“There’s no plaque, there’s no name and it’s just him looking down at a pinecone,” Watts says of McLaren’s statue. “It’s reminded me every time I go on my hikes about what John McLaren wanted the space to be — he wanted it to be wild.”

McLaren later became a mentor to Max’s son Frank, who was born six days after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Ironically, for a short time after being displaced by the temblor, Frank was raised in a park — in a tent in Hamilton Square.

At the age of 14, Frank began working at Golden Gate Park as a surveyor’s assistant. Later on, after he was trained as a landscape architect, Frank landscaped both the Palace of Fine Arts and Carl Larsen Park, and he also laid out the entirety of McLaren park. He was recognized for his work with awards for beautifying the state and the country.

Frank was also close friends with the Hagiwara family who oversaw the Japanese Tea Garden for many years.

When the Hagiwara family was sent to Japanese Internment Camps during World War II, George says his father tried to protect the tea garden as much as he could, but it was ultimately pilfered. There have since been efforts to restore elements of Japanese culture to the garden lost during the war.

Ultimately, McLaren chose Frank to succeed him as park superintendent. This was Frank’s final position in his nearly 50-year career serving the park.

In the 1970s, George became the third generation of Foehrs to work in the park. For a brief time, George was in charge of the native plant section in the Botanical Gardens. And though he later left the park, he continued to manage landscapes for a living — designing gardens for private estates.

“Some of my kids said I was born with sap in my veins,” he laughs.

The Band Plays On

If you have ever enjoyed a concert in the park, you have Frank Foehr to thank.

The year was 1967, and hordes of young people had descended on San Francisco for the Summer of Love, converging in the Haight-Ashbury and gathering on Hippie Hill.

“My dad was quite concerned about this influx of young people coming into the city,” recalls George Foehr, who was 15 at that time. “I remember him at the dinner table talking to my mom saying, ‘Mary, these kids are coming to this city, they don’t have shoes or shirts on their back.’”

Frank, who leaned conservative, was concerned about the drug use going on at the time, his son said.

“He just felt sorry for the kids,” George says. “They’re hanging out in the park, they don’t have a penny in their pocket.”

Meanwhile, there was a petition going around to have a concert in the park (George thinks the performers in demand might have been The Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane).

Despite his aversion to some of the trappings of hippie culture, Frank was in support of the idea, as he saw the concert as a positive outlet. So he went before the park commission and argued in favor of having a concert in Golden Gate Park, “and after that,” George says, “it’s history.”

Since then, annual concerts have become a staple of Golden Gate Park. Outside Lands, which brings in hundreds of thousands of attendees, has been an annual occurrence since 2008 — save for this year.

Photo courtesy of Dennis Minnick

Yet it’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass that seems to have captured the hearts of so many San Franciscans, especially because the annual concert remains free and accessible to all, unlike Outside Lands.

“Hardly Strictly is anybody — hippies from the ’70s, kids who’ve never been to concerts, and it’s a cross-section of blue collar, white collar, every kind of person,” says Michael Durand, editor and publisher of the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon newspapers.

As a musician himself, Durand is particularly fond of the annual Flower Piano event — a 12-day period where 12 pianos are placed around the Botanical Garden for public use.

There’s one piano that sits surrounded by redwood trees. That’s Durand’s favorite spot.

“I’d play there for hours,” he says.

Amazing Races & Good Games

No picture of the park is complete without a discussion of the countless ways visitors and locals alike make use of it to exercise and stay active. And the iconic annual Bay to Breakers event, which merges fitness and festivity, has yielded many cherished memories.

As the name implies, the century’s old race starts at the San Francisco Bay and ends at the breakers of Ocean Beach, with much of the course weaving through Golden Gate Park.

San Francisco native Marguerite Rodigou ran the race for several years in the ’80s. She remembers it as a treasured family event that always concluded at her parents’ house in a post-race carbo-loading feast of beer and pancakes.

Rodigou says one of her all-time favorite memories of the race is the final two-and-a-half mile stretch where participants get to see “the best parts” of Golden Gate Park.

After Hayes Street, runners, power walkers, and meandering day drinkers arrive at JFK Drive “and you cruise through the park,” past the Conservatory of Flowers and then the de Young Museum and the Bison Paddock. And, eventually, those who finish arrive at the beach.

“It really is magical, that last two-and-a-half miles,” Rodigou says.

Long-time San Francisco resident Nancy DeStefanis says she used to train for the Bay to Breakers by running the path around Stow Lake three times. In 1976, when she ran the race with three friends, a photographer snapped a photo of them that ended up running as a full page in Sunset Magazine.

Photo courtesy of Dennis Minnick

These days, DeStefanis prefers to walk the perimeter of the lake.

“I know I’m doing well when I’ve done my three walking laps,” she says.

San Francisco native Dennis Minnick, who grew up in the Haight-Ashbury and spent a lot of time in Golden Gate Park as a child, says he rediscovered the park five years ago when his doctor told him he needed to start exercising. Now, he’s in the park four to six days a week.

“It’s to the point where I know the park like the back of my hand,” he says.

Minnick has a few favorite, lesser-known trails, including one that begins at the intersection of 25th Avenue and MLK Drive and runs through the east end of Mallard Lake; the Oak Woodlands Trail, which runs through the northside of the park; and the two trails that run from the lily pond, one ending at the Academy of Sciences and the other ending at the rhododendrons.

The park has also always served as a perfect place for team sports. But Durand might have the best story of sports and friendship in Golden Gate Park.

It was 1978. Durand and a few friends had gone to exercise in the park when they spotted a softball game taking place in Speedway Meadow. Durand says he and his friends asked to join in, and everyone ended up having such a great time that they decided to meet up again the next weekend.

“I ended up going out and playing softball every Saturday and Sunday for probably eight years,” he says.

As the years passed, more and more people got involved, so a system was developed: the first ten people to arrive would play the next ten in a seven-inning game. And sure enough, another team of ten would be waiting to play the winning team.

“We did that from noon until it got dark,” Durand says.

Then, as people got married and had kids, the weekends turned into a family-friendly “Speedway Sunday” which went on for another four years. Although the weekly meet-ups at Speedway Meadow (now known as Hellman Hollow) eventually stopped, the group stayed involved in each other’s lives through camping trips, weddings, graduations, and house parties.

Golden Gate Park — San Francisco’s 1,017 acre shared backyard — turns 150 years old this year. Photo courtesy of Xavier Hoenner, Shutterstock

“It’s remained a real core group of friends for all these decades,” Durand says.

Later on, Durand became one of the first few members of the Speedway Meadow Hall of Fame. Each year, new members are voted in, but they must be 50 years or older and they have to have played softball around 1978. The organization has since grown to 50 members.

Looking back, Durand says he considers the days playing softball at Speedway Meadow as not only his favorite memories from Golden Gate Park, but of all time.

“Every single person I talked to from those days unanimously say those were the best years of our lives,” he says.

Birder’s-Eye View

Frequent visitors to Golden Gate Park might recognize a familiar red Toyota Corolla with a plastic heron popping out of its sunroof. The car belongs to Nancy DeStefanis, an environmental educator whose primary goal is to get the public excited about the environment so they are motivated to protect it.

Photo courtesy of Kristi Coale

DeStefanis, who has lived in San Francisco for 50 years, is perhaps better known by her nickname: the Heron Lady of Golden Gate Park. And the title is much deserved, as DeStefanis is credited for discovering and documenting the first colony of great blue herons to nest in San Francisco.

Before that momentous June day in 1993, when DeStefanis spotted the herons nesting in Stow Lake, she was a self-described “casual birder.” Her discovery changed everything.

“I was blown away, because it was just a beautiful scene — you’ve got this bird with six-foot wings landing in a nest with two humongous birds standing up,” DeStefanis recalled. “And then I became obsessed and started watching them all of the time.”

Over the past 27 years, DeStefanis has observed 249 chicks learning to fly. This year was particularly memorable, with seven heron nests and 17 chicks learning to fly.

DeStefanis is also the founder of San Francisco Nature Education which has led field trips for over 20,000 people since the year 2000. The organization’s premiere program is “Heron Watch,” a free program where members of the public are invited to learn about herons and view and observe them through spotting scopes. This is the first year that the program has been canceled, but DeStefanis is eager to resume the program next spring.

The organization also leads Kindergarten through fourth grade classes on a variety of field trips, including some in Golden Gate Park.

Speaking about her favorite memories from field trips over the years, DeStefanis recalled a bird calling contest for third and fourth graders that ran from 2000 to 2010. Student participants would dress up as birds, such as Red-tailed Hawks or Great Horned Owls or Hummingbirds, and perform their coinciding bird call.

DeStefanis said the bird calling contest was a “wonderful way to get the kids really psyched,” but it was also a special moment for everyone.

“I’d run into these kids years later and they’d remember their bird and their call and they would do it for me, right then and there,” she says. “In fact, I ran into one three years ago. He was 21, and I last saw him at seven or eight. And he did the mourning dove call. I’d say that was pretty momentous for me.”

Fellow San Francisco birder Alan Hopkins said people often assume that a busy city like San Francisco would be a less-than-ideal setting for bird watching, yet the opposite is true.

“The birds get used to being around people, so they know they’re not being hunted — which means you can get much closer to them than, say, if you were in a wildlife refuge in the Central Valley,” Hopkins says.

Golden Gate Park has long been famed for its birds. The American ornithologist Joseph Mailliard authored “The Birds of Golden Gate Park” in 1930. And Hopkins, who owns a copy of Mailliard’s book, says bird watching has always been going on in the park.

Since moving to San Francisco in 1972, Hopkins has seen a number of memorable birds in the park, including a Virginia Rail, a Sora and a Brown Thrasher.

Photo courtesy of Bob Gunderson

Once, when Hopkins was on his way to lead a field trip for DeStefanis’ organization, he stumbled across a Rustic Bunting, a rare bird from Asia. Hopkins and some friends returned to look for the bird, but they were unable to find it.

“And then somebody I didn’t even know [emailed] and said ‘I took this photo of a funny looking bird, is this your Rustic Bunting?’ and it was!” Hopkins says. “We’d almost given up on it, and we rushed back and got a look at it. And people from not only all over California but all over the United States came to look for it.”

Everybody’s Museum

Just like the Spreckels Temple of Music and the Japanese Tea Garden, the de Young Museum — originally just “the Fine Arts building” — was a temporary structure built for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894.

Yet these features became permanent fixtures of the park, and the de Young has now called Golden Gate Park its home for over 125 years. The way she sees it, the park and the museum play similar roles.

“We’re all about promoting curiosity,” she says. “Art inspires, informs and enriches. And I think nature does the same.”

Pressley says there are several community-focused partnerships aimed at welcoming new audiences to the museum. For instance, the de Young has previously hired community representatives to give tours of the collection in place of the museum’s docents.

The rebuilding of the de Young in 2005 marked a significant change in the museum’s role. Pressley said before, the museum’s operations were aimed at teaching visitors about art instead of allowing them to learn and explore on their own. Now, with multiple entrance points and a third of the museum designated as a “free zone,” Golden Gate Park visitors are meant to feel comfortable wandering into the museum.

The redesign was also conscious of the museum’s context within the park. In fact, Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron were selected for the project because they pitched the idea of building the new de Young as an extension of the park. This is seen, for instance, in the choice to clad the structure in copper with the thinking that, over time, it would begin to green and appear to blend in with the trees of the park.

The day of the new de Young’s opening in 2005 was a particularly memorable one for Pressley, who had worked with her colleagues to plan 36 straight hours of public programming. Over 50,000 people showed up and formed a line that stretched way down Stanyan Street. Festivities carried on throughout the night. And the next morning, people showed up in their pajamas to continue the celebration.

Pressley also spoke passionately about the Museum Ambassador Program which she oversaw for ten years. Since 1982, the program has hired San Francisco public high school students living under the poverty line to do paid work at the museum. There have been over a thousand ambassadors, many of whom have gone on to become teachers.

In her work with low income students, Pressley discovered that not only had some students not previously been exposed to art, but some had never set foot in Golden Gate Park.

“A lot of people feel like nature or park settings are not necessarily for them, they needed to be invited,” she says. “It’s kind of the same with the museum — yes, this is your museum, it’s everybody’s museum. You don’t need a degree in art history to walk in.”

Photo courtesy of Janet Thompson

Where Time Stands Still

Third-generation San Franciscan Janet Thompson shared a photo of her grandmother and 18 other relatives at a family picnic in the park. It was taken in 1898.

Now, well over a century later, you can take a stroll by the park on any non-rainy day of the week — even during the pandemic — and you’ll see the same scene.

Those who grew up in and around Golden Gate Park say the park has changed in small ways, with mentions of new speedbumps, the addition of the National AIDS Memorial Grove and increasingly large gatherings on 4/20.

Rodigou says she and her father, who grew up in the Richmond District, would marvel at how the park had simultaneously evolved over time yet remained the same as how they remembered it from their childhood.

The preservation of the park has played a huge role in its timelessness. After finishing the master plan, Nelson later authored the report that added Golden Gate Park to the National Register of Historic Places. Although the label is ceremonial — it doesn’t convey any real protection — Nelson believes it is important to preserve the park’s original design.

“It was designed with this vision of the future of how it would be used,” Nelson says. “People aren’t doing horseback and carriage rides, but it’s being used overall in the same way it was designed 150 years ago.”

City Approves 145 New Units for the Unhoused

Published: San Francisco Weekly. July 1, 2020. View here.

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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has approved an agreement to lease a new building with 145 units earmarked for housing individuals experiencing homelessness.

The proposal, approved on Tuesday, came in the form of a resolution from Mayor London Breed to lease the property — currently under construction at 833 Bryant Street.

The building’s “micro studios” are part of the city’s ongoing effort to open more than 1,000 new “permanent supportive housing” (PSH) units by the end of 2024, according to a press release from the mayor’s office.

Individuals experiencing homelessness will be referred for housing in these units by the city’s Coordinated Entry System. Sarah Owens, the mayor’s deputy press director, explained that individuals who live in PSH units generally allocate between 30-50 percent of their income toward rent, with the remaining amount covered by multiple subsidy programs that support PSH in San Francisco.

Mayor London Breed, who grew up in public housing in San Francisco, was elected on a promise to provide 1,000 more beds by the end of 2020. A recent investigation into the city’s homelessness situation done by the New Yorker found that “there are still about four thousand more people than beds on any given night.”

The city currently houses over 10,800 people in PSH units.

“These new homes will not only provide permanent housing for formerly homeless people, they will also open up more spaces in our shelter system for people who are currently living on the streets,” Breed said in the press release from her office.

It will be at least another year until the units are made available. The site previously existed as a parking lot, and the building currently being constructed at 833 Bryant Street has a projected completion date of fall 2021.

The site itself was acquired using $35 million from a larger philanthropic donation from Tipping Point Community, a non-profit foundation focused on fighting poverty in the Bay Area. No city funds are being used in the building’s construction.

Mercy Housing California, acting as the project developer, is partnering with Citibank and the State of California to secure low-income housing tax credits and tax-exempt bonds to finish construction, according to the press release from the mayor’s office. This will free up a portion of the original $35 million donation from Tipping Point. Those funds will then be invested into additional supportive housing projects.

Mercy Housing is also working in partnership with Episcopal Community Services to construct 258 homes for formerly homeless individuals on 7th and Mission streets by 2021.

The project at 833 Bryant Street is not without complaints. An organization named “Friends of Bryant Street” sent a letter critical of the project to Tipping Point Community, Mercy Housing, and District Supervisor Matt Haney on June 27, 2019.

In the letter, the group requested that the building’s bottom three floors be reserved for commercial space and asked for fewer than 145 units of housing. They also asked for a higher wall between the building and the neighborhood, a zero tolerance policy for residents which would require them to stay off drugs and alcohol and in recovery programs, and a rooftop patio that would be made accessible to both residents and members of the public.

The press release from the mayor’s office made no mention of these requests.

With the approval of the mayor’s resolution, the city has entered into a long-term lease on 833 Bryant. At the end of the lease, the city will have the option to purchase the property for $1 with the assurance that the building will be permanently affordable, according to the press release from the mayor’s office.

YBCA Cuts A Third of Its Staff

Published: San Francisco Weekly. July 22, 2020. View here.

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The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts announced yesterday that it is eliminating 27 staff positions, over a third of its total staff, due to the significant financial impact caused by the coronavirus shutdown.

For the past three months, YBCA’s payroll expenses have been supported by a $1.5 million Paycheck Protection Program loan. Those funds have now run out.

The YBCA saw a $3.5 million decrease in gross revenue in the 2019–20 fiscal year. In addition, for the 2020–21 fiscal year, the YBCA is projecting a loss of $6.8 million in gross revenue from its rental program, annual fundraisers and anticipated funding reductions from the Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy.

YBCA has been closed to the public since March, when the city’s shelter-in-place order began. In the public letter announcing the staffing cuts, YBCA CEO Deborah Cullinan wrote that the eliminated positions are “tied to live events and activities which are not operational for the foreseeable future.”

The YBCA is one of several Bay Area art institutions facing financial difficulties because of the ongoing shutdown. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, just a stone’s throw away from the YBCA, has already laid off over 180 employees and it is projecting an $18 million deficit for 2021. The MoMA is also currently facing additional turmoil following accusations of racism within the institution.

Just last week, the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, which includes the de Young and Legion of Honor, announced lay-offs for 14 staff members and furloughs for 33 others. The FAMSF has projected a $20 million loss in revenue.

Top officials at both FAMSF and YBCA will take significant pay cuts, and all remaining YBCA staff will see pay reductions. YBCA staff members who have been laid off will be paid through the end of July and will be considered as priority candidates for future job openings at the center.

Outside of San Francisco, museums around the country have been deeply impacted by the implications of the pandemic. Over 1,350 employees were laid off at 17 museums around the nation in the month of June alone, according to an estimate done by Artnet News.

Moving forward, the YBCA plans to continue supporting Bay Area artists through the Artist Power Center, a resource set up to serve artists and cultural workers. YBCA’s website is currently collecting donations that will be split between the Artist Power Center and the Artist Now grants supporting artists in the Bay Area who are people of color, women and those who identify as LGBTQIA+.

Local Janitors Strike for Black Lives

Published: San Francisco Weekly. July 20, 2020. View here.

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Marcos Aranda is a janitor in San Francisco whose single paycheck has been supporting his wife, his six kids, and his extended family after his wife was laid off in March. Two months ago, Aranda spoke before a Congressional subcommittee to address his fear of losing his job.

“I have heard of union janitors like me, over 25,000 across the country, who have been laid off despite being essential,” Aranda said at the hearing. “And my company just laid off 200 workers in one day. I have no idea if I’ll have a job in a week or two.”

Today, Aranda was one of 1,500 janitorial workers represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 87 who participated in an unfair labor practice strike in San Francisco. They demand personal protective equipment, alerts for when co-workers test positive for COVID-19, and negotiations between SEIU and employer Able Services to ensure the health and safety of janitorial workers.

Striking janitors gathered at 415 Mission Street for a press conference before marching to City Hall. During the march, janitorial workers stopped to take a knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time a Minneapolis police officer was believed to have knelt on George Floyd’s neck before (prosecutors have since said the exact length of time is unclear).

Once at City Hall, participants joined with union members and supporters for a rally.

The San Francisco strike, however, was not a solitary action — today, thousands of workers from different lines of work took to the streets in over 25 cities across the United States as part of the Strike for Black Lives.

Protestors and strikers are demanding that governments and corporations immediately address COVID-19-related safety concerns, racism as well as systemic and economic inequalities, according to a press release from SEIU.

The strike is specifically targeting large corporations like McDonald’s, Amazon, Uber and Lyft.

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is the executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center which supports grassroots efforts in their fight for justice and equality. Woodard Henderson spoke during a Facebook Live event organized by SEIU about how corporate giants like Walmart and McDonalds “profit off of racial injustice and inequality.”

“When uprisings began across this country in May […] so many corporations were quick to declare their support for Black Lives Matter — we saw the commercials, we saw the Instagram posts,” Woodard Henderson said. “But these exact same corporations whose profits are made from the exploitation of Black workers have done little to shift their actual policies.”

Yeon Park, a member of Alameda County’s SEIU Local 1021, also spoke during the livestream, addressing how frontline workers of color are disproportionately affected by the virus.

“They are serving the community and saving lives and [they] shouldn’t have to work for their basic protective equipment,” Park said.

The strike has already received international support, including from UNI Global Union, which represents workers in 150 different countries. SEIU’s Facebook Live event broadcast messages of support from Germany, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

The Strike for Black Lives represents a significant partnership between major unions and grassroots and social justice groups. As Vox’s coverage of the protests noted, the collaboration is unique because “labor unions don’t always act in concert, let alone partner with grassroots and social justice groups.”

In addition to SEIU, other participating organizations include the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the American Federation of Teachers, Fight for $15 and a Union, United Farm Workers, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance — as well as the Movement for Black Lives, the Poor People’s Campaign and others.

Participating workers represent a variety of workforce backgrounds. They include fast food and airport employees, drivers, teachers, nurses, and nursing home caregivers, along with Google engineers.

Chewy Shaw, a Google engineer in Fremont, California and one of the creators of Google Against Racism, said via SEIU’s Facebook Live event that Google’s response to the George Floyd protests felt “very tone deaf.” As of now, there are 950 individuals in the Google Against Racism group.

Around the U.S., strikes were held in cities including North Carolina, Massachusetts and New York. In Manhattan, over 150 union workers protested outside the Trump International Hotel demanding that the Senate and the president adopt the HEROES Act, already passed by the House, which would allocate additional federal aid to millions of Americans.

Workers who were unable to strike participated in a job walk-out lasting 8 minutes and 46 seconds, according to Vox.

Speaking on the livestream, Aranda said the Strike for Black Lives is a perfect example of how labor movements and civil movements “go hand in hand.”

“We need the proper PPE — I’m lucky to have it, but not everybody is lucky,” Aranda said. “We need equality. And we [have] to make it understood that Black lives matter.”

SF Program Pays COVID-19 Patients to Stay Home

Published: San Francisco Weekly. July 1, 2020. View here.

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The Right to Recover program, which launched today, will allocate $2 million of philanthropic donations from the city’s Give2SF COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund to up to 1,500 COVID-19-positive San Francisco residents. These individuals will receive the equivalent of two weeks’ worth of wages earned with a full-time, minimum wage job — or $1,285.60. If an individual needs additional recovery time, the wages can be extended for an additional two weeks — for a maximum of $2,2571.20.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who worked in collaboration with her staff, doctors from UC San Francisco and the Latino Task Force on COVID-19 to create this program, explained how it works.

First, individuals have to get tested for COVID-19. Ronen said it doesn’t matter where the testing occurs — whether done at a hospital like Kaiser or a neighborhood pop-up clinic, all of the test results go to the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH).

Next, the SFDPH will call individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 to ask whether they have experienced financial instabilities since the pandemic began and whether they might encounter financial difficulties during their quarantine over the next two weeks.

“If they say yes, that person will be put on a list; that list will be sent to one of the non-profits that are administering this program, the non-profit will call that individual and find out basically where to send the check,” Ronen said.

The funds will initially be distributed by the Mission Economic Development Agency in the Mission District, and by Young Community Developers in the Bayview. Beginning next week, funds will also be distributed by Hospitality House in the Tenderloin. Moving forward, Self-Help for the Elderly in Chinatown will allocate funding, and there are plans to distribute funds to Visitacion Valley.

Ronen explained that these organizations serve some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable communities and have “both the cultural and linguistic ability to talk to people in their preferred language so people feel safe” while they recover.

The program also has purposefully few barriers. Both immigration status and criminal records are irrelevant, and the program does not require individuals to prove that they do not have alternative sources of financial support. According to Cristina Padilla, a spokesperson for the SFDPH, “self-declaration that the individual would have no source of income or replacement wages while in quarantine is sufficient to qualify for the program.”

Padilla said the program has two main goals: to encourage all essential workers to get tested for COVID-19 and to guarantee that workers who test positive and do not otherwise have access to replacement wages have financial support so that they may safely quarantine, halt the spread of the virus and focus on recovering.

In addition to providing alternative wages, the program also looks to ensure that individuals with COVID-19 can quarantine effectively.

“The program aims to ensure that those who qualify also receive a comprehensive and culturally competent assessment of their ability to isolate and properly self-care,” Padilla said. “In addition to replacement wages, individuals may be eligible for free hotel rooms where they can quarantine, as well as food and essential supply delivery.”

The Right to Recover program itself was created in order to address what Ronen characterized as “stark” findings from a first-of-its-kind study done in April by UCSF and the Latino Task Force on COVID-19. Nearly 3,000 residents and workers in a Mission District census tract were tested for the virus as part of the study.

“What we found out was that 95 percent of the people that were positive were essential workers,” Ronen, who is the supervisor for the Mission District, said. “They could not work inside the home. The vast majority — about 90 percent of those who were positive in the census district — were Latinx.”

Ronen and her staff, alongside officials from UCSF and members of the Latino Task Force on COVID-19, discussed how essential workers from vulnerable communities — especially undocumented individuals who are not able to receive government assistance — feel that they cannot afford to quarantine, even if they test positive.

And the program, a response to this issue, was launched in record time.

“I’ve never seen something happen this fast in San Francisco,” Ronen said.

Data will be collected from the program to assess if it ensured that people felt safe and whether it encouraged people to get tested and to quarantine if they tested positive. Ronen said if the data shows that Right to Recovery made a difference, “we’ll be aggressively fundraising to continue the program.”

“What I would like to do, if it’s successful, is share the model throughout the rest of the state and country,” Ronen said.

Activists Demand San Francisco Defund Police, Reinvest in Black Community

Published: San Francisco Weekly. June 27, 2020. View here. Co-written alongside Benjamin Schneider.

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On Friday, an activist group called Wealth and Disparities in the Black Community held a press conference on the steps of City Hall and directed specific demands to the San Francisco Police Department, the Police Commission and the Department of Police Accountability in the wake of the recent surge of Black Lives Matter protests and conversations around racial justice.

The demonstration comes a month after George Floyd’s killing at the hand’s of Minneapolis police. In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, protesters took to the streets in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and many more cities around the country, and the world, to call for an end to police brutality and systemic racism. As public protests inevitably wane from their early-June peak, actions such as WDBC’s June 26 press conference will be essential in the fight for meaningful change.

The group’s demands include de-funding the police and redirecting those funds to San Francisco’s Black community; implementing the federal government’s 272 recommendations for reforming the SFPD; and accountability for racist remarks made by the Police Officer’s Association and its members.

“Where you spend your money shows you what you value,” said Kaylah Williams at the event. Williams is the co-president of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club and founder of the San Francisco chapter of the AfroSocialist and Socialists of Color Caucus. “When we look at our budget in San Francisco, what do we see? Hundreds of millions going into the police budget to militarize and police our Black community in San Francisco. We are here to defund the police and immediately reinvest it into the Black community here in San Francisco.”

The first demand, redirecting police funds to the Black community, could be already underway, after Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Shaman Walton announced their intention to pursue such a policy. However, the amount of money diverted, and what programs it will fund, remain to be seen.

Meeting WDBC’s second demand — the complete implementation of the 272 recommendations made by the U.S. Department of Justice — may be a little harder. As of March 2020, only 40 of the DOJ’s 272 recommendations had been fully implemented.

The 2016 review was begun after then Mayor Ed Lee and former Police Chief Greg Suhr asked the DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Services to “assess the department’s policies and practices.” This request was made in regards to two separate instances of SFPD officers sharing racist, sexist and homophobic text messages, allegations of sexual assault involving an SFPD officer and several fatal and controversial officer-involved shootings.

Between May 1, 2013 and May 31, 2016, nine of the 11 individuals shot and killed by SFPD were people of color. One of these individuals is Mario Woods, a 26-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by SFPD in 2016. Fighting for justice for Woods and other victims of police violence is WDBC’s guiding mission.

Speakers at Friday’s event also brought up a 2016 incident where the San Francisco police union published a photo of a black labrador with a sign that said “Black Labs Matter” (referring to the dog breed) sitting next to another dog, a labrador with a lighter coat, with a sign that said “All Labs Matter.”

At the press conference, Phelicia Jones, the founder of WDBC, said the progress made on the implementation of the DOJ’s recommendations is “too slow.”

“The San Francisco Police Department, the Police Commission, the Department of Police Accountability, y’all ain’t working together to pass nothing,” Jones said. “This is why we must defund the police.”

Getting accountability and apologies from the POA, a notoriously polarizing organization, could be activists’ most difficult task. The POA frequently clashes with city officials and racial justice activists. Due to the POA’s track record, WDBC said in a release promoting their event that it does “not acknowledge any truth or sincerity in their current commitment to reform.”

Racial justice advocates hope to see much more from the POA, the SFPD and the city government.

“We will no longer allow the POA […] to indirectly or directly give racist statements, be racist to our people,” said Rico Hamilton, a speaker at the press conference who is involved with the Street Violence Intervention Program. “We will fight the whole system to fight racist injustices in our community.”

UC Davis Counseling Services staff at odds with SHCS leadership over summer furloughs

Published: The California Aggie. June 16, 2020. View here.

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All six counselors who agreed to an interview spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to protect themselves — and their jobs — from any type of retaliation. They are referred to as Counselors A, B, C, D, E and F. 

“I think there [are] some strange things going on with the money trail,” Counselor D said.

Leadership within UC Davis’ Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS) recently and unexpectedly decided to furlough 37 employees within the department. During a global recession, furloughs are to be expected — yet university leaders adamantly deny that the furloughs are COVID-19-related. Even so, losses to revenue are to be expected — yet the student fees that fund SHCS were collected at the beginning of the year, pre-pandemic, and have been unaffected.

“Where’s the money?” Counselor D asked.

Budgetary explanations don’t add up

Citing uncertainties concerning what SHCS’s budget holds for the future, the SHCS Executive Team decided in April to furlough 37 partial-year employees. As SHCS is composed of a medical and counseling team, the 37 partial-year employees taking one- or two-month furloughs include eight counselors plus one supervisor, who is also a counselor, as well as employees from the medical team.

The furlough notices, given on April 9 and 10, came as a shock to staff, as department leaders had told employees throughout March that furloughs were not going to be necessary, according to all six counselors who spoke to The California Aggie for this story.

Partial-year employees have 10- or 11-month appointments with the expectation that they work during the academic year and not during the summer months, when there is less student demand.

For the SHCS medical team, spring is typically a busy — and profitable — time of year. Before students graduate, some seek to fill prescriptions, such as birth control, or get a new pair of glasses while they still have insurance, Executive Director of Health and Wellness Margaret Walter explained. And COVID-19 has directly impacted projected springtime income, with fewer students seeking out, and paying for, these types of services.

Photo Courtesy Margaret Walter

A slideshow presentation created by Walter and given to counseling staff shows a breakdown of SHCS’s operational costs pre- versus post-COVID-19. SHCS shows a $1.8 million estimated deficit.

That estimate, according to Walter, is based on two main factors:

• Money spent on expenses that were not initially budgeted for: personal protective equipment, rental tents set up in the SHCS parking lot for outdoor COVID-19 testing and iPad purchases for clinicians to provide telehealth visits
• A reduction in the number of appointments requested and offered as well as a reduction in the number of prescriptions filled

Whereas other university’s health departments rely upon income generated from sources like prescription refills, UC Davis’ SHCS is unique in that it is funded entirely through student fees, thanks to a referendum passed by UC Davis students, Walter said.

“Funding for mental health comes from student service fees and also mental health fees and some mental health initiative fees,” explained Dr. Cory Vu, the associate vice chancellor for Health, Wellness, and Divisional Resources. “Ninety-seven or 98% of that pays for staffing and 2 or 3% pays for operations.”

These fees were collected at the beginning of the year and have not been impacted by COVID-19, according to Walter.

Furthermore, Walter said it would be a “stretch” to say that the furloughs are COVID-19-related: “I guess you could say it’s related to COVID because COVID sent our students away,” Walter said. Vu also confidently and repeatedly denied that the furloughs are COVID-19-related.

Counselors, however, say “obviously” the furloughs are COVID-19-related.

“We have been told in staff meetings that we are in a major budget deficit (like most departments in UC),” Counselor C said via email. “Obviously, this is due to Covid 19. I think anyone would be hard pressed to even say that furloughs are not related to Covid 19. We have never had so many staff placed on furlough with little notice and involuntarily. And we are told “we don’t always do this” (in reference to multiple furloughs) in the same breath of telling us of budget deficits and uncertainty.”

Vu, Walter and other university leaders interviewed for this story claim that summertime furloughs for partial-year staff are a regular and annual occurrence.

“This year, it is what it is, and it’s not because of COVID-19,” Vu said. “It would’ve been a normal course of action that would’ve taken place anyways.”

All six counselors, however, said this is not an annual occurrence — even for partial-year staff. Counselor E said, “it was understood [that] there was never really a need for furlough,” with the exception of those furloughs enacted after the 2008 recession. As recently as March, counselors with partial-year appointments were told it would not be necessary for them to furlough this year.

Counselor C echoed this, saying partial-year staff “were told their positions included possibility of furlough but were reassured at hiring this never happens involuntarily.”

In response, Vu said that, in previous years, there might be different or unusual budgetary circumstances — such as staffing shortages — which then provide SHCS with financial opportunities that enable the department to employ partial-year employees for all 12 months. In the past, SHCS has been short-staffed, and that has provided a budgetary surplus, “but right now, we’re pretty much very close to full capacity,” Vu said.

That was disputed by Counseling Director Paul Kim, who said counseling was 75 to 80% staffed before the pandemic and remains at these levels. According to Counselor E, Counseling Services lost two full-time counselors this academic year — and this is on top of other, existing vacancies. These multiple vacancies have left “students underserved,” Counselor E said.

In her response, Walter said enacting the furloughs this year was a financially prudent move.

“We have funded these partial-year positions to pay the salaries as they are, [and] when we choose not to furlough someone, we have to find that money to pay them,” Walter said. “During this time, it was prudent of us to not try to find those resources, […] especially given that summer is remote.”

When asked what funding sources were previously used to fund those additional months of work, Walter said SHCS has “a whole bunch of funding sources” and “it just depends on where we have the savings at that time.”

Yet counselors also say it doesn’t make sense why the current fiscal year’s budget would be impacted, given that Counseling Services is funded through student fees that were already collected pre-pandemic.

“The budget is July 1 to June 30, [so] even with the pandemic, there’s no fundamental changes to that budget,” Counselor E said.

Additionally, current projections for first-year enrollment for fall are “surprisingly strong,” according to UC Davis Chancellor Gary May in a recent interview. And because SHCS is supported by student funds, funding levels should be more or less maintained moving forward.

How Student Affairs factors in

All six counselors said that in department meetings, Walter and Kim pointed to huge financial losses in Student Affairs as a reason for a change in SHCS’s expected budget for the current fiscal year.

If student funds meant for Counseling Services were being redirected to Student Affairs, as all six counselors say they were told, these student funds would seemingly be being used in an inappropriate manner.

In that recent interview, May had said that the campus’ move to suspended operations impacted the university’s budget by $125 million. This included both costs unique to the COVID-19 pandemic and lost revenue, with $35 million of that coming from “returned Housing and Dining contracts from students who went back home.” The division of Student Affairs includes Housing and Dining Services as well as SHCS.

Counselor F said there was discussion by management about the Student Affairs’ budget “being really hit,” and the message conveyed to staff by SHCS management was that “basically, we’re making up for some deficit in the Student Affairs’ budget.”

Counselor A said Walter had told counseling staff that because Student Affairs is in “the red,” funds that “were going to be utilized for mental health have to go in other places.” Walter denied that she said this.

“Student service fees [are] a big fee that students pay, [and] they pay for athletics and a lot of Student Affairs stuff, and a slice of that is the mental health fund and another slice of that is the fee we get in SHCS and that fee gets split in half — half to counseling and half to medical,” Walter explained. “Those are directed by Student Affairs, but we haven’t seen any change in those fees.”

All six counselors, however, say it was either directly stated or strongly implied on at least one, if not multiple, occasions that these furloughs were tied to Student Affairs losses. Counselor F said staff brought up concerns with management about why Student Affairs losses would affect counseling finances.

“How is it that their losses affect us?” Counselor F asked. “Plus, there are vacancies and salary savings with that, so how is it there’s no money to pay people through the end of the fiscal year? There just wasn’t enough clarity. I don’t know that there’s something shady going on, but answers thus far about why this is happening are just sort of lacking.”

Vu, Kim, Walter and Interim Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Emily Galindo, however, deny that funds from SHCS were moved to Student Affairs and have said no new budgetary directives were given to SHCS by Student Affairs or by any other university department.

According to Walter, the only new budgetary directive given to SHCS since the pandemic began was from UC Davis Budget and Institutional Analysis, which told SHCS and all other university departments not to change any line items in their budgets ending in a negative. This directive came so that the pandemic’s financial impact could be documented and so that the university could then request funding specific to the pandemic, such as funding provided through the CARES Act.

But to Counselor B, the idea of SHCS “willingly cutting services [for] students at a time where mental health needs are higher than ever” feels like “a big mismatch.”

“We were told in staff meetings that Student Affairs as a whole is losing a significant amount of money due to dorms being nearly empty as a result of COVID-19 campus closure,” Counselor B said. “Within our meetings, we were also informed that CS [Counseling Services] is not income-generating, as our student services are covered within registration fees. Therefore, our budget should have been set for the year. However, following COVID-19 closures and student refunds, CS furloughed staff. It seems difficult to untangle these two events.”

Budget transparency

All six counselors noted that a lack of budgetary transparency within SHCS is a trend that has continued for years. Some counselors said that when their colleagues have requested copies of the budget from SHCS management, these requests went unfulfilled.

“If they’re wanting to build more trust, they’re just going to generate more speculation if they’re not transparent,” Counselor C said. “What are the reasons behind not sharing this? Is this a trust issue? [Are they] planning to use the money in ways that they’re anticipating we’re going to disagree with? It starts building more mistrust about what actually is going on.”

In response, Vu, Kim and Walter said the budget is routinely presented to employees at staff meetings. Vu also said the budget is presented in meetings with the Council on Student Affairs and Fees, which is composed of both students and faculty members.

“I don’t know what those counselors are referring to,” Vu said. “Budgets are talked about quite a bit, even with students, too, because a large chunk of the budget is coming from fees from students. So everyone knows how we’re spending those funds.”

Recognizing that it was an anxious time and that additional information and transparency would be helpful, Kim organized a staff meeting on May 20 — and a follow-up meeting on May 26 for those unable to attend the earlier meeting — focused on budgetary transparency.

“Margaret [Walter] and I wanted to take time to give our staff information about the different funding sources — the student service fee and the mental health fee,” Kim said. “We wanted to explain both funding services as well as expenditures so that our staff had an idea about where we were in terms of our budget.”

Although Counselor F acknowledged that the meetings were helpful, they said the meetings occurred “a full month after furloughs were announced.” Counselor B also pointed out that these meetings “transpired following persistence from staff.”

In Counselor C’s eyes, the pie charts and “data speak language” used both in and out of the meetings when it comes to the budget are “difficult to decipher” and reminiscent of “smoke and mirrors.”

“It is cultural incompetency to assume they are transparent when we don’t understand the language and aren’t given time to engage,” Counselor C said via email. “This is a systemic problem […] not unlike other institutions built on bureaucratic levels of decision making and communication styles vs. “reasonable” collaborative inclusion in the process.”

How the furloughs will impact the availability of counseling services

When asked whether it would be fair to say that UC Davis is effectively cutting back on its scope of mental health services during a time of crisis, Vu, Walter, Kim and Galindo all gave a resounding no. Kim even ventured to say that the university had expanded its scope of services, justifying this by pointing to five new podcasts added to the SHCS website.

All six counselors, however, disagreed. Counselor C said “anyone would be hard pressed to say ‘no’ that the ‘scope’ of services have not been reduced.”

“When you anticipate having […] providers being out for 1-2 months at around the same time, I’m not sure how you can argue that we are [not] cutting back on our scope of [mental health] resources,” Counselor E said via email. “I’m not sure how podcasts, as useful as they are, can replace staff and other resources that are typically offered.”

All six counselors also said the counseling staff being furloughed have a heavier caseload of students than others in Counseling Services, meaning their absences will “result in a decreased availability for students, given that we were already short-staffed,” Counselor B said.

Although some of the furloughed SHCS staff will be taking their furloughs at different times, the furloughs will occur in the summer. Despite summer session enrollment at UC Davis being up by over 30%, Galindo noted that there will still be less demand for counseling services over the summer as compared to the academic year because overall student enrollment will be significantly smaller.

“For the summer, we also have the ability, if we saw a surge at some point, to look at how we would change our staffing,” Galindo said.

What will happen to the students being seen by furloughed staff

According to furloughing counselors, directives about what to do with their current student caseload while they furlough were not readily given by the management team when the furlough decision was announced.

“We’re the ones asking these questions like, ‘Okay, so what’s the plan? What do we do?’” Counselor B said. “‘We’re already short staffed, [so] how are our remaining colleagues going to maintain our caseload?’”

The lack of clear direction from the get-go, in addition to the late furloughing notice, made it seem as if the furlough decision was made “in haste,” Counselor B said.

All six counselors have said it seems like management did not plan the furlough decision well and that the consequences of the furloughs were not fully taken into consideration. In response, Walter and Kim said because some counselors have not furloughed in the past, this might seem like an unusual process.

“But if that’s the feeling, that is our responsibility to make sure they have the support, given that they haven’t done it before,” Walter said. “To say that we had a plan doesn’t excuse the fact that they might not have known about it, and that’s on us.”

Ultimately, in terms of what to do with their student caseload, counselors were told to either wrap up sessions with students for good or refer them to colleagues, off-campus providers or LiveHealth Online.

“Time in sessions with students is then being taken up by transitioning them,” Counselor B said. “The responsibility is then put back onto the clinicians being furloughed versus management stepping up and making plans on how they’re going to deal with this.”

LiveHealth Online

In explanations of why they feel students will now have less access to mental health services, counselors point to the understaffing and the furloughs, but all six also pointed out that students who are not on the UC Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP) will no longer be able to access LiveHealth Online (LHO) at no cost to them after June 30.

LHO is a contracted service that gives students the ability to speak with non-UC doctors and psychiatrists who are available 24/7.

“Currently, both SHIP and non-SHIP students are asked to enter their insurance information when signing on to Live Health Online,” Walter explained via email. “The coupon code signals LHO to charge SHCS any out-of-pocket costs instead of sending the bill to the student. The UCD SHIP committee voted this year to include LHO as a benefit with no copay beginning […] this fall.”

Because LHO changes its coupon code annually, and because that coupon code is set to expire on June 30, non-SHIP students will need to receive the new coupon code from the university or else they will be forced to pay out of pocket for this service.

All six counselors say they were told that, due to recent budget constraints, SHCS does not have the money to cover the new coupon code for non-SHIP students after June 30. This is an issue, they say, because they were told to refer more and more students to LHO.

In response, leadership gave conflicting information. Vu said, “yes, from all indications,” LHO will “be renewed,” given that “it’s been very well accepted and embraced by students.” Walter, however, said the new coupon code will be made available for non-SHIP students for the summer, but that no assurances have been made for the fall.

“Now that Counseling and Psychiatry are offering video visits (medical providers will soon), we believe that students may be better served by our SHCS staff, who have access to their health records and can make video visits a part of a longer-term provider relationship,” Walter said. “LHO is great, but now we can encourage visits with our providers as well.”

Counselor E said one important benefit of LHO is that it ensures that students in other states and even other countries have access to care. Some UC Davis providers have state-specific licenses and can thus only provide care to students located in that state.

“We know students use this, we direct them to use this and now this service will not be offered, despite the fact it provides access to providers in other states and even countries at a time when students are dispersed throughout the world and unable to access SHCS services due to regulatory restrictions,” Counselor E said.

UC Davis operates on a brief therapy model — meaning that the number of counseling sessions provided to each student is capped. This is not unusual for a university. Because “demand will probably always be higher” than the scope of resources the university is equipped to provide, other resources, established referrals and contracted services are developed to fit the need, Counselor C explained.

Yet, some counselors say the increased reliance upon LHO reflects a larger trend in SHCS of relying upon contracted services in place of actually hiring more counselors. Additional services like podcasts can be helpful, but they are not a replacement for “a licensed professional,” Counselor E said.

“It’s like, ‘Just refer them to LiveHealth Online,’ but […] that’s not sufficient,” Counselor E said. “Maybe [that] feels less safe than seeing a counselor that is within your institution — the institution that you pay a lot of money to attend. It doesn’t sit well and it doesn’t seem right.”

How the furloughs will impact staff

“In March, before that decision of obligatory furloughs was made, staff was reassured that there was not going to be any furloughs, and people were making financial decisions given that information,” Counselor B said. “When that’s revoked and folks have already gone off and made financial decisions because they thought that they were going to be employed or had job security, that puts people in really difficult situations.”

In addition to the significant financial burdens posed by these furloughs, Counselor B said they feel that their job is not secure and fear “what’s going to happen after this summer.”

“I’ve lost trust,” Counselor E said. “[I] lost trust in my department and in UC Davis and in the UC system in general, in terms of really putting their money where their mouth is […] In a department that hails social justice and had us work on a mission statement that totes this ideal, saying I’m disappointed is an understatement.”

Academic Senate allows instructors to make finals optional in light of pandemic, protests

Published: The California Aggie. June 2, 2020. View here.

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In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing protests and demonstrations focused on racism and police brutality, the UC Davis Academic Senate announced its decision today to allow instructors to make their scheduled finals for Spring Quarter courses optional, as per a letter sent to instructors by Academic Senate Chair Professor Kristin Lagattuta.

“Our UC Davis community is currently experiencing the compounding stressful effects of the global pandemic with the pain, suffering, and outrage over the recent killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor,” the letter states. “Due to these events, some instructors who have scheduled a final exam in Spring 2020 may wish to offer students the alternative of receiving their course grade based on work completed through the last day of instruction (June 4).”

In an email sent to The California Aggie, Lagattuta explained that instructors are not required to make their course finals optional. Even if a course’s final exam is made optional, students are still able to take the exam, as “many students rely on their final exams to improve their grades,” Lagattuta noted.

She also clarified that the Academic Senate, which has authority over decisions regarding courses, instruction and grading, “did not authorize instructors to cancel scheduled finals.”

This is now the second quarter in a row that the Academic Senate has made provisions for finals. In Winter Quarter, the Academic Senate allowed for “maximum flexibility,” which enabled instructors to substitute scheduled finals for a take-home exam or to drop the final exam altogether.

Lagattuta also emphasized the flexibilities made this quarter to assist with student academic success: The deadline to opt into undergraduate Pass/No Pass (P/NP) and graduate Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (S/U) grading was pushed until June 4, the last day of instruction, the quarter was made exempt from university and college-specific undergraduate P/NP unit caps and advisors were encouraged to be flexible with late drop requests.

Additionally, Lagattuta noted that, as is the case every quarter, students are able to contact their instructors to request an incomplete.

“Instructors are working hard to make sure that their students learn the material and are prepared for the next course in a series or for their post-graduation plans—they do have their students’ best interests in mind,” Lagattuta said via email. “Students should also be aware that many instructors are processing their own trauma and stress. So, please respect the decision the instructor makes for your course.”

Parents of UC Davis students who died by suicide turn to advocacy work

Published: The California Aggie. May 22, 2020. View here.

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Content Warning: Suicide. Resources for 24/7 national and local crisis phone lines and text lines are listed at the bottom of this piece.

This article is the third in a three-part investigation by The California Aggie looking at suicide in the UC system. Parts one and two are available at theaggie.org.

What is a public university’s obligation to the well-being of its students? Several of the nation’s leading mental health experts, including from the National Institute of Mental Health, said, in actuality, there is none.

Universities “are not required to provide any care,” said Dr. Victor Schwartz, the chief medical officer of The Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on suicide prevention for the nation’s teenaged and young adult population. “It doesn’t have to be that everything is provided on campus.”

Victor Ojakian is quick to dismiss this notion.

“The general premise of what an educational institution should be doing […] is graduating their students, and one of the ways you do that is by making sure that they have mental health treatment if they need it,” Ojakian said.

Ojakian’s son, Adam, died by suicide in December 2004 when he was a senior at UC Davis. Adam had not shown suicidal tendencies, and he was never diagnosed with a mental illness. His death is what is referred to as an “out-of-the-blue” suicide, Ojakian said.

“You’re subjected to someone you love taking their life unexpectedly,” Ojakian said. “And there is a level of trauma around that. I’m not even sure if I’m capable of explaining it.”

Later, in conversations with his son’s peers, he heard “what a wonderful guy” Adam was.

“I think one called him a ‘gentle giant,’” Ojakian said.

In retrospect, Ojakian suspects his son was struggling with major depression.

Adam’s death was also part of what is referred to as a suicide cluster. He was the fifth of six UC Davis students who died by suicide that year. A cluster, according to Ojakian, is not stopped “by doing nothing,” so it upset him that the university had not informed families of the situation.

At the time of Adam’s death, Ojakian said he “didn’t know four students had killed themselves prior to my son taking his life.” In his eyes, “it might have been helpful to know that.”

UC Santa Barbara, unlike UC Davis, notifies its campus community when a student dies. UC Davis students who served on the chancellor’s mental health care task force, convened in 2018, “were asking for more communication” from the university, and brought up examples of emails sent by UCSB to its student body upon a death in the campus community, said Margaret Walter, UC Davis’ executive director of Student Health and Counseling Services.

Currently, no changes have been made to UC Davis’ policy.

In the decade between 2008 and 2018, an estimated one to two UC Davis students died by suicide each year. This is the case for every year except three: An estimated four students died by suicide in 2011, an estimated three students died by suicide in 2012 and an estimated five students died by suicide in 2013, according to data collected by The California Aggie.

The UC does not require its campuses to collect suicide-related data, nor does there exist a “systemwide UC policy or standard on collecting suicide data,” according to Andrew Gordon, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President (UCOP).

“There is no systemwide definiton of suicide nor policy thresholds at which suicides must be reported by a campus,” Gordon said via email. “Though campus counseling centers typically do collect this data and share with campus leadership locally.”

The Aggie submitted 20 California Public Records Act requests for the previous decade’s worth of student suicide statistics at each of the 10 UC campuses.

According to the responsive records, UC Davis, which saw 20 student deaths by suicide between 2008–2018, had the highest number of any UC campus. This number is based on deaths classified as a suicide by the county coroner, who then notified UC Davis Student Affairs. This data may not represent the actual number of student suicides at UC campuses over the previous decade. Because there is no system-wide definition or standard in use, it is difficult to accurately compare data on deaths by suicide across UC campuses.

UC Davis also showed the highest number of student deaths by suicide of any other UC campus between the years 2000–2005, the period of time during which Adam died. UC Davis saw nine out of the UC system’s total 29 student deaths by suicide during this time period, according to the 2006 “Report of the University of California Student Mental Health Committee.”

In 2006, Ojakian was asked to testify at a U.S. congressional hearing aimed at updating the National Mental Health Act. He recalled that an aide for former Congressman Patrick Kennedy approached him and remarked on the UC’s report from that year.

“He said that they had been touring in California, and they’d just been visiting UC Davis and they understood that it had the highest number of suicides of any of the campuses,” Ojakian said. “That’s not something to be proud of. If you’re in that situation, you should be doing more.”

As far as he knows, Ojakian said his son had not sought out counseling services beforehand — but, as Ojakian noted, “I don’t know how he would have.” Over the past 15 years, the mental health resources offered by UC Davis have drastically changed. In 2004, the year Adam died, the CAPS budget “had been cut eight consecutive years; they were operating on a shoestring,” according to Ojakian.

In 2004, the year Adam died, the CAPS budget “had been cut eight consecutive years; they were operating on a shoestring,” according to Ojakian.

“We knew that students who were in need had no idea about what was available, what to do,” Ojakian said.

That’s when he and his wife, Mary, became advocates for student mental health.

For over a decade, the Ojakians’ advocacy work has led to tangible changes at UC Davis (additional student services); changes at UCOP (the creation of a Suicide Prevention Website and the Red Folder Initiative, a reference guide to mental health resources used by campuses both inside and outside the UC system); changes at the state level (Assembly Bill 89, which requires that all psychologists in the state receive training in suicide prevention) and even changes at the federal level.

Both Ojakian and Lomax worked on getting AB 89 passed for over five years — as Ojakian noted, if you do work in suicide prevention, “you have to be persistent.”

Described by others as a “fountain of information” on student mental health and suicide prevention, Ojakian repeatedly clarified that none of this advocacy work was done alone. He is also adamant about the fact that his advocacy work, which has saved lives, is not enough.

“We still think suicide is not something we can do anything about”

Since 1999, the U.S. has seen a 33% increase in its national suicide rate, and that rate is expected to rise amid the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, a “statistically strong and reliable method” to identify those at high-risk of suicide “remains elusive,” according to a 2016 study in the journal PLOS One.

Dr. Jane Pearson, the special advisor to the director on suicide research at the National Institute of Mental Health, said identifying factors that explain the upward trajectory of the nation’s suicide rate over the past decade is “the big question we would love to answer.”

“To say what one thing is contributing to suicide risks is really hard,” Pearson said. “The field is struggling right now […] to understand what’s going to be the most effective type of intervention.”

A key factor identified by several suicide prevention advocates is awareness. According to Craig Lomax, when a group of individuals understands foundational information about suicide and mental health, relevant stigmas and fears associated with seeking help are “reduced dramatically.”

In June of 2012, Lomax’s daughter, Linnea, died by suicide when she was a 19-year-old freshman at UC Davis.

“People described her as being extremely positive, extremely generous and just very interactive and encouraging,” Lomax said.

She was also diligent, thorough and a perfectionist, he said.

In May of 2012, Linnea was severely underweight and engaging in other physically destructive behaviors — “I just didn’t understand that it [was] the size of something much deeper going on,” Lomax said.

He remembers apologizing to Linnea’s roommate about the stress of the situation, and he recalls that “the roommate’s response was one of, ‘Oh yeah, well this kind of thing happens when you don’t know how to handle stress. I handle it just fine.’”

“She was clueless,” Lomax said. “I’m really not irritated, but that echoes my point of: What if everybody in the room understands the foundation of this? She might have been able to help surface Linnea’s understanding of what was going on. [Linnea] might have been able to get help earlier.”

On her 19th birthday, Lomax tried to talk Linnea out of taking her upcoming finals and coming home. UC Davis was immediately cooperative to the idea, but because Linnea was over 18, it was her decision to make. She was “absolutely certain” UC Davis was not going to let her return because she felt her grades were so poor, Lomax said, noting that she had a 3.83 GPA.

“Our rights are wonderful, […] however, when a mental illness comes in, it starts representing the body and that isn’t reflective of who that person is or their values,” Lomax said. “People start listening to the mental illness while the person is dying, and the mental illness wants to be destructive to the body.”

Soon after her birthday, Lomax found his daughter in a suicide attempt and took her to UC Davis’ Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS).

“The clinician looked at her and […] said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that she’s going to commit suicide.’ I just came from a suicide attempt 30 minutes ago,” Lomax said. “The clinician was a little bit impatient because she had other things to do, but I pressed for a letter because in order to get her out of finals, we needed a letter.

“So we got that, but we didn’t get any other direction,” Lomax said. “We didn’t get any other help. We have no [idea] what to do, where to go, what to learn. Now that I know a lot about suicide prevention, [that was] completely incompetent and wasn’t adequate at all.”

 “We didn’t get any other help. We have no [idea] what to do, where to go, what to learn. Now that I know a lot about suicide prevention, [that was] completely incompetent and wasn’t adequate at all.”

Lomax decided to write emails to a number of psychologists, one of whom recognized a dangerous combination in Linnea: that of suicidal ideations and perfectionist tendencies. The psychologist made an emergency appointment to see Linnea and recommended that she be admitted to an outpatient therapy center in Sacramento.

Linnea spent 10 days in a psychiatric hospital under a hold. On the eleventh day, she went to a voluntary outpatient program under the supervision of her hospital psychiatrist. On this day, she voluntarily left, three hours before her parents were scheduled to pick her up. She had not alerted anyone to her whereabouts.

“We were stupid, we didn’t think voluntary meant voluntary […] or I would have had a chair and waited and watched the building — that’s how concerned we were,” Lomax said.

Over the next 10 weeks, as Linnea’s story gained media coverage, over 1,300 people from Sacramento and the Lomax’s hometown of Placerville searched for her. Lomax said his family received over 300 phone calls reporting Linnea sightings, but only two of the 300 calls were actual sightings.

“Most parents can’t get it around their heads that their kid is suicidal, but even after you know that your kid is suicidal, it’s another thing to actually think they would do it,” Lomax said. “And that’s true of any human. We respect each other enough that we can’t fathom that that person that we know could actually do that, it just doesn’t make sense. So you have a hard time believing it. And we had 300 phone calls that said, ‘We’re seeing her in Sacramento.’ We would rather believe that.”

Ultimately, after a 10-week search, it was Linnea’s mother who found her body.

“It’s completely horrific and destroyed us in so many ways,” Lomax said. “It didn’t destroy us all the way, if I was still searching for my daughter, which I would be.”

The Lomaxes received hundreds of cards offering condolences for Linnea’s death, including one from UC Davis.

When Linnea died, Lomax said he was “totally uninformed about mental health and mental illness.” He has now educated himself and others on these topics.

“We do a lot of things nowadays to save a life,” Lomax said. “What degree will the campus go to save one of those lives? I suspect that they’d be willing to spend millions of dollars if they thought they could save a life. We still think suicide is not something we can do anything about.

How we talk about suicide

Patti Pape, an active member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is currently teaching classes aimed at de-stigmatizing mental illness. In these classes, she talks about suicide and addresses the “fact that bringing up suicide does not ‘plant a seed.’”

“It needs to be discussed and communicated,” Pape said.

Pape’s son, Eric, died by suicide in May of 2017 while attending UC Davis. Eric was a traveler, an anthropologist and someone who “worked hard” and “felt deeply,” Pape said. A psychology major, he entered UC Davis as a junior transfer and worked in a neuroscience lab.

According to Pape, Eric had not struggled with his mental health before transferring to UC Davis.

“The transition to Davis was more difficult than I had seen him experience before,” Pape said. “He had always had pretty stable relationships with friends and family, and not having that support system right at hand, right away, really took its toll on him.”

Eric began receiving support for anxiety and depression through drug therapy and through UC Davis counseling services. His first suicide attempt was in January of 2017, and he was checked into Sutter Davis Hospital and placed on a 72-hour 5150 hold. While there, an altercation occurred between Eric and a nurse at the hospital. After his release, and after he returned to school, Pape said Eric was doing better until he was charged with felony battery for the altercation.

“The trial was delayed and he felt more and more desperate,” Pape said. “He was still going and seeking services but he […] basically just decided there was no other way to solve the problems. His perception of himself was all based on what was going on with this trial and the outcome of that, because that was going to change his life irrevocably.”

In his last few weeks, Eric requested to see a specific UC Davis counselor, but there was a wait until he could see them. If Eric had been able to see the counselor, “I think that could have made a difference in the outcome,” Pape said. She believes the support UC Davis provided to Eric was “adequate,” but that “in a crisis, they let him down.”

After her son’s death, Pape received Eric’s diploma posthumously. She said she appreciated meeting the chancellor and being treated “in a nice way” by university officials, “but there was no acknowledgement of the fact that he killed himself.”

When a student dies by suicide, there is some level of fear held by a university that it will be blamed for the death, said Paul Gionfriddo, the president and CEO of Mental Health America.

Although UCOP does not require that campuses maintain student suicide statistics, Ojakian believes “they know who’s died on campus.”

“They try and hide it and mask it because they don’t want it reflecting on their service,” Ojakian said. “There’s a legitimate reason: They don’t want to create concern or consternation on a campus, but there’s also a level where they don’t want people to know students are dying on campus.

“My son died in the middle of December,” Ojakian said. “Then we got a call from the CAPS director — I think it was between Christmas and New Year’s. He’s calling for a reason. He knows my son is dead. They know. Regardless of what they say.”

In Ojakian’s mind, the UC president needs to be making sure that each campus has a plan and that these plans are being communicated between the campuses — “the fact of the matter is that the president’s office should be more involved.”

When it comes to work in suicide prevention, “you have to overcome things like being dismissed or avoiding dealing with suicide,” Ojakian said. “We think if we turn the other way, it won’t exist.”

But what happens when you lose someone to suicide?

“Other people talk with you, they ask you about what’s going on with their loved one or tell you about what happened to one of their children, so then you start seeing the bigger picture,” Ojakian said. “People started telling [me], ‘My son is at a community college and he has attempted to take his life.’ But it’s not just the campuses, it’s the whole culture that doesn’t want to talk about this. So, then you get to realize how big a problem that is. If you just sit back and do nothing, it’s not a solution.”

Ojakian’s home county of Santa Clara has a formalized suicide prevention plan, thanks to work done by Ojakian and others. His county is one of only seven out of the total 58 California counties that has a suicide prevention plan (Ojakian worked on a bill that would have required every California county to have a suicide prevention plan, but the bill was held by the appropriations committee without explanation).

Santa Clara has the lowest suicide rate in the state. Whereas the state of California has seen an increase in its suicide rates over the past several years, Santa Clara has seen a decrease from 150 down to the low 130s.

“I’m not a clinician, but it doesn’t prevent us from doing something,” Ojakian said. “I’ve educated myself on this topic, because my end goal is to save lives. In a sense, I’d rather not have people call me. I’d rather know that everyone’s loved one is safe and/or getting help because they need it.”

Suicide prevention at UC Davis

When the head of a university’s counseling department is asked about the work they do related to suicide prevention, they will say that all of their work is, in some form, related to it.

“All the work we were doing was effectively an attempt at suicide prevention in the same way providing medical care working in hospitals is working death prevention,” Schwartz, who was also the former medical director at New York University’s counseling services and current chief medical officer of The Jed Foundation, said.

The current work related to suicide prevention undertaken by UC Davis is vast and varied. After noticing an uptick in student suicides, UC Davis officials began a multi-year process guided and supported by The Jed Foundation. The process has consisted of the foundation providing the university with feedback aimed at improving its mental health care and suicide prevention efforts.

When schools provide more of these types of services, “suicide rates go down,” Schwartz said.

As part of a recommendation by the foundation, UC Davis has recently created and implemented a set of postvention guidelines used by the university in its response to traumatic events, including suicides. The guide is meant to ensure “a rapid and adaptable response aimed at preventing the trauma from growing,” according to the UC Davis website.

“Last year was about improving access,” Walter said. “We’re trying to open up the avenues where students can get support.”

And because universities provide some form of reliable community support, there is reason to believe that college is a safer place to be for individuals with mental health issues. In fact, the “actual rate of suicide is lower among college students than non-college-attending 18- to 25-year-olds,” Schwartz said.

Ojakian and other advocates, however, see college campuses as having a “captive audience” and, thus, an opportunity to reach out to students and let them know that “there are alternatives to taking your life.” There is a shared belief held by Ojakian, Lomax and Pape that universities can and should be doing everything in their power to prevent suicides from occurring.

“As parents, we send our children to an institution of higher learning assuming that these places are enlightened and open to research-based changes, and then when they seem to disregard that responsibility it’s disheartening,” Pape said. “What is the focus of the UC system? Is it research? Is it fundraising? Or is it our undergraduates and graduate students who need to get an education in a nurturing environment?”

This past May 4 marked the second anniversary of Eric’s death. In a recent email, Pape talked about the feelings that the anniversary prompted.

“Everyday is a bit easier to recognize the reality of our loss, but it certainly doesn’t keep us from missing his presence and wondering how he would be reacting to the craziness our world is in with this pandemic,” Pape said. “We all agree he probably would have backpacked up into the mountains and waited it out.”

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Chancellor Gary May has made it a point to highlight the mental health resources available to students. Those resources, as they appear on the SHCS website, include the following:

• Mental health visits: Counseling Services are available by phone or via secure video conferencing. Schedule an appointment through the Health-e-Messaging portal or by calling 530-752-0871. All Mental Health Crisis Consultation Services are offered via phone consultation or secure video conferencing. Call 530-752-0871 to access these services.

• COVID-19 Mental Health Resource Flyer (pdf download)
• LiveHealth Online: Have secure, online video visits with licensed mental health professionals and primary care providers; no referral is needed.
• Therapy Assistance Online: Use interactive tools and self-care exercises for mental health concerns.

The number for the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is (800) 273-8255; the number for the 24/7 Crisis Text Line is 741741; the number to speak with a trained counselor through The Trevor Project, available 24/7, is 1-866-488-7386 and the number for Yolo County’s 24-hour crisis line is (530) 756-5000 for Davis callers.

Yolo County issues mandatory shelter-in-place, fifth COVID-19 case confirmed in county

Published: The California Aggie. March 19, 2020. View here.

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Yolo County announced Wednesday that it would be instituting a mandatory shelter-in-place effective instantly through April 7 and applicable to all residents. The order restricts all non-essential activity in an effort to slow the transmission of the novel coronavirus COVID-19.

“You and those you live with should remain at home,” states a press release on the Yolo County website. “You are allowed to leave your home for specified reasons to make sure you have the necessities of life such as getting food and medical supplies. You are also allowed to go outside to take care of pets, go on a walk, exercise outside, and enjoy nearby parks, so long as you do not congregate in a group and maintain at least six feet of distance between you and other people.”

Hours after the shelter-in-place mandate was announced, a fifth county resident was confirmed to have tested positive for coronavirus. That person, “an elderly adult with chronic health problems,” acquired the disease through community transmission, according to The Davis Enterprise.

The announcement comes just one day after the city of Davis urged residents to shelter-in-place. Yolo County’s mandatory, county-wide directive is not a suggestion and violators may be penalized — the county, however, has said its intent is not to punish residents, “rather, the role of law enforcement is to educate and inform with legal action reserved for significant violations.”

Essential services that provide food, shelter and social services are allowed to operate. These include but are not limited to pharmacies, food and convenience stores, child-care facilities, gas stations, banks, laundromats and restaurants (for delivery or take-out only).

Included in the county’s list of non-essential businesses and services are religious institutions, gyms, large gatherings of people and nonessential medical care that should be postponed if possible.

UC Davis

As a result of advisory notices from both Yolo and Sacramento counties to shelter-in-place, UC Davis is moving to “suspended operations.” The status is enacted when “current conditions pose a safety risk or logistical challenges that are more severe and there is a substantial interest to having a limited number of individuals travel to, or remain at one or more campus locations,” according to university policy.

University employees are working remotely as much as possible. Students are encouraged to take their finals from their place of shelter, however, the library, computer labs, study spaces and classrooms remain open through Sunday, March 22 to ensure students are able to access computers and WiFi.

It was announced recently that both UC Irvine and UCLA had canceled their commencement ceremonies. In their most recent comment on the situation, UC Davis officials told The California Aggie that UC Davis is still planning to have commencement.

Other campus updates:

• Aggie Compass, located in the East Wing of the MU, will be distributing food tomorrow, March 20, from 9 a.m. to noon, and weekly grocery bag pickups will take place every Thursday.
• The Mondavi Center has canceled all remaining public events for its 2019–20 season. Those who have purchased tickets will be contacted.
• Unitrans has further scaled back operations, implementing Weekend Service today through at least March 27. The bus lines that are currently operational are the G, K, M P, Q, O and V-MU lines, beginning at 7 a.m.
• The CoHo remains closed until at least March 30. Dining commons remain open.