Paramount quarantine housing problems

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Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021 • Volume 74, Issue 18

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

@berkeleybeacon // @beaconupdate

‘Paramount—you do not want to be there’

The Office of Title IX and Equity Access. / Beacon Archives

Final Title IX reccomendations present minimal changes Katie Redefer Beacon Staff

Paramount Building in snow. Zhuoli Zhang / Beacon Staff Black mold in Paramount shower. / Courtesy Katie Broderick

Miscommunications abound in on-campus quarantine housing Dana Gerber Beacon Staff

Several students who spent time in Emerson’s quarantine housing during the spring semester have reported inconsistent protocol communication, faulty facilities, and meager food provisions— painting a picture of the college’s quarantine experience as one of profound institutional abandonment. Approximately 110 students have been relegated to the Paramount residence hall this semester. The residence is reserved for students in isolation (who are known or reasonably known to be infected) and quarantine (who may have been exposed to the virus). Many of the students sequestered in Paramount—some battling COVID-19 symptoms—repeatedly lacked vital information only the college could provide, like release dates, laundry, and trash pick-up schedules. In other cases, they were volleyed from department to department in search of answers, lacking a streamlined process.

When first-year theatre and performance major Katie Broderick got the call that she tested positive for COVID-19 on Feb. 11, she texted everybody she considered a close contact. First-years Lily McCormick, Nathalie Calvillo, and Alaina Reyes, three of her close contacts, waited for calls from the college. They never came. “Our assumption was we’re going to hear from contact tracers, so for the first few hours we were like, ‘Let’s hold tight, we should get calls any second now,’” Calvillo said. “When that didn’t happen, we decided to email and reach out and tell them.” Calvillo was the last one to arrive in Paramount that day, following a dark walk in the freezing cold at 8 p.m. It wasn’t until the next day that the college reached out to them. “We didn’t get calls from Emerson until the next morning,” Calvillo said. “They called us and said, ‘Did you know that you have been in contact with somebody who tested positive?’ And, I said,

‘Yeah. I’m in isolation.’” The time elapsed between Broderick’s positive test and the call from Emerson was worrisome, Calvillo said. “It’s in human nature to wait until Emerson does something and reaches out to you, because they’re in charge of us—we were supposed to trust them,” she said. “You would think that they would handle it. That’s where the risk is: We’re not getting contacted until too late.” Close contacts—who have the potential to drive virus transmission—are contacted depending on what time of day the positive test is identified, Jim Hoppe, vice president and dean for campus life, said. “While time is still very important, the most important piece is that everyone is still following all those other protocols, so masking, distancing, and all of that,” Muurisepp said. “The focus is on the positive case. Those contacts certainly are a close second to that. But within the sixto-eight hour period of time is the ideal” Paramount, Pg. 2

and the Last Dragon” as figuring out how to coordinate to make things happen for the effects department. She described the department as the spot where the film’s “literal magic” is created— this means any work not relating to a character, set or prop. “Since it is 3D, and the effects are so complex, it’s a lot of working with other departments and really getting things figured out in terms of problem solving,” Soorholtz said. “Everyday, it’s a different issue, complication or puzzle to be figured out, and that’s where we come in.” Soorholtz talked about the collaborative effort that goes into making an animation film. “Animation is like one giant group project. Everyone kinda has their own little edition of things; everyone has a say in their own way and it adds onto the department,” Soorholtz said. “We always say that each department keeps

adding on more and more beauty, complexity and depth to the movie as it goes, and it’s something that I don’t think people realize before they step into the industry is how much it’s not just one person sitting at their desk making a whole movie.” “Raya and the Last Dragon” is Soorholtz’s first Disney credit, which she said she’s thrilled about. She explained that although working on this film was a fun task, it also proved to be an obstacle with working from home because of the pandemic. “This movie specifically, especially with work from home, it provided a lot of challenges that we did not see coming,” Soorholtz said. “Somehow, we really didn’t skip a beat. We transitioned to work from home immediately thanks to our incredible tech team who really moved heaven and earth to make sure everyone was able to work from home.” Raya, Pg. 7

Emerson alum animates new Disney movie Karissa Schaefer Beacon Staff

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Raya and the Last Dragon” takes viewers on an epic journey through the eyes of lone warrior, Raya, as she tracks down the last dragon to help her stop an evil force threatening her homeworld. Viewers can watch the fantastical world of Kumandra, one that Emerson graduate Kathryn “Ryn” Soorholtz ‘16 helped produce, after the film’s release date on Mar. 5. The film, directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada and Don Hall, is coming to select theaters as well as Disney+ with Premier Access for $29.99. Tickets are available for preorder on sites such as Fandango. The animated film has a star-studded cast including Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Sandra Oh and Benedict Wong, among others. Soorholtz spoke in a phone interview about her experience working as a production coordinator for the film’s effects animation department. The marketing communications alum credits Emerson for getting her foot into the door of the animation world. In fact, the Emerson Mafia Facebook page was where Soorholtz got her first animation job for the TV show, “Bojack Horseman,” created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. “Emerson helped prepare me by really giving me a good network of people to talk to and find my way out in Los Angeles,” Soorholtz said. “Other than that, just kind of giving me some major skills in terms of being able to connect with people, work with people on projects. It was really important stuff I couldn’t have gotten at another school.” Soorholtz described her job on “Raya

President M. Lee Pelton accepted the Presidential Working Group’s final draft of recommendations for Emerson’s Title IX processes on Tuesday—a draft that is notably similar to earlier versions that faced harsh criticism from students and faculty. Now that Pelton has reviewed and accepted the group’s report, a Standing Committee formed out of the final report will work to address the remaining suggestions from the PWG and formally implement them into the college’s Title IX policy. The afternoon email comes on the heels of the PWG sending their finalized report to Pelton in mid-December, following a period for public comment and a community forum webinar the same month. The final report is also largely similar to the first draft released in April 2020, which was met with strong rebukes from students and faculty. At the Dec. 4 public webinar, the PWG took questions from community members related to their second draft released in November, which took a step away from the more actionable suggestions within their first draft of the report from April of 2020. Questions raised at the December webinar revolved around lack of Title IX guidance for student organizations, and how Pelton’s planned departure from the college at the end of the spring could affect the PWG’s report. While the second draft was influenced by community feedback to the first draft, there were no significant changes made to the finalized PWG report released this week, even after the public comment period in December. Working Group Co-Chair Jan Roberts-Breslin reaffirmed the similarities of the second draft to the final report in an interview with The Beacon, saying the community feedback on the second draft did not have a substantial impact on the final recommendations sent to Pelton. “I didn’t feel like the community meeting or reopening the report to online feedback resulted in a lot of substantive changes,” Roberts-Breslin said. “The feedback tended to be more in terms of people emphasizing things they wanted the [PWG] to keep working on, not specific critiques to what we were recommending.” Pelton created the PWG in September 2019 to review the college’s Title IX policy after a list of more than a dozen students accused of sexual misconduct appeared outside of the Little Building. A first draft was released by April 2020, highly criticized by student activist group Students Supporting Survivors for lack of coherent changes proposed and extended timelines, among other grievances. The first draft was followed by an updated second draft in November, maintaining much of the previously contested points with minor adjustments, like the suggestion to move the Title IX Office out of the Social Justice Center. Nine months have passed between the release of the original draft in April 2020 and the final report released this week. In Tuesday’s email, Pelton shared administrative measures that have already taken place in alignment with the PWG’s findings and recommendations—yet many of these changes have been in the works for months, long before Pelton received a final report from the PWG. Several of the changes mentioned in Pelton’s email were already included in the new Power-Based Interpersonal Violence policy released in August 2020, such as expansion of informal resolutions and setting precise timeframes for Title IX investigations. Roberts-Breslin said many of the recommendations from the PWG corresponded with efforts of other departments like the Title IX Office, which led to the overlap with recommendations in the report and changes mentioned in Pelton’s email. “The recommendations of the working group kind of dovetail with work that is going on, and has been going on, on the part of Title IX and other departments,” she said. “Things were evolving at the same time toward what basically, in its essence, seems like the same goal.” The PWG was dissolved after Pelton accepted their final report in December, Roberts-Breslin said. The final report creates a Standing Committee, which would be tasked with improving cross-departmental communication during Title IX proceedings, as well as implementing other suggestions from the final PWG report. Pelton’s email said the Standing Committee should meet within the month to begin discussing suggestions from the PWG that have not yet been addressed. Title IX, Pg. 3

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positive COVID-19 tests

.18%

positivity rate Ryn Soorholtz ‘16 / Courtesy Ryn Soorholtz

*Accumulated from 2020-2021 school year

INSIDE THIS EDITION Emerson senior runs for vacant State House seat Pg. 3 Editorial: MA’s failed vaccine distribution Pg. 4 Alum publishes Emerson based young adult novel Pg. 6 Review: Student band Sunsetta’s new EP Pg. 7 Women’s lacrosse hails four new team captains Pg. 8


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