COVID Spike

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

Thursday, April 8, 2021 • Volume 74, Issue 24

@berkeleybeacon // @beaconupdate

COVID-19 positives surge, campus life restricted Week brings 36 new positive tests

Spring athletics temporarily suspended

Dana Gerber, Charlie McKenna, Ann E. Matica, Camilo Fonseca, & Bailey Allen

Christopher Williams

Beacon Staff

Beacon Staff

Emerson canceled all in-person student activities beginning at 5 p.m. for at least the next seven days on Wednesday, the result of an unprecedented spike in positive COVID-19 tests among community members in the past week. Classes will continue to be held in-person, but all indoor and outdoor student activities, including athletics and student organization meetings, will be on hold until April 14, the email from Assistant Vice President for Campus Life and “COVD Lead” Erik Muurisepp said. All film production on and off-campus has also been canceled for the next week, Visual and Media Arts Chair Christina Kotz-Cornejo announced Thursday night. All on-campus space capacities, aside from classrooms and dorms, have been set at one for the next week, an email from Student Engagement and Leadership Director Jason Meier said. The decisions were made in consultation with the Boston Public Health Commission and Tufts Medical Center, Muurisepp wrote. Emerson has reported 36 positives over the past week out of 7,112 tests administered, a positivity rate of .51 percent. As of Wednesday afternoon, 24 students are in on-campus isolation and 38 students are in on-campus quarantine, the highest figures seen over both the fall and spring COVID, Pg. 3

All athletics games and practices are canceled for at least the next week, as Emerson imposes new restrictions to limit the number of positive COVID-19 tests on campus, college officials announced in a Wednesday afternoon email. “All in-person student activities and gatherings, including athletics, whether they are indoors or outdoors, will be prohibited for at least the next seven days, effective 5:00 p.m., Wednesday, April 7 through the end of the day Wednesday, April 14,” Assistant Vice President for Campus Life and “COVID Lead” Erik Muurisepp said in the email. Muurisepp’s email marks the second consecutive week that all sports activities have been canceled following a spike in positive coronavirus tests on campus. The college canceled all games and practices last Friday after seven positive tests—a number which has now more than quintupled—were reported on campus. An unnamed member of an athletics team said the spread began with members of the women’s basketball team and affected other teams. Muurisepp’s email accounts for the possibility that the new on-campus regulations will have to be extended if the number of Athletics, Pg. 8

Fall 2020

Spring 2021

Graphics Diti Kohli

ECPD ‘Autism Speaks’ posts trigger harsh backlash Dana Gerber Beacon Staff Content Warning: This article discusses harmful and ableist stereotypes against autistic people, violence against autistic people and disabled people, and includes harmful and ableist photographs posted by the Emerson College Police Department about autistic people. The Emerson College Police Department is facing backlash from members of the Emerson community for two social media posts made on April 2, known by the United Nations as “World Autism Awareness Day,” which some say perpetuated harmful stereotypes about people on the autism spectrum. The posts—which have since been deleted from Instagram and Twitter without a public apology—featured a video of a flashing blue police siren with the hashtags “#AutismAwarenessDay” and “#LightItUpBlue,” as well as the ECPD emblem against a background of rainbow puzzle pieces. Both puzzle pieces and “Light It Up Blue” are symbols associated with the organization Autism Speaks, and otherwise condemned by many autistc people as stigmatizing and harmful. More than 60 disability rights organizations have condemned Autism Speaks for their harm to and exploitation of the autistic community. The organization spends just a fraction of a percent of its budget on “family service grants,” which fund services for autistic people and their families, and has only one autistic person out of 30 individuals on their board of directors, according to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, abbreviated as ASAN, a nonprofit run by and for autistic people to advocate for disability rights.

Autism Speaks has also called autism spectrum disorder—a developmental disability that impacts social interaction, behavior, and communication—a “disease,” a designation advocates say is false and produces stigma against autistic people. Historically, Autism Speaks has promoted research about the cause and prevention of autism rather than quality of life, and perpetrated the idea that autism needed to be “cured” through biomedical research, according to ASAN. (The word “cure” was removed from Autism Speaks’ mission statement in 2016.) “The puzzle piece and blue as symbols being used as support for the autistic community—they don’t understand how really harmful that is,” Zach Swasta ’20, who is on the autism spectrum and co-founded Access: Student Disability Union at Emerson, said in an interview with The Beacon. Harper McKenzie, current president of Access, declined to comment to The Beacon. ECPD Chief Robert Smith said the department removed the posts in response to community feedback. “The ECPD posted images to highlight Autism Awareness Day in support of community members who are on the autism spectrum or who have family members, friends, and loved ones who are autistic,” he wrote in a statement to The Beacon. “After receiving feedback from our community about the concern that these symbols can cause, we removed them from our social media accounts. We apologize for causing harm to any members of the community.” The puzzle piece as a symbol for autism—which some organizations have re ECPD, Pg. 3

Robert Colby started at the college in 2018. / Courtesy Emerson College

Robert Colby, performing arts chair, dies at 70 Camilo Fonseca Beacon Staff After 44 years at Emerson, students and colleagues fondly recalled Robert Colby as a committed theatre practitioner, a trusted mentor, and by many, a valued friend. The longtime faculty member served as chair of Emerson’s performing arts department from 2018 until his death from pancreatic cancer early Monday morn-

ing, at the age of 70. Colby taught courses in theater education, theater for young audiences, and directing for undergraduate and graduate students alike. The news of his death spurred an outpouring of grief on social media, as those who knew him paid tribute to their late instructor. One post on the Emerson Mafia, a Facebook group of alumni and current students, garnered 45 comments and over 200 reactions. “There’s just page after page after

INSIDE THIS EDITION

Access unveils accessibility demands for admin Pg. 2 New individually-designed major to replace IDIP Pg. 3

FSL orgs reimagine PVIV policy Pg. 7 Bye, sister: Send James Charles to prison edition Pg. 7

Editorial: Pandemic isn’t over. Student-athlete quarantine diaries from Paramount Pg. 8 Yet. Pg. 4

page of tributes to him from students,” Assistant Professor Bethany Nelson said. “Again, and again, you hear the same thing: ‘He made me the teacher I am today,’ ‘He changed my life,’ ‘He made me a different person,’ That would be the legacy he wanted to leave. The legacy left for young people in classrooms, that’s where his heart lay.” Nelson, who succeeded Colby as director of the theatre education graduate program, attended Emerson as an undergraduate student in 1979 where she first met Colby—who was then a 28-year old instructor fresh out of Eastern Michigan University. “I’ve known him for 42 years—and of those, we were close friends for about 35 of them,” Nelson said. Lecturing alongside Colby for much of his time at Emerson, Nelson experienced his commitment to the field of theater education first hand. “Bob,” as he was called by faculty and students, rose from adjunct professor to tenured instructor to faculty union president to an administrator during his tenure at the college. In the process, his teaching earned him numerous accolades. Despite his recognition within the Emerson community and beyond, Colby never grew complacent, Nelson said. Colby, Pg. 6

203

positive COVID-19 tests

.18%

positivity rate *Accumulated from 2020-2021 school year


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