The Huntington News October 16, 2020
The independent student newspaper of the Northeastern community
@HuntNewsNU
Graphic by Devin Raynor
FACULTY MEMBERS DESCRIBE CONFUSION, PRESSURE TO RETURN TO CAMPUS By Matt Yan News Staff After the first month of Hybrid NUflex, students and faculty have entered the routine of classes. However, during the summer and as the university outlined its hybrid plan, faculty felt pressure to return as well as confusion regarding reopening. About two-thirds of faculty are now teaching on campus, according to Northeastern’s media relations team. “Later, when I saw the school touting, ‘Oh, look at how many professors chose to come back,’ it was a bit of a slap in the face because I know a lot of [professors] didn’t feel like they had a choice,” said an anonymous teaching faculty member in the College of Science, who requested anonymity in fear of professional retaliation.
Brandon Sichling, an assistant teaching professor and game design coordinator, never noted explicit pressure from the university, but felt the act of reopening and asking students and faculty to return serves as pressure in itself. “I think that assuming that us being there was the default — I think that’s pressure,” Sichling said. Other professors echoed this pressure from the university at a faculty senate meeting Oct. 7. The anonymous instructor provided The News with emails, policies and correspondences from the university. On June 30, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Madigan and Chancellor and Senior Vice President for Learning Kenneth Henderson sent an email to all faculty and staff,
updating them on policies for their return to campus. “For some departments, meeting business goals and maintaining a standard of excellence may require 100 percent of their employees to be on site,” Madigan and Henderson wrote. “For other departments, a percentage of employees continuing to work remotely may be acceptable.” Each request for remote work fell under two options. The first option was for faculty with “a medical or mental health-related concern, diagnosis or illness, or if [they] are in a high-risk category,” and they had to provide medical documentation. The second option was anything that fell outside of personal medical issues, and each request for remote work was handled individually. “We understand that some faculty
and staff have childcare challenges or medical conditions that may prevent or curtail their return to campus,” wrote Michael Armini, senior vice president of external affairs, in an email to The News. “There is an established process for considering requests for remote work, and they are handled on a case-by-case basis.” Abbie Levesque, a doctoral candidate in English with a focus in writing and rhetoric and an instructor of first-year writing, opted to teach remotely. However, for a while, she said that it was unclear whether instructors would be approved for remote work, and while the English department was supportive, communication from the university was often confusing. “At the university level, for a long time, it was mixed messaging,”
Levesque said. “The students were being told that it was their choice whether they had online or in-person classes. A lot of them interpreted that to mean that they could choose whether they had an in-person, professorial experience.” Sichling also said at first, the options in regards to reopening and remote teaching were confusing. They wanted to teach remotely because their partner is immunocompromised and initially thought they fell into the first option. “When I clicked on option one, it was saying, basically, that I needed a doctor’s note,” Sichling said. “That was something that was very frustrating: the idea that I needed to justify my not wanting to be on public transit during a pandemic.” FACULTY, on Page 3
Fridge initiative battles food insecurity By Maggie Scales News Correspondent Flavia DeSousa, Zachary Shea and Veronica Bettio have made strides in developing community fridges — refrigerators on the street filled with donated food for locals in need — across Jamaica Plain and Somerville.
Communities all across the U.S. have taken massive economic hits due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rendering many families unable to sufficiently put food on the table. In fact, one in eight people in eastern Massachusetts are projected to suffer from insecurity this year. “People are starving,” Shea said.
In 2012, community fridges arose as a worldwide trend, beginning in countries including Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, India, New Zealand and Israel, to combat food waste and reduce the world’s accumulated trash. This past February, New York-based activist group In Our Hearts NYC brought the trend
to the United States with “Friendly Fridges.” In starting the Boston fridge initiative, Bettio — the main organizer of the Jamaica Plain fridge — is pursuing both the original intention of the fridges, combating food waste, and helping the abundance of hungry locals who are not receiving the help
they need from the government. “Number one, there’s a lot of food waste, and number two, there’s a lot of food [needed],” Bettio said. “We wanted to help shift some resources and just look out for our communities. Community efforts and mutual aid are also very important during FRIDGES, on Page 6