3. The Essentials

When the Fitchburg State campus went silent in March 2020, it remained so for months to come. But its emptiness belied the continued pace of work and change. In Episode 3, Fitchburg State administrators, staff, faculty, and students reflect on the difficult decisions made during the pandemic all while feeling isolated. 

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Transcript

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AD Rich Lapidus

Richard Lapidus  3:16  

My team never left. We were here the entire time.

Steven Olson  5:17

How did it feel coming to pretty much empty campus?

Richard Lapidus  5:29  

Well, if you if you ever saw that, Jack Nicholson movie, The Shining, that, that that's what it felt like, I mean, we roamed the halls, we, you know, shouted at the top of our lungs, you know, did did weird things to you know, get some stress relief. But it was terrible. You know, I mean, the the the the institution is designed to create relationships to build networks. And we were essentially trying to reverse engineer the place, creating separation, creating distance. That was by design, and it's just not natural.

Welcome back to Perseverentia. Last time, we heard about the students and faculty that got pushed away from campus when the pandemic first arrived. Today, we’ll look at those who had to stay, those who had to keep working on campus. This is Episode 3: The Essentials.

Fitchburg State lists “sustaining a supportive campus environment for students, faculty, staff, and alumni in which all members can grow and excel in their personal and professional lives” as a core value of the university. What happens to the campus when students and faculty are forced away? What happens when the core of the campus is forced away? 

VP of Student Affairs, Dr. Laura Bayless, was among those who stayed on campus. She vividly remembers the experience

AD Laura Bayless

Unknown Speaker  22:43 

It's terrible. It was the weirdest thing, I would come to work, you know, and there's 10 cars on campus. And, you know, you don't, in some ways, it was masked for me a little bit, because I would just come here, and I would come to my office, and all of these offices, like, right around this hallway are filled, because we're all working here… You know, I mean, at least the vice presidents, the president, the executive cabinet members, the administrative assistants were not here. You know, so it would just be like me in the office by myself here. You know, Jay (Bry), who's the Chief Business Officer as we share that wall, me and him, and then the Associate Provost and the provost and the President and the HR Associate Vice President, you know, so in some ways, we had people around us, not very many, but we were here, but campus was, like, dead, quiet. You know, and the buildings were not open. So, there's no running over to Hammond for some tea. There's no grabbing lunch in the dining hall. 

Administration was faced with endless challenges to try and get the university working in its new setting. University President Richard Lapidus provided a relatively detailed account of the work being done on all levels of the university.

AD Richard Lapidus

Richard Lapidus  0:47  

Yeah, so that was a big planning week. One, we obviously had to think about transitioning students to a remote format for which none of the classes or very few of the classes were, were designed. And so we needed time to give faculty the opportunity to do that. We were extraordinarily fortunate, because I think maybe a semester or two prior, I had made the decision to move to Google format. And so everything was already in. In that forum, I added an enterprise system kind of way. And so part of it was just to learn how to navigate Google meet synonyms. So we were very fortunate in that regard. Faculty had the obviously the most amount of work to do and figuring out how they were going to convert their lectures and all their materials to, to that format. At the same time, we had to on the back end, the things that people tend not to think about, we had to figure out how to sort of activate our business continuity plan. How is this place going to operate remotely as well. So all of a sudden, people had to figure out teleworking, so we're disassembling the infrastructure here and, and sending people home with all kinds of equipment that wasn't necessarily designed to be used that way so that the university could operate. So just a phenomenal amount of work. We were working 18, 20 hour days for at least two weeks just to get some bare minimum up. And then from once on ended, you know, I'm sure the students have said, but I know the faculty and staff would say the same we, we worked harder during that semester, probably than any time in our lives. It was just challenging and stressful.

The influx of work and the transition into a state of emergency forced the University to focus more on efficiency and making incredibly quick decisions. An unfortunate drawback of that is the information those who were away from campus received about these decisions was incredibly limited. Student Government President Kerry McManus knew this all too well.

AD Kerry McManus

Unknown Speaker  2:18

 I always wish and they've gotten a lot better at it after Student Government has pestered them many times. But I always wished that administration had been more willing to come to student government so we could provide them the student perspective and that student feedback before some of their larger decisions were made. Because there were a few times where decisions were made. We were kind of like, oh, wait, what's happening? For the most part, they did very well. And after we, you know, moaned and complained and mind about not getting enough student input. And these decisions that students were rather worked up about got much better from that point on.

CAUTELA III

Unknown Speaker  18:54  - DONE

A lot of students still don't know that health services isn't on campus or incoming freshmen or just incoming students in general. I also work at the info desk as a building manager, but I also worked as an info desk manager last year, and they'd be so many times and people have come up to me asking where health services are, and I would have to try to explain to them that is actually not on campus, and that if they want to go it's like a 30 to 40 minute walk. So I think the advertising of health services off campus could have been much better I've actually never been so for all I know the services are excellent. 

Steve Olson, Student Trustee at the time of the decision, expressed a lot of frustration about how the decision was handled.

AD Steve Olson

15:32

…it became clear to us after the fact like okay, maybe this was an okay decision, you know, the university was in a bad spot. With the pandemic, it's my understanding that everyone who was employed in the Health Services Office was older and closer to retirement. So some of them just took an early retirement or they found employment elsewhere, or just simply didn't want to work in nursing through a pandemic or want to work in health care through a pandemic. And I understand that I respect that. So Fitchburg was kind of left at a crossroads of do we hire a whole new Health Services staff, and re equip the Health Services Office to deal with a pandemic? Or do we go with Community Health Connections over on Wall Street, to try and get, try and get that working, trying to try and get that as a substitute. And that was hashed out over the summer. When classes weren't running. Student Government sessions, student government was not in session, the Board of Trustees was not meeting. And students had no say in that decision. And trying to retro actively say, Hey, guys, what's going on here? was very tough. Because the decision was made about us without us. God forbid someone slips and fall when I when we leave this interview, and I will go down the stairs in front of First of all, if my right knee just explodes on me. Right, and all attendances, terror, whatever, I know, it's a grotesque picture. But say something horrific, like that happens. All the sudden, you're gonna have to

Unknown Speaker  17:22  

charge me to be interesting. I'm practical take,

Unknown Speaker  17:26  

I'll give you the keys to my truck, I parked closer either way, I'm gonna have to get outside transportation to that health office. Where whereas otherwise, it would just be in the just next to Russell towers. And I can hobble over there myself. And it's tough to think like, oh, yeah, in the middle of a pandemic, your health services is gone. Thanks, guys. You know, and the plan was to come back for that, that semester, too. And we did for a minute. We started that semester on campus. And we went back after after Thanksgiving. And we didn't have health services on campus. The quarantining was sketchy from what I understand for residents. And the overall just vibe of campus after that decision was off. And I think that's the decision that kind of set us on the course to where we are now is a written administration. And I want and I want to 

Perhaps the largest decision made during the pandemic was the decision to move University Health Services off campus to a third-party private facility with two branches in Fitchburg. Joe Cautela, one of the most prominent student leaders on campus, was one of the defining voices of dissent on that decision.

emphasize this make making I don't know if it's the correct decision, but correctly making a decision. So they made a decision because they had to, and they were short on time. And I understand that that's on the pandemic's then.

President Lapidus gives more context on the move from an administrative perspective.

Richard Lapidus  11:32  

Sure. So that that decision really wasn't a COVID related decision. That was a that was in the works, I think, before COVID hit. And it concern there was that student need at this institution and across the state has been growing. We're seeing more and more students with either health issues that they have, or health issues that they're not addressing. And sort of the old fashioned, at least on our campus, the old fashioned health services that we had, really didn't have a broad enough reach of services. So we had two nurses that were working five days a week with specified hours in a very small facility for which we couldn't grow or enhance the services. Because medical facilities have specific requirements for the environment, a lot of it revolving around H vac, air circulation, etc. 

So, the University was left with a decision. Build a whole new medical facility, or outsource.

So we would either have to build a medical facility on the campus, which didn't make a lot of sense to me, because that would then result probably, in health services fees that we don't charge on this campus. Or to try to take advantage of, as you said, Community Health Connections, which has two branches within a mile of the campus in two different directions. So you can either go to the one, which is by the market basket on Waterstreet Waterstreet. Or you can go up to the old Burbank campus, yes, which is where they have some of their enhanced services got it. So the thinking was that if we could get students in front of doctors, or other professional providers, along with a bank of nurses, where you now can go anytime of the day or night, lab services, optical, etc, etc, that we were providing a broader array of services. And we found so far and we will survey students actually in the fall to see how they're liking it. But what we are seeing is that those services are being taken advantage of particularly around behavioral and mental health. So now we have psychology professionals, even psychiatry professionals, working with students that can dose serious medications if needed. And interestingly enough, quite a lot of interest with Optometry. And initially why I was a little surprised going back and looking at the literature. optometry is one of the most abused of all the student services you know, so you say geez, I, I can't see the board quite well or Are I have constant headaches or he can't focus. A lot of that is site related. You need corrective lenses. And now but people didn't want to pay for it, you know, if you sort of look at the, the payments for eye care and dental care sucks, there's a high cost. And so now students are taking advantage of that. So, you know, only time will tell, I know that there are some cons to taking it off campus. But I thought that the pros outweigh the cons. And so that's what we did.

In the midst of chaos, even faculty members were sometimes left in the dark. Brad Cohrs, director of the university’s Recreation Center, expressed his frustration.

CL Brad Cohrs

Unknown Speaker  4:51  

A lot of communications that can take place with people being off campus. And so I certainly hope that the university learned a great deal as far as efficiency and productivity, it's not essential for us to always be in person. But that being said, especially with the student interaction, I think one thing we realized is how much we maybe took for granted, just how great that was to have the student interaction and how important that was, for growth, really, to have people here to have them benefiting from really being in the rec center. 

The work that Administration completed on campus clearly had a large impact on those off-campus. Steve Olson, a commuter student who lives in nearby Lunenburg, relied heavily on the social experience of going to campus and seeing friends and classmates. Here he is discussing the shock he experienced seeing the University in its emergency state.

AD Steve Olson

Unknown Speaker  7:41

I live six minutes away from campus, that's my drive to the campus six minutes. And coming into school, I would, because I have nothing else to do, I would just go drive around, and I would drive down North Street and there would be not a soul in sight. There'd be no cars, no anything, nothing there. Excuse me, noting that nobody, and it was almost eerie. And it really hit me when I would drive past the civic center in the Landry arena. Because the Landry arena, as we know became a temporary morgue. And they had privacy fencing surrounding that, but it wasn't very good privacy fencing, it was temporary. It was just like that construction fencing with the green tarp on it kind of green like canvas, and you could see straight through it. And you could see the refrigerator truck so you can see the people working. It was a I don't want to say humbling. There's not a really a word I can use to describe that, that that site.

Life on campus was just as difficult as life at home. Despite being physically present, the essential faculty of the university felt disconnected from the rest of the campus community. They still needed to make decisions to ensure the university didn’t collapse as a result of online learning, and the disconnect between administration and faculty and students ultimately contributed to the outcomes of those decisions.

AD Kerry McManus

Unknown Speaker  2:18

 I always wish and they've gotten a lot better at it after Student Government has pestered them many times. But I always wished that administration had been more willing to come to student government so we could provide them the student perspective and that student feedback before some of their larger decisions were made. Because there were a few times where decisions were made. We were kind of like, oh, wait, what's happening? For the most part, they did very well. And after we, you know, moaned and complained and mind about not getting enough student input. And these decisions that students were rather worked up about got much better from that point on.

Unknown Speaker  4:34  

And I know for administration, they did a lot of extra work behind the scenes. They were in meetings up all night. I've talked to a few of them about that. So I do know that there was quite a lot going on.

AD Steve Olson

Unknown Speaker  7:41

I live six minutes away from campus, that's my drive to the campus six minutes. And coming into school, I would, because I have nothing else to do, I would just go drive around, and I would drive down North Street and there would be not a soul in sight. There'd be no cars, no anything, nothing there. Excuse me, noting that nobody, and it was almost eerie. And it really hit me when I would drive past the civic center in the Landry arena. Because the Landry arena, as we know became a temporary morgue. And they had privacy fencing surrounding that, but it wasn't very good privacy fencing, it was temporary. It was just like that construction fencing with the green tarp on it kind of green like canvas, and you could see straight through it. And you could see the refrigerator truck so you can see the people working. It was a I don't want to say humbling. There's not a really a word I can use to describe that, that that site.

CL Brad Cohrs

Unknown Speaker  4:51  

A lot of communications that can take place with people being off campus. And so I certainly hope that the university learned a great deal as far as efficiency and productivity, it's not essential for us to always be in person. But that being said, especially with the student interaction, I think one thing we realized is how much we maybe took for granted, just how great that was to have the student interaction and how important that was, for growth, really, to have people here to have them benefiting from really being in the rec center. 

Unknown Speaker  6:40  

it changed how we cleaned, it changed how we went about, really our daily processes here in the in the rec center. And that one of the things that we wanted to do right away, we realized, which was standard in the industry, was instead of having our traditional setup around the rec center with all the you know, fitness and cardio equipment up in the fitness center, and everything we were looking to space people out. And so one of the things we wanted to do was to take all of our fitness equipment and put it in the gymnasium. So we thought that was going to be our best way to do things moving forward. And we were surprised to find out to just have a company command and move our equipment down the floor was about $10,000. And so we realized early on that we were not going to be able to afford to do that. Yeah. And and so with kind of the cleaning regulations that were coming from the state was also the requirement that every piece of fitness equipment that people beyond, it had to be 14 feet apart from each other 14. And so you know, I don't know off the top of my head. But in the fitness center, we probably have a good 40 or 50 pieces of equipment in just that fitness center part. And so we had to based on quick math and how we could measure things out, we could really only have like eight or nine pieces of equipment that people could really use.

CL Kat McClellan

Kat McLellan  0:20  

Okay, so when we first went remote in March of 2020, the initial goal was to continue to provide all of our services but to provide them remotely. So during that spring break, we spent an amount of time converting all of our services to remote services on the fly. So we created the system of having unique links in Google Calendar and setting it up so SSC would email those links automatically to students when they sign up for an appointment so that we could continue to have the same drop in effect for tutoring that we have always had when we were in person because it was both create all of your services as remote services, do so in a way that supports privacy, and also don't spend any money because of course, the university was trying not to spend any money. So so that was the hugest change, of course, we all were working remotely as well. So we started to rely a lot more on various online tools like Slack and Trello. Because actually sending each other 300 emails a day is terrible, and doesn't accomplish anything, and then, when we returned, it turned out that some students really prefer online services.