 This program is brought to you by cable franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you This is the Amherst weekly report from Amherst media Friday, February 26 2021 I'm Claire Healy and these are the stories from Amherst, Massachusetts this past week in Early February community members had the chance to once again celebrate Amherst annual Winter Fest With this year's main attraction being around a dozen large ice sculptures The Amherst weekly reports Chris McLaughlin has more from a report filmed earlier this month Thanks Claire Amherst recreation the business improvement district and the Amherst area Chamber have come together to put on a modified winter fest for 2021 this year's drive by event features 11 life-size animal sculptures on display on the town common and open for all to see The idea was you know, we want to avoid Crowd gatherings and we know it's great as the Luminaria was it is and could be next year We will just you know want to avoid that So we're encouraging people to go in their cars get in their cars and they can drive by across from the What used to be the Lord? I'm really excited for it knowing we have a you know a really talented artist and again the Amherst area Chamber and more importantly the or most importantly the Business improvement district and all of us and how Amherst recreation Town of Amherst have all put our hands in to make something special this season Despite restrictions imposed by the pandemic the Amherst community is still finding ways to highlight and celebrate this wintertime season For the Amherst weekly report. I'm Chris McLaughlin Following student gatherings the last weekend of January The UMass Amherst campus saw its largest uptick in positive case numbers recorded so far during its first week of classes According to the UMass COVID-19 dashboard this one week resulted in a total of over 400 new cases in the course of seven days Now three weeks into the spring semester UMass has already recorded over 900 positive COVID-19 cases Due to the large increase UMass Chancellor Subhaswamy raised the campus risk level to high risk After it had been raised to elevated risk only two days prior Under the high risk designation all students on and off campus were told to self sequester Meaning that they should only go out to obtain meals get tested twice weekly for COVID-19 or to attend medical appointments All in-person classes moved online and students were asked to refrain from travel and not gather with anyone outside their household Failure to comply would result in disciplinary action including removal from on-campus housing and potential suspension The measures were relaxed beginning this past week, but are still considered to be at elevated levels As of February 22nd in-person classes athletics and library on-site services have resumed Employment restrictions for students have also been eased as many students who had off campus jobs were prevented from working due to the tightened measures Students are now required to get tested for COVID-19 twice a week or they will lose access to their online class platforms Unauthorized student gatherings and guests on campus are still prohibited The University Museum of Contemporary Art UMass Amherst largest exhibition space closed before this outbreak alongside many similar spaces due to the pandemic However, it is starting to open back up to the public with three virtual exhibits available until April 30th The museum had hoped to open to the university community for in-person viewing this week, but is postponing that reopening The first exhibit titled We Are for Freedoms is a collaboration with the non-profit organization for Freedoms Which focuses on civic engagement in art The second exhibit is artifacts at the end of a decade 44 unique pieces of photography, ceramics, fiber, print, clothing, painting, and drawing, compiled from a variety of artists in 1979 Finally, the third exhibit is Mirror Mirror, the prints of Alice and Tsar, a series of prints from the artist Alice and Tsar who focuses her work on the African diaspora and black woman identity The Amherst Weekly report has been covering a story about Amherst students attendance during the pandemic We have been investigating why certain students including those who are English language learners or in the free lunch program have had lower attendance than those who are not Rebecca Duffy sat down with Emily Gribko, the student representative on the regional school committee to learn more Basically, I had to serve as a connection between the students and the school committee So with the SAC, which is the student advisory council at the high school, that was a group that like elected me I just take their input and report back and get student feedback to bring to the meetings and just sit in the meetings so students know what's going on Gribko thinks there are a few factors as to why certain students have lower attendance than others I don't know how much I can personally speak on this, but I think a lot of it is that with like technology like inequalities with like Wi-Fi and computers access and stuff, I think a lot of that tends to target certain groups of people like you were mentioning like people on free lunch and lower income So I think that that might be sort of an aspect of that and why there's sort of a lower attendance than others and why there's sort of a lower attendance rate Also, you know, other responsibilities, some people have to take care of kids or something or like, you know, siblings, I think that could definitely be a factor of that too From her perspective, Gribko believes Amherst Pellum Regional Public Schools are doing a good job in ensuring all students have access to the technology they need to succeed They're doing really well, they make sure that everyone has a Chromebook so all the students I think right now have a Chromebook for personal use and earlier in the summer, they're talking about giving like Wi-Fi hotspots to people that don't have their own Wi-Fi or setting that up, so that's definitely, I think they're working around those inequalities and to make sure that everyone has, you know, access to technology and teachers are really understanding too, like if you're a little late to a meeting because of Wi-Fi or something, they get it At UMass Amherst, Professor John Bracey of the WEB Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies is conducting an archival project titled Black Presence at UMass This project seeks to document the legacy and life of UMass black students, alumni and faculty on a website and ultimately in a book The piece I'm working on is the content for the website and there are two aspects of that When it began, I think people thought it'd be something to be fairly easy to do You know, you find 25 or 30 famous people and you interview them and you throw it up on the website and it kind of goes galloping along but I'm a historian and I knew better and I said this is going to take a little bit longer than that and if you want to do everybody, and we do want to do everybody to say all the alums, all black alums, all black faculty, all black administrators, all black staff all black anybody that came anywhere near UMass from 1867 to the present He has been teaching a parallel course under the same name in which students assist with this work Mainly I had one assistant, Erica Slokum, who's a grad student and we couldn't do it all by ourselves So by setting up a class, we get undergrads and grads who help us with the interviews We assign people to interview alums or faculty or administrators who have an interest that they have So if you're interested, say in sports, we give you some sports people to interview If you're interested in biology, we find that grads in biology, you interview those So there's something for everybody Whatever your interest is, we have alums or faculty or administrators or staff who can meet that particular need One of the African students wanted to interview African students because we hadn't thought about that as a category But in fact it's a category And so we're getting interesting kinds of viewpoints on what it was like to be black at UMass So we're African at UMass and so forth Both Bracey and his students have been conducting interviews with black members of the UMass community, both past and present And we'll make those interviews public on the website and in the university archives Likely this upcoming summer But the interviews for the website, they're going to put up short little clips of things Because you know, they don't want to put up big things The interviews that Erica and I are doing In fact much more substantial than that We're doing interviews at average about an hour And they will be deposited in the library, special collections Under Blake Spitz's supervision And so what you will have is a massive, massive body of material To evaluate and understand the black presence at UMass Mainly from the 1950s on until before that people were not around anymore But we've got historical topics that people can work on Like the black students who were here at the beginning of the 20th century And there was a small group of them that came out of black colleges To get an agricultural degree so they could get land grant money for black colleges But nobody studied them, but that's a whole master's thesis or dissertation for somebody We had people that were here in the 1920s We just haven't tracked them down yet But the number of active alums is about 3,000 So they're literally 3,000 African So we're kind of working, trying to work that down And you do the obvious famous people, you know, the Marcus Cambys The Julius Irvings, Natasha Tretheway Fatally like, you know, John Whiteman who was here and so forth The scientists we had at one point, which people don't know In the math department We had three of the 10 black mathematicians with PhDs in the whole country Don St. Mary, Floyd, Floyd Williams and Nate Whitaker There were only 10, like 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Black people with PhDs in mathematics Three of them were on our campus I mean that's a phenomenal kind of circumstance Bracey hopes that this archive can serve as a resource and inspiration For researchers and students And is working to interview as many people as possible He encourages anyone interested in being interviewed To reach out to him at his email jhbracey at umass.edu In national news, last week snowstorms devastated the state of Texas Killing at least 26 people According to CNN, temperatures were historically low With multiple cities dipping into the single digits More than 4 million people lost power and heat And there were over 500 vehicle crashes in Houston from Sunday to Tuesday alone Over 15 million people were impacted by water disruptions statewide Temperatures began to warm this past Sunday And much of Texas will be in the 60s and 70s If you are looking to donate money or supplies to help Texas Here are some storm relief resources Some people in Massachusetts have been facing difficulties Scheduling vaccination appointments for those ages 65 and up According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette Residents tried making appointments for themselves or their parents But after repeatedly entering their information online It said that there were no vaccinations available at any sites They refreshed websites for hours to try to fix the issue Others entered their personal information online And it kept getting deleted Massachusetts officials apologized for the website challenges In a series of tweets from mass.gov According to NBC Boston State officials said it could take over a month For all eligible individuals to book an appointment Residents are told to keep checking the website As appointments are added on a rolling basis That's all for this week Thank you for tuning in to the Amherst Weekly Report from Amherst Media I'm Claire Healy and we'll see you at the same time next week