summer is here!

[Bill Maurer]

    Dear social sciences faculty, staff, grad students, lecturers, and researchers,

    With Commencement ceremonies--virtual and in-person--now over, it
    feels like summer is finally here, and with it, the beginning of a
    new phase in our pandemic lives. This will be my final message for
    the year. And it's the time of year when the jacarandas begin to
    drop their blooms, graduates and recent PhDs go off into the world,
    we mark LGBTQ Pride Month, as well as Juneteenth this coming Saturday.
    As a community, we've shared in each other's grief at the losses
    to Covid or otherwise that we've faced--friends, colleagues,
    relatives--and celebrated together as we welcomed a bunch of new
    babies, in our own little Social Sciences baby-boomlet. In my Covid
    victory garden, the peas are basically finished, the beets are
    hanging on doing not much of anything, and my tiny okra plants
    struggle... but stretch toward the sun. I think they'll make it.
    We will too.

    Things are going to start happening on campus, but (surprise!) it's
    not going to be a straightforward path. Here's the latest. The
    Governor's official reopening is June 15. Cal/OSHA recently issued,
    and then almost immediately revised, its own guidance regarding
    workplace safety. The campus is still technically in its Phase 3
    Research reopening, and there may be news of a Phase 4--be on the
    lookout for that. Campus facilities will be reopening all the
    buildings on their normal, pre-pandemic schedule beginning July 6.
    But in a meeting with the deans, David Souleles, director of the
    campus's Covid response team, said that the timing of various parts
    of the reopening and return is not going to align neatly: the timing
    of when we don't need to submit return-to-work plans to occupy our
    spaces for research or events, and when we don't need masks, and
    when the campus interprets the Cal OSHA guidelines, etc. etc. The
    period between June 15 and July 6 is likely to be particularly ...
    weird? I think we can expect to still be wearing face masks inside,
    and we should still continue to use the daily symptom checker app.
    And let's remember that, regardless of the official guidance,
    everyone's comfort level is going to be different, and re-entry is
    as much about our own emotional readiness to be in close physical
    proximity to others as it is a public health matter. So, let's
    continue to embrace the uncertainty, and be patient with one another!

    I'll be taking a little break the week of July 5. I've got my garden
    to tend to; I am sure you each have yours, too. Here's to a summer
    of rest, care, and... stepping back out, and in the company of
    others, bit by bit.

    Happy summer!
    Bill