Pride Month is here once again, and Colorado State University’s very own KCSU has kicked off celebrations with a brand-new podcast, “Patria Del Cuore,” written and directed by Alana Corrigan. But the podcast, which breaks new ground as a play produced as audio drama, has had a long life journey, one that […]

Marshawn Lynch, Justin Forsett named to Cal Athletics Hall of Fame

The dominance of running backs Marshawn Lynch and Justin Forsett will be honored in the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame.

As far as one-two combos go, there haven’t been many pairs of running backs in the history of college football better than Marshawn Lynch and Justin Forsett. Now, their dominance will forever be memorialized in the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame.

Headed to the Hall together!

Congrats to the 1-2 tandem of @MoneyLynch and @JForsett! pic.twitter.com/Le25Giigxs

— Cal Football (@CalFootball) June 9, 2021

Forsett’s sterling career was capped with an absolutely dominant 2007 season, in which he rushed for more than 1,500 yards on 305 attempts, as well as 15 touchdowns. Named to that year’s All-Pac-10 first team, Forsett helped carry Cal to seven wins. Following that season, Forsett’s career yardage would eclipse 3,100, cementing him among the top 10 all-time rushers for the Bears. Forsett was then drafted in the seventh round of the 2008 NFL Draft, and in 2014 he earned a Pro Bowl selection while playing for the Baltimore Ravens.

As for Beast Mode, what more can be said? Lynch is one of the most iconic figures in Cal football history, and likely would be if the only thing remembered was his moment of glory in a golf cart. But luckily for all parties involved, that was just the tip of the iceberg for the Oakland legend.

Lynch rushed for more than 3,200 yards in his three-year Berkeley career (just eking out his partner Justin Forsett) and tacked on 29 touchdowns on the ground for good measure. Lynch brought contact to the defense every Saturday, and was so good at it that he was drafted in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft and got an opportunity to do so on Sundays, too. Lynch would finish his NFL career in 2019, with more than 10,000 yards rushing and 85 touchdowns, along with five Pro Bowl selections and an appearance on the First Team All-Pro roster in 2012.

Lynch and Forsett are both incredibly deserving of their respective spots in the Hall, and Bears fans everywhere will rejoice upon seeing them together in blue and gold one more time.

Jesse Stewart covers football. Contact him at jstewart@dailycal.org, and follow him on Twitter @jessedstew.

The Daily Californian

Juana Garcia/The Cougar

While most of us spent this past year of confinement wondering when we’ll get back to the real world, Bo Burnham produced “Inside,” a comedy special now on Netflix. 

Throughout the special, you can see how in tune Burham is with the times. Burnham began producing his special at the beginning of the pandemic, when people had just begun to realize the coronavirus was real and masks weren’t a normal part of one’s outfit of the day. 

Burnham films the entire special in one room/house, and uses lighting to create depth in one singular space. 

Watching the special, you can tell around when in the last year each song was likely produced. 

For instance, about five minutes in, Burnham’s first number in the special addressed last year’s protests and advocacy around the Black Lives Matter movement. He was also able to recognize his privilege as a white man in America through sarcastic comedy. 

This trend of sarcasm continues throughout the special with a now fan-favorite song, “White Woman’s Instagram.” Burnham, once again, uses lighting, sarcasm and the resources he likely had at his disposal to create fake Instagram posts that he thinks someone would typically find on a white woman’s instagram.

This song comes right after a strong message he delivers about marketing departments and companies attempting to address social justice issues without seeming too opinionated. 

These sharp cuts between numbers with little to no explanation of what may be coming next is very indicative of Burnham’s usual comedy style. Aside from his directing and producing career, Burnham performed stand-up comedy pretty often, even having one taped and put on Netflix called “Make Happy.”

Burnham addressed his stand-up career in this special and was very nonchalant about his reason behind stopping live performances. He developed stage fright sometime between the “Make Happy” and “Inside” specials, and when he felt comfortable performing in front of audiences again, the pandemic hit.

Overall, Burnham’s special was long awaited and definitely worth the wait. Now that vaccines are more readily available and Bo Burnham is outside, a tour with similar tones of sarcasm and lighthearted humor would be appreciated. 

arts@thedailycougar.com

—
“Bo Burnham’s “Inside” brings lighthearted sarcasm to tough times” was originally posted on The Cougar

The University System of Georgia (USG) newly released guideline recommendations for university policies for the upcoming Fall semester. After approaching students on the Armstrong campus on Friday, Jun. 4, some were willing to comment on the USG’s suggested university procedures.

The USG stated in a live update on May 17, 2021 that they “strongly encourage faculty, staff, students and visitors to get vaccinated and continue to do so. While the vaccines are safe and effective, it is an individual decision to receive one and will not be required to be a part of our campuses.”

The USG added in another live update that fully vaccinated individuals are free to attend normal campus classes and activities without wearing face coverings while unvaccinated individuals are urged to continue doing so.

“I think that makes sense,” Nick Hickman, a senior, said. “Everybody should still be wearing a mask if they’re not vaccinated. I think that’s a good plan not to force face coverings on individuals.”
The USG stated institutions are expected to resume traditional student activities beginning Fall 2021 regardless of whether individuals are vaccinated or not.
“If the institutions do resume traditional activities in Fall of 2021 then it is on the individuals to become vaccinated,” Nathan Chapman, a senior, said. “I believe there should be no more accommodations given to those who refuse to become vaccinated. While it doesn’t matter to me if someone got the vaccine or not, I believe institutions shouldn’t give out accommodations to those who are unvaccinated when the vaccine is available.”

While vaccinations are available through the university and local community providers, the university is not required to measure the vaccination rate amongst the university population.

“I just feel like they should keep track of the COVID cases and make sure they’re going down,” Sammy Sawyers, a sophomore, said.

For more information about the University System of Georgia’s latest COVID-19 guidance, read “USG Publishes New Guidelines for Vaccinated Individuals for Fall 2021” or click here to read the full USG guidance.

Javier Montañez will serve as the new interim superintendent of the Providence Public School District following former superintendent Harrison Peters’ May resignation, according to a press release from the Rhode Island Department of Education. Montañez is currently the principal of Leviton Dual Language School, an elementary school in Providence focused on bilingual education in English and Spanish. 

Montañez will step into the role in the wake of Peters’ May resignation, which was due to Peters’ hiring of an administrator, Olayinka Alege, who was charged with assault for rubbing a teenage boy’s foot nonconsensually during his tenure in the PPSD and accused of “popping” toes as a form of discipline prior to arriving, The Herald previously reported.

Amid an already contentious state takeover, the scandal and Peters’ subsequent resignation further sowed uncertainty about Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green’s leadership. 

Some constituents and colleagues worried that the hiring process for Peters was not sufficiently thorough, crediting Infante-Green with the oversight, The Herald previously reported. 

Victor Morente, director of communications at the RIDE, previously told The Herald that the “months-long (hiring) process … considered input from state and city leaders as well as community members including parents and students.” Further, Infante-Green had not been informed about the accusations against Alege prior to hiring Peters, Morente previously wrote in an email to The Herald.

A former Hope High School student himself, Montañez has served in the PPSD since 1997, starting his education career as a dual-language teacher before eventually becoming an assistant principal and finally a principal. 

Montañez took a nontraditional path to district leadership. Growing up, Montañez experienced homelessness and would often come to school just to receive the two meals a day there. After experiencing academic difficulties, he dropped out of high school, but eventually went back to school to receive his GED, according to the press release.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to lead Providence Public Schools and work with our incredible school community during this pivotal moment,” Montañez said in the press release. “I know the immense value of an education personally because it changed my life, and I’m eager to contribute to the transformational work that is taking place in Providence to help students reach their highest potential.”

Infante-Green expressed hope about Montañez’s appointment. “As a product of Providence Public Schools and now a leader in the District, Dr. Montanez is uniquely prepared to build on the strong foundation laid to turn around Providence schools,” Infante-Green said in the press release. “Throughout his years of service Dr. Montañez has demonstrated a deep commitment to Providence students and families. A lot of work remains ahead to improve outcomes for students in the capital city, and I’m pleased to have him as a partner in this critical effort.”

It remains to be seen if Montañez will fill the role permanently — a role that state leaders hope to fill before the start of the school year. 

Morente declined to comment beyond the press release. 

(Emory Wheel/Jay Jones)

The transformative possibilities of defunding the police and abolishing prisons have entered the popular imagination over the past year. Much of the momentum on the streets gained over the summer of 2020 has slowed down, but millions of people were exposed to the radical framework of abolition. Now that it’s LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, queerness will enter the spotlight as corporations create rainbow versions of their logos, rainbow products are placed on shelves and queerness is depoliticized in the name of inclusion. However, as abolition and transformative justice rise in popularity, queer folks and abolitionists have a responsibility to draw connections between queer and trans liberation and the elimination of carceral systems. Prison abolition is a queer issue.

Queer people have long been criminalized and faced significant harm at the hands of the prison industrial complex. Anti-sodomy laws are some of the more obvious examples, originating in 16th century western Europe and spreading to many of its colonies as a means of social control and legislating morality. In the mid-20th century, when gay cruising was criminalized and highly policed, surveillance and entrapment were key tactics for the state to control queer people’s relationships with the fear of being exposed, disowned, fired, attacked or arrested. Similarly, many queer spaces, including bars, theaters, bookstores and magazines, were and are policed by obscenity and indecency laws. Laws against so-called cross-dressing and impersonation—in other words, wearing clothes of the supposedly wrong gender—have a long history as well. One of the most infamous was New York’s three-article rule, in which people were required to wear three pieces of so-called correctly gendered clothing. This informal rule allowed police to harass queer folks defying gender norms, most often drag queens, trans people and butch lesbians.

Queerness has also long been pathologized, as many LGBTQIA+ people have been forcibly committed to mental institutions and hospitals under the guise of curing deviant sexuality. Queer people, especially queer sex workers of color, were also heavily policed during the AIDS crisis through quarantine orders (though ineffective) and a ban on entry for immigrants with HIV. Policing and violence against queer people, especially queer people of color and Indigenous people who reject settler sexuality, has transformed significantly over the last several centuries, but there is no doubt that our community has been continually harmed by surveillance, policing, and the entire prison industrial complex.

The harms of prisons and policing against the queer community are still very much alive, making the depoliticization of queer pride even more dangerous. One of the most highly politicized attacks on our community over the last few years was North Carolina’s proposed bathroom bill in 2016, in which trans people would have been required to use the bathroom of their assigned gender, rather than the most affirming one. Transphobic legislation has had a resurgence over the past year as well, including not only similar bathroom bills but also restrictions on trans health care and trans participation in sports. Many of these bills directly rely on the threat of carceral punishment (e.g. jail time for parents who provide youth with trans-related healthcare), but even those without explicit criminal implications rely on the state’s power to dictate morality and to police those who do not conform.

In addition to legal discrimination, many queer people also face harsh rejection from their immediate family and risk losing access to housing and financial support. Unhoused people are highly policed regardless of their sexuality, but 40% of unhoused youth are queer; unhoused queer youth are 200% more likely to be arrested for status offenses such as truancy and running away than their straight cisgender counterparts. Additionally, unhoused queer folks are often pushed into criminalized economies like drug sales and sex work. This is especially dangerous for trans women of color, who are subjected to assault, police harassment, profiling (such as with the Walking While Trans law), and arrest. Following the footsteps of the quarantine orders in the AIDS crisis, HIV transmission has been criminalized in most U.S. states, disproportionately affecting queer people, especially queer men of color. This also extends to immigrants, especially those in ICE detention facilities, who frequently face violence, denial of healthcare, and solitary confinement based on a positive HIV status.

Queer people, especially those of color, are overrepresented in both the juvenile and adult prison systems and are more likely to face abuse and violence from police and prison officials. It is clear that our community confronts a colossal amount of violence every day, particularly at the hands of police, prisons and the prison industrial complex. How can we possibly liberate ourselves and each other if we do not center fundamental social transformation, including prison abolition, in our movement?

Not only is policing in our community’s history, but resistance is too. The most famous example is the 1969 Stonewall Riots, an explicitly anti-police riot following a raid of a queer-friendly bar. Riots, uprisings and rebellions like the Stonewall Riots occurred across the country in response to police brutality and surveillance, including the Compton Cafeteria Riots in San Francisco, riots at the the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles, Dewey’s Lunch Counter Sit-Ins in Philadelphia, and riots following a police raid of Ansley’s Mini-Cinema in Atlanta. ACT UP also vocally denounced police brutality and persistent arrests at its actions during the AIDS crisis, and the gay liberation movement collaborated with the Black Panther Party to resist state violence.

Additionally, all queer resistance in the U.S. today is built on the continual resistance of Indigenous peoples to settler sexuality, heteronormativity, mononormativity, the nuclear family, the gender binary and the violent state supression of Indigenous knowledge of kinship and family. Resisting settler sexuality means resisting settler policing. In solidarity with their Indigenous siblings, many foundational Black feminists and abolitionists viewed their queerness as integral to their resistance; from the Combahee River Collective to Audre Lorde to Angela Davis, our trailblazing predecessors knew the importance of centering queerness in the fight for prison abolition, and centering prison abolition in the fight for queer liberation.

Solidarity between queer folks on the outside and those currently or previously incarcerated is critical. Efforts like the Black and Pink, the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, LGBT Books to Prisoners, and Survived and Punished all work towards accessing better living conditions for queer and trans people in prisons, towards freeing our community members, and towards creating a world where the abuses inherent to policing, prisons, surveillance, and punishment are no longer possible.

We need to follow in the footsteps of Black queer feminist abolitionists and not allow our celebration of queer pride be diverted from the radical and transformational intentions our community has had for centuries. Pride means liberating ourselves and each other from the systems that oppress us. Pride means resistance.

Jay Jones (22Ox, 24C) is from Tallahassee, Florida.

The post Prison Abolition is a Queer Liberation Issue appeared first on The Emory Wheel.

The Minnesota Daily Board of Directors has chosen Niamh Coomey to serve as the new editor-in-chief (EIC) and Avni Tripathi for business operations officer (BOO). They will hold these roles from May 2021 to May 2022.

The EIC and BOO went through a rigorous process of job applications, essay questions and presentations before the Board of Directors made a decision. The EIC oversees all of the editorial decisions, which include the school paper, while the BOO is in charge of the business side of the Daily, including advertising and sales.

Editor-in-chief

Coomey will enter her fourth year as a journalism student this fall. She has been working at the Minnesota Daily since the fall of 2018, when she was a first-year student.

Coomey started on the city desk as a cops and courts reporter. She then switched to the campus activities desk, where she reported on student government, before moving to the campus administration desk, covering staff and faculty. During the 2020-21 school year, she was the campus administration editor.

Before starting at the University of Minnesota, Coomey worked at the Roseville Area High School’s newspaper, the Raider Report, and was promoted to EiC during her senior year of high school.

As the new leader, Coomey hopes to make the Daily more accessible.

“[At the Daily,] we don’t pay a ton, but it is a really big time commitment,” she said. “One thing that I would really like to do is make some of the positions a little more flexible so people can still work at the Daily … but not necessarily have to write two stories a week in order to get paid.”

Coomey also wants to expand the Daily’s social media presence.

“I’m hoping to set up a TikTok manager position,” she said. “Expanding to more platforms that college students use will be helpful for our brand as a paper.”

Daily board member Drew Geraets said in an email that Coomey promised to make the Daily staff represent its community.

“This is a fundamental part of building and maintaining trust with our sources and readers, and will make the Daily an even better place to work,” he said.

Coomey will be working alongside managing editor Hana Ikramuddin.

Business operations officer

In the fall, Tripathi will be a third-year student studying entrepreneurial management with minors in philosophy and product design. She started as a business intern and switched to an account executive in the summer of 2020. She worked as the assistant sales manager during the fall 2020 semester.

Tripathi started in advertising in high school when she began creating ads for a local resort in India. One of her ads was featured in National Geographic.

As BOO, Tripathi hopes to increase Daily hiring and recruitment efforts.

“I want to create another position where we have student recruiters who help us hire people in the business division,” she said. “I want to ensure that incoming students don’t feel disadvantaged because of lack of experience.”

Much like Coomey, Tripathi also wants to create a better social media presence.

“Avni wants to help continue our transition to more digital initiatives,” said Geraets. “Being able to grow our website and social media presence, and develop new digital products, is important to ensure we can support our business and advertising partners in the future.”

After nearly a month of uncertainty and anticipation of who would lead Colorado State women’s soccer, the Rams landed a well-suited candidate. It was announced June 1 that Keeley Hagen will take over as head coach for CSU soccer. Hagen has a laundry list of impressive accolades and credentials to move the Rams into a […]

Bo Burnham has always presented an interesting dichotomy of feelings about his successful comedy career. When asked what his advice would be to someone wanting to follow in his footsteps he said, “you gotta just take a breath and give up.”

In his 2016 comedy special “Make Happy,” Burnham furthered this sentiment by saying, “I had a privileged life and I got lucky and I’m unhappy.” Much of this special was dedicated to expressing Burnham’s complicated feelings regarding his gratitude and simultaneous despise of his fan base.

Having achieved great comedic success at such a young age, Burnham has only really ever known performing. The powerful aforementioned feelings coupled with this early success has led to a brand of experimental meta-humor where the audience is often left wondering “Is Bo doing okay?” I found myself asking that same question more than a few times watching Burnham’s newest special, “Inside.”

Dark, Playful Comedy 

“Inside” follows Burnham over the last year as he strives to make a comedy special entirely from inside his room. It’s incredibly intimate and almost claustrophobic at times as he speaks directly through the camera at us individually. Burnham wrote, directed, and edited the special, and it truly is a feat of technical brilliance that is extremely impressive to behold. The passion and dedication is clearly evident as Burnham manages to turn his room into what might as well have been a professional studio.

Much of the special walks a hilariously depressing line of reflecting upon the stress, anxiety and loneliness all of us felt in the garbage pile that was 2020. Burnham also uses the special to comment on our culture’s obsessive need to constantly broadcast everything we are thinking and our often unwarranted trust and reliance on brands and celebrities.

One of the opening songs finds Burnham in the dark sitting at his piano. A spotlight flashes on and he begins to lament on the many serious world events that occurred in 2020. Burnham begins to wonder what he is to do, as he wants to help make the world a better place, and he sarcastically quips, “there’s only one thing I can do about it … while being paid and being the center of attention.” He goes on to sing how what the world needs is for a white man like him to tell jokes and sing silly songs.

For around 35 minutes, “Inside” follows this theme of jokes and songs about inappropriately processing the seriousness of our current world climate. Then, suddenly, the tone shifts, and we live behind the bright colored silliness typical to Burnham’s style.

Slowly we begin to watch as Burnham descends into madness: his hair and beard become progressively more wild and untamed as he expresses concerns of never being able to finish the special. Then he expresses concerns that this special is the only thing keeping him sane and that if he ever finishes it, he’ll lose his mind. Between these concerns are brutally honest layers of desire to know if we’re enjoying the special and if it’s any good.

The Perfect Mixture of Sadness and Humor 

Burnham wraps up the special by reiterating his conflicting feelings — how he is supposed to tell jokes in a world so broken? He wonders: once he is old and irrelevant, will anything he said or did matter?

As I listened over the course of an hour and a half of content, I could barely withhold my tears. Burnham, like most of us, simply wants to be a good person, but isn’t quite sure how to do that.

“Inside” is a comedy special that is hard to put into words, it moves past being just a comedy special and needs to be experienced. It’s thought provoking, hilarious and genuinely sad. For me, it was a perfect summary of everything I went through in 2020 and I can’t stop thinking about it.

“Inside” is available to stream on Netflix.

luke.jackson@dailyutahchronicle.com

@__lukejackson

The post Bo Burnham’s ‘Inside’ Isn’t Just a Comedy Special appeared first on The Daily Utah Chronicle.

Since March 2020, the student experience at the University has been largely relegated to Zoom meetings and recorded lectures. But the novel prevalence of online technology in the University curriculum has provided a chance for the University to examine how it educates and challenges faculty and students alike.

As COVID-19 positivity rates decline nationally and more community members get vaccinated, a question remains: Moving forward, how does online learning fit into the Brown experience?

Online learning before the pandemic

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the University was already looking to increase its use of online resources and remote instruction. The University’s 2013 Building on Distinction Strategic Plan announced that it would develop new online curricular resources and experiment with online courses.

The plan noted “substantial uncertainty about how online courses (might) affect the higher education marketplace.” But, by increasing the usage of technology in Brown academics, the plan hoped to “increase the quality of education, strengthen the curriculum in key areas and expand opportunities for Brown students.”

“There had been this wave that had been going on in recent years of online education … and seeing (it) as a complement to the residential experience,” Provost Richard Locke P’18 told The Herald. “I don’t think anyone at Brown in 2013 ever thought, like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do online education instead of the residential experience.’”

But community members began wondering whether increasing the use of technology in courses would better serve Brown students in their educational endeavors. Many advocates for online learning at the time thought that recorded lectures would be a more effective method of conveying “timeless” information — course fundamentals that would remain mostly constant throughout a course’s lifetime — Locke said. This would leave students with class time to apply these theories to more “timely” information relevant to the present day, as well as more time to get involved with interactive aspects of each course.

There was some hesitancy from faculty, Locke explained, as a fully residential experience had long been standard for the University.

“When I became provost in 2015, we did a survey of faculty asking them (their feelings about online learning),” he said. Out of nearly 400 faculty respondents, about 70 percent used some sort of web-facilitated resource, like Canvas. “But, when you asked them, ‘Are you interested in online (instruction)?’ … 40 percent said, ‘I have no experience (with it),’ and 30 percent of them said online education is not part of the future, and it’s not going to be.”

In March 2017, the University created professional Master’s programs with courses offered partially online and partially in-person. Online technology had already become part of Brown academics, albeit to a limited extent.

All at once: COVID-19 and the transition to remote operations

When the University canceled all in-person classes and programming due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, what had been a gradual transition toward online instruction became immediate as the University had to suddenly create remote alternatives for all educational operations.

Before the switch from in-person to online instruction, Professor of English James Egan taught select classes asynchronously to allow a “wider range of students” from different disciplines to have access to English courses. 

But when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced all classes to transition to remote learning, Egan was left without the option to teach in-person. 

Where remote education had once served as a way to increase access for students interested in Egan’s courses, universal adoption of remote learning revealed stark disparities in how students were able to engage with Brown’s curriculum. 

During the switch to remote instruction, Egan sensed there were “a lot of people who were … struggling psychologically,” especially with the implementation of exclusively online learning which required “different (kinds) of learning strategies.” 

Throughout the pandemic, remote learning has posed challenges to student mental health. Recent efforts from the University and community care organizations have aimed to better support students during this time, but many students still struggle with mental health amid online learning.

Harshini Venkatachalam ’23, who has studied remotely from her home in Arizona for the past year, said her “experience with remote learning was tough.”

“I wasn’t ready for the shift to remote learning, and I had a difficult time with motivation and getting things done on time,” she said.

Similarly, for many students, accessibility barriers posed challenges in engaging with the University’s curriculum after their departure from campus.

Some students need the “visual stimulation” and “kinetic movement” of being in a classroom setting, Tere Ramos, interim director of Student Accessibility Services, said. These aspects are lost in remote learning environments, which can make it challenging for students who value traditional in-person methods of instruction, she added.

In finding ways to support student mental health and accessibility concerns, the University as an institution learned how to better serve its student body, Locke said. University administrators listened to student feedback and found that resources like pre-recorded lectures, lecture capture and alternative modes of class participation actually enhanced their engagement and experience with courses.

This increased accessibility of online resources was a highlight of remote learning during the pandemic for some students, like Christopher Vanderpool ’24. Vanderpool agreed that recorded lectures meant a level of flexibility that he enjoyed, as he was able to access the lectures at his convenience.

Moving forward

Some offices at the University, including Digital Design & Learning, have worked with professors to “incorporate digital tools” into their courses through online activities during the pandemic, Shankar Prasad, the deputy provost for strategic initiatives, wrote in an email to The Herald. 

According to Prasad, the pandemic has helped the University “uncover opportunities for innovation” in both teaching and learning that can be used to “enhance experimental education and faculty research” in the future.

“What I’m thinking about going forward (into the fall 2021 semester) is (ensuring that) … a sufficient number of courses in every concentration are remote-accessible,” Locke said. “There may be some students who, for health reasons, can’t come back to campus, or for travel restriction reasons can’t actually get here. But they should be able to continue their education,” he said.

In upcoming semesters, many faculty members have opted to teach remotely and offer recorded lectures, namely for large, introductory courses, Locke added. Still, residency requirements would ensure a level of “faculty contact,” including “in-person recitation and office hours.”

The increase in faculty interest in online instruction came as a byproduct of instruction during the pandemic, according to Locke. After both the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters, feedback from professors regarding online instruction improved, and by the end of the spring semester, roughly 90 percent of professors said they felt well-prepared to teach online, he said.

Egan said that he would continue to teach some of his courses online since he believes “they can really serve a lot of students.” He also noted that during the pandemic he has become more creative with content for his courses and feels “more enthusiastic about teaching … these courses in the future.”

Likewise, Locke found that student feedback showed increased “satisfaction and engagement post-pandemic” relative to fall 2019, the last fully in-person semester at the University, suggesting students on average feel more comfortable with increased technology in their courses. “It seems to be working for students — not every course, not every instructor… but on average the feedback from students is higher,” he said.

“What I’m hoping for going forward is that Brown will continue to offer these online courses… (and) that that will do at least three things. One is enrich the residential teaching and learning experience … (by using) precious class time to do more interactive, engaging things. Two is promote accessibility… (and three is) create more opportunities for students,” Locke said.

In terms of creating opportunities, many students who hope to study abroad in college abstain because they cannot afford to miss out on course requirements, Locke explained. Increasing online courses could mean students can live abroad, or even could work at an in-person internship, non-profit or start-up while taking University classes, he added.

Locke also hopes that online resources could reach a larger community than the University’s curriculum can currently serve.

The University has previously offered classes with edX, a remote education platform that allows students to take free online courses. Now that the University has begun to create so much recorded and web-based educational content, Locke said that offering online courses to the public might be able to increase economic accessibility.

“We only have 1,650 slots per class when we admit students, and we have 46,000 applicants. It’s hard to get in, but there’s a lot of really qualified people who could benefit from what we offer,” Locke said. 

“We’ve been working really hard with a bunch of community colleges recently,” Locke said. “Imagine if now (their students) can take some Brown classes fully online, they can show they can get the grades — that’s going to really strengthen their applications to become transfer students. And they don’t have to be in Rhode Island, they can be anywhere. I see that as another opportunity for us that fulfills our mission of being a truly accessible university, and a more diverse university.”

But after more than a year since the University’s initial transition to online learning, many are excited to simply get back to in-person learning. “(I am) not sure students are going to be interested in online classes for a while,” Egan said.

For Venkatachalam, the past year has been enough online learning for the foreseeable future. “I would (consider online courses) if they helped me fill my concentration requirements,” she said. “But if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, I wouldn’t.”