Current WACD COVID-19 Update

Dear WACD Community:

The links below provide crucial up-to-date information for each subgroup of our departmental community.

STUDENTS: CLICK HERE

STAFF: CLICK HERE

INSTRUCTORS, FACULTY AND TAs: CLICK HERE

CITY OF LOS ANGELES’s “SAFER AT HOME” ORDER

The city of Los Angeles:

  • Orders Los Angeles residents to remain in their homes, with exceptions;
  • Requires all Los Angeles businesses that require in-person attendance to cease operations, with exceptions; and
  • Bans all gatherings outside a home, with exceptions.

All WACD personnel are asked to avoid campus and Kaufman Hall until at least April 19. This means that as of this writing, the building is locked, and all staff are observing the "safer at home"order.

Rest assured, WACD staff will continue performing the vital functions of the department from our homes. We have prepared for this. You will be receiving communications about teaching your courses, taking your courses and all other departmental functions. If you have any doubts or concerns at all, please do contact us.

Now, some brief information that concerns us all:

COMMENCEMENT:

  • From Chancellor Block: “We have heard the important voices of our students and their families, and based on those, we will step back and make a decision on commencement in consultation with students and student leaders.” More information on this still to come.

“CRISIS REVEALS CHARACTER”:

  • Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang posted this thoughtful essay about the language around the Coronavirus, specifically the term “social distancing”. Definitely worth reading: “social caring through safe distancing” anyone?

HELPFUL COVID-19 INFO:

STAY IN TOUCH:

FREE BOOKSTORE DELIVERY:

  • The UCLA bookstore is offering free delivery to dorms for students who remain in campus housing, as well as free shipping for students living off campus in the coming quarter.

Friends, the world has changed; or rather IS changing, and rapidly. Let’s acknowledge that it’s overwhelming and stressful to say the least. In many ways, it just plain sucks. At the same time, we now have the opportunity to reinvent not only what it means to be activists or scholars, to read and discuss critical theory, to take dance class, to make documentary videos and art books and Legislative Theatre and choreography; but also what it means to dance, what it means to learn, what it means to survive. Painful as it is, might it not also be liberating? Can we let go of the ways we thought about college, and learning and, well, just about everything? At least for a while, to make room for…well…something else?

And, because we need poetry more than we need toilet paper, here is a poem apropos to the moment, shared with us by Vic Marks:

Pandemic, a poem about our times by Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it

as the Jews consider the Sabbath—

the most sacred of times?

Cease from travel.

Cease from buying and selling.

Give up, just for now,

on trying to make the world

different than it is.

Sing. Pray. Touch only those

to whom you commit your life.

Center down.

And when your body has become still,

reach out with your heart.

Know that we are connected

in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.

(You could hardly deny it now.)

Know that our lives

are in one another’s hands.

(Surely, that has come clear.)

Do not reach out your hands.

Reach out your heart.

Reach out your words.

Reach out all the tendrils

of compassion that move, invisibly,

where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--

for better or for worse,

in sickness and in health,

so long as we all shall live.

Finally, thank you, thank you, thank you for the kind words that many of you have sent to the hard-working staff here at WACD. You have no idea how very grateful we are for your appreciation, and to know that our efforts are having a positive impact. Really, you make our day.

The fact is, no matter how you’re feeling, we always love to hear from you.

Be well,

Dan

and Marcia, Lynn, Donja, Luz, April, Arsenio, Will, Mark, Ginger

CLICK HERE FOR LINKS TO PREVIOUS WACD COVID-19 UPDATES

Update for WACD Staff