UC Davis students are waving goodbye to Zoom and saying hello to professors, friends and classmates — face-to-face and bike-to-bike, like student body president Ryan Manriquez.
“I have a friend who was riding a bike and we both just stopped in the middle of the bike lane to give each other a hug,” he remembered of a recent reunion.
The university resumed in-person classes on Jan. 28. While professors teaching hands-on courses like labs, performance and studio art were allowed to teach in-person starting Jan. 10, all lectures are now held in-person unless instructors previously made arrangements for their class to be virtual throughout the quarter.
The switch back isn’t universally welcomed.
According to a survey of UC Davis students conducted by ASUCD’s Research and Data Committee, 59% of the over 1,000 respondents preferred hybrid instruction. Of the 107 respondents who self-identified as being disabled, 64% said they preferred hybrid.
Several wanted all in-person classes — not just hands-on learning — to resume sooner. Others say the return to in-person has helped build community in and outside of the classroom.
While Manriquez was part of an effort on behalf of ASUCD and other campus groups to keep classes online for the quarter’s first four weeks — and still advocates for academic flexibility — he said he valued returning.
“That’s kind of what the university is about, making connections to people,” they said.
But many other students remain worried about the university’s handling of the pandemic, with both graduates and undergraduates wanting to see UC Davis adopt a hybrid learning model instead of shifting all classes back to in-person instruction.
A student-organized walk-out on Feb. 2 underscored a desire for instructional flexibility. And over 9,000 students and community members signed a petition calling for hybrid instruction to protect vulnerable members of the campus population.
Disabled students at UC campuses across the state have struggled to be prioritized long before the pandemic. But now securing remote accommodations can be a matter of life or death.
Heather Ringo, a second-year PhD student in the English department, teaches courses at both UC Davis and Solano Community College. The latter provides online-only, hybrid and in-person options for classes, except for courses like labs that can’t be transitioned online. Ringo wants to see that happen at Davis.
“This would enable students to select the modality that best aligns with their access needs,” Ringo said. “[It] benefits even non-disabled students and student employees, like those who have to work multiple jobs to afford rent.”
UC Davis spokesperson Melissa Lutz Blouin said students can contact the Student Disability Center if they need accommodations for remote instruction. But she said the university was “primarily an in-person institution” in a statement.
Manriquez said he wasn’t seeing as many students on-campus as last quarter, when classes were also in-person. Still, they characterized the sentiment on campus as “at an all-time high compared to being online.”
Forging connections has been tougher with remote instruction, according to second-year microbiology graduate student Eduardo Ruiz. He called his experience over the past few years “slightly isolating,” saying it’s taken longer to get to know his graduate group.
He attends an on-campus lab with in-person work, but it’s been mostly empty, Ruiz said.
“I think everybody’s keeping to themselves a lot more than in a normal environment,” he said.
But he says one benefit of in-person instruction is getting to better know his professors outside of an academic environment.
“If somebody like your PhD advisor, when you don’t know them beyond that [academic environment], it definitely makes me a little more stressed to talk to them,” Ruiz said. “That rapport just makes it a little easier to talk to professors in general.”
UC Davis on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022.Andrew Nixon / CapRadioDue to the omicron surge, the university announced that classes the first week of winter quarter would be virtual.
During that first week, UC Davis asked all students to get tested before returning to campus.
Kris Jayme Matas, a community and regional development major in their last year, is part of ASUCD’s Disability Rights Advocacy Committee. They called the university’s early expectation that all students would be able to get tested “ludicrous”.
“It was just chaos,” they said. “I was hearing from students who were standing there with lines wrapped around the ARC [Activities and Recreation Center, where the university administers free COVID-19 tests for students], and some of that hecticness probably contributed to the spike that happened early in January.”
That spike spanned the first full week of January, during which 1,415 employees and students tested positive, according to the university’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Consequently, the university extended remote instruction for another three weeks before the first week of winter quarter ended.
Along with the extension, the university aimed to address the surge by distributing 135,000 N95 and KN95 masks to faculty, staff and students via their departments, Lutz Blouin said.
It also implemented updated testing requirements for students in residence halls — those who do not receive a booster shot need to be tested every four days.
First-year psychology major Vaishnavi Loganathan is one of many students in the residence halls, but said she’s not feeling great about UC Davis’ safety measures.
While the dining commons offer take-out meals, she’s only seen “a very small percentage” of people use them.
“When I go into the dining halls, everyone is maskless in an enclosed space, and it doesn’t feel very safe that that’s being allowed,” she said.
Matas said they were frustrated with hearing student concerns about COVID-19 characterized as just “being scared.”
“Part of deciding how safe you want to be with COVID is understanding you could have a lifelong [health] complication,” they said. “For a lot of disabled students, it’s a matter of ‘Do I want to be even more disabled if I get this?’ It’s not as simple as ‘just being scared.’”
As the pandemic continues, some professors are finding work-arounds, according to Ringo.
Some of the things she’s seen include professors offering non-mandatory attendance and posting class notes to support students who don’t feel safe attending in-person.
“Safe learning environments and access needs shouldn’t be left to chance,” she said.
On the student government's end, ASUCD successfully petitioned for an extension allowing students to opt into Pass/No Pass grading until the quarter’s last day. Manriquez also says they want all lectures recorded and posted online, or at the very minimum have professors upload their slides.
The university currently has a program where students can get paid to record and upload lectures on their own devices, but instructors must opt in.
Lutz Blouin added that any decisions about hybrid options are made by the Academic Senate, a faculty government group that works with the administration on policy and decisions.
Meanwhile, amid student advocacy for instructional flexibility, students will still need to wear masks during in-person classes regardless of vaccination status, at least through the rest of winter quarter.
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