From Other Sources: News For And About Amherst (#29)

“From Other Sources” is back after a four month hiatus. This column offers links to selected articles that might be of interest to Amherst readers.  I am starting to favor in these postings, with a few exceptions, material that is not hiding behind a paywall. Hence, I have reduced my postings from journals like the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, which are doing some great reporting but which make their articles inaccessible without a subscription.  But on occasion, an article, such as, fromthis week, The Washington Post’s photo essay on hunger during the pandemic, seems too important to not mention and in such cases I will post it, and leave it for the reader to decide whether to pay for access.

Editor’s Pick 
There is so much good writing out there that I sometimes fear that the volume of recommendations will dissuade the reader from pursuing any.  So each edition of From Other Sources now features an Editor’s Pick – something that has struck me as a must read. 

This week’s featured story is Laurence Wright’s The Plague Year from The New Yorker. Wright offers a detailed chronicle of the year we just endured, weaving together the stories of people impacted by the pandemic – those well known and those pretty much unknown, to provide us with a synthesis of how and why things went the way that they did.

AMHERST
UMass Report: Alex Morse Didn’t Violate School Policy In Pursuing Relationships With Students by CBS Staff (1/15/21). An independent investigation finds former Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse did not violate school policy when he pursued relationships with UMass students while teaching there. UMass Amherst hired an outside lawyer last year to review claims that Morse pressured college students into relationships. Morse, who is openly gay, had admitted having relationships with students and said the allegations were part of a “smear campaign.” Investigators determined that Morse did not violate school policy on consensual relationships because he did not have any kind of supervision over the students. (CBS Boston)

Key W.D. Cowls Forest Land Protected In $3.25M Deal by Scott Merzbach (1/1/21). On Wednesday, state officials announced the creation of the Walter Cowls Jones Working Forest, which supplements the 3,486-acre Paul C. Jones Working Forest and will serve to protect water supplies locally and for Boston, preserve extensive wildlife habitat and promote continued production of timber.The conservation restriction was purchased for $3.25 million, or $100,000 less than the appraised value, with public funding coming from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and U.S. Forest Legacy Program, the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, which will hold the conservation restriction, and private funds raised by Kestrel Land Trust from the John T. and Jane A. Wiederhold Foundation and other philanthropists. (The Daily Hampshire Gazette)

New Ranking Systems Places Amherst College Second, Hampshire College Eighth In Ranking Of 50 Best US Liberal Arts Colleges by Michael T. Nietzel (1/27/21). Swarthmore College has been rated the best liberal arts college in the U.S. by Academic Influence, a new college rankings method that uses artificial intelligence technology to search massive databases and measure the impact of work by individuals who’ve been affiliated with colleges and universities throughout the world.
The top 20 in order were:

1. Swarthmore College 
2. Amherst College 
3. Sarah Lawrence College. 
4. Reed College 
5. Barnard College
6. Wesleyan University
7. Vassar College
8. Hampshire College
9. Wellesley College
10. Williams College
11. Cooper Union
12. Pomona College
13. Oberlin College
14. Bryn Mawr College
15. Bard College
16. Haverford College
17. Smith College
18. Claremont McKenna College
19. Morehouse College
20. Kenyon College
    
    (Forbes)

COVID-19
The Coronavirus Hunger Crisis. A Photo Essay by Washington Post Staff (1/27/21).  Across America, people are lining up for food — on foot and in cars, at churches and recreation centers and in school parking lots, in wealthy states and poorer ones. They are parents and grandparents, students and veterans, employed and underemployed and jobless.
(Washington Post)

The Pandemic Is Finally Softening.  Will That Last?  by Robinson Meyer (1/25/21). In the past week, a new picture has emerged in COVID-19 data: The pandemic seems to be receding from its high-water mark in the United States. The most dependable metric of COVID-19’s spread—the number of people currently in the hospital with the disease—is in its first sustained, week-over-week decline since September, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. Hospitalizations fell in the past week in every state but Vermont. The number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 is falling too. New cases declined in every region of the country last week. Cases even seem to be ebbing in the coronavirus epicenters of California and Arizona, though the Sun Belt remains a hot spot. In the past two weeks, only two states—New York and Virginia—have set a single-day record for new cases. (In contrast, 13 states set a new record three weeks ago.) In other words, the numbers are finally moving in the right direction. But while the trajectory of the pandemic is encouraging, the overall level of infection is staggering.  (The Atlantic)

COVID-19 Is Ravaging Local Newspapers, Facilitating The Spread Of Misinformation by Tara Law (1/21/21). Keeping up with the torrent of news over the last year has been overwhelming for all Americans. But it’s an especially difficult challenge for local newspaper editors like Reed Anfinson, who not only owns and publishes Swift County, Minn.’s Monitor-News, but writes nearly every news story it publishes, too. Anfinson, who also owns two other papers in nearby counties, has worked virtually seven days a week since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, including through a battle with the virus himself. For all his hustle, he still wishes he had time to write more about the people whose lives have been disrupted by COVID-19—or the money to hire reporters. While there’s more news to fill the pages of Anfinson’s papers this year, his publications have had to shrink to survive as cash-strapped businesses have pulled ads, forcing the papers to shed pages and cut staff positions and hours. Anfinson says more cost-saving measures will be necessary, but it will be hard to figure out what to do next. “We are so lean, we don’t have anywhere to cut,” he says. (Time)

PARKING
Berkeley Overhauls Offstreet Parking With An Eye Toward A Greener Future by Emilie Raguso (1/27/21). Most new housing projects in Berkeley will no longer have to build off-street parking, a move the city hopes will “more aggressively promote” alternative modes of transportation, such as walking and biking, and advance the city’s climate goals. Berkeley officials voted unanimously Tuesday night to eliminate the city’s age-old parking requirements which, in many areas of town, required the creation of one off-street parking spot for each new housing unit. (Berkeleyside)

Why Town Parking Should Pay Its Way Instead Of Getting A Free Ride by Joe Cortright (1/22/21). the subsidies we provide for car storage have shredded the fabric of America’s urban areas. By giving over so much land to cars, we weaken and undermine the things that make cities work well: the opportunities for easy interaction. There’s  evidence that the effects of parking are causal: from 1960 onward, an increase in parking provision from 0.1 to 0.5 parking space per person was associated with an increase in automobile mode share of roughly 30 percentage points according to a study of nine cities.  We have too much parking for many reasons: we’ve subsidized highway construction and suburban homes, we’ve mandated parking for most new residential and commercial buildings, and we’ve decimated transit systems. But a key contributor to overparking is the strong financial incentives built into tax systems. (Strong Towns)

Four Easy Steps To Squash The “There’s No Parking” Argument by Nathaniel M. Hood (7/23/15). A quick how-to guide for dealing with those who claim your city or town lacks adequate parking. (Strong Towns)

POLICE (or Reimagining Public Safety)
Northampton Policing Commission’s Report Offers Tepid Interest In Bold Ideas by Brian Zayatz (1/22/21). The Alternatives subcommittee recommends that non-criminal complaints be met by a “respondent with no gun,” and suggests a phased process of reducing the scope of policing in the city and redistributing responsibility to other entities, such as existing resources like Tapestry or ServiceNet, or peer-led programs like Western Mass Recovery Learning Center. They have also considered “co-respondent models,” wherein a non-police responder rides along with police and presumably leads the response, though there is little additional information about such a model.  Commissioner Javier Luengo-Garrido rightly pointed out at the PRC’s January 5th meeting that agencies that currently work with the police, like ServiceNet, have a vested financial interest in the status quo, or something like it. Among public commenters, the clear favorite is for peer-led programs that remove police from the equation altogether. This is the model that is given the most ink in the report, particularly for mental health-related calls, including descriptions of Eugene, Oregon’s well established CAHOOTS program and several others. (The Shoestring)

Austin May Use Money Cut From Police Budget To Buy Permanent Supportive Housing by Meg O’Connor (1/26/21).  On Wednesday, the Austin City Council will vote on whether to purchase twohotels and turn them into permanent supportive housing for people experiencing chronic homelessness. If the measure passes, the city will spend approximately $16 million from its Housing and Planning Department’s general obligation bonds to acquire the two properties and use some money from a $6.5 million fund taken from the police department’s budget to provide services to the residents of the hotels. At full occupancy (which wouldn’t happen this year), services and operating costs for these two hotels are expected to be about $3.8 million annually. (The Appeal)

A Podcast About Defunding The Police And Public Safety by Sara Bernard and David Kroman (1/28/21). Six Episodes.  Six months after renewed protests against racist policing began, Seattle city leaders face an unknown future with a commitment to a downsized police force. (Crosscut) 

US Police Three Times As Likely To Use Force Against Left Wing Protestors Data Find by Lois Beckett (1/14/21). Police in the United States are three times more likely to use force against leftwing protesters than rightwing protesters, according to new data from a non-profit that monitors political violence around the world. In the past 10 months, US law enforcement agencies have used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and beatings at a much higher percentage at Black Lives Matter demonstrations than at pro-Trump or other rightwing protests. Law enforcement officers were also more likely to use force against leftwing demonstrators, whether the protests remained peaceful or not.The statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests across the United States since April 2020, show a clear disparity in how agencies have responded to the historic wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence, compared with demonstrations organized by Trump supporters. (The Guardian)

Off Duty Police Officers Charged With Participating In Capitol Riot by Eric Westervelt (1/15/21). Nearly 30 sworn police officers from a dozen departments attended the pro-Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol last week, and several stormed the building with rioters and are facing federal criminal charges as well as possible expulsion or other discipline.The officers are from departments large and small. There was veteran officer in Houston, the nation’s eighth-largest department; a sergeant in the small town of Rocky Mount, Va., and a group of Philadelphia transit officers. (NPR)

No One Took Us Seriously.  Black Cops Warned About Racist Capitol Police For Years by Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien (1/14/21). Allegations of racism against the Capitol Police are nothing new: Over 250 Black cops have sued the department since 2001. Some of those former officers now say it’s no surprise white nationalists were able to storm the building. (ProPublica)

RECYCLING
Northampton Passes New Plastics Regulations by Greta Jochem (1/22/21). The ordinance, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2022, will require restaurants to stop giving customers food in disposable containers made of Styrofoam or several kinds of plastic, including polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate. Containers also must be recyclable. It also requires restaurants and retail businesses to use disposable ware such as utensils and cups that are biodegradable, compostable, reusable or recyclable. Additionally, the ordinance will prohibit stores from selling Styrofoam packing peanuts and bans the use of plastic checkout bags in favor of bags that are recyclable or reusable. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Recycling In America Is A Mess.  A New Bill Could Clean That Up  by Michael Kimmelman (1/27/21).  The recycling business in America is in a heap of trouble. The environmental and economic ripple effects on towns and cities are ominous. China used to take our recyclables but essentially shut its doors in 2018 because the paper and plastics we shipped were too contaminated with garbage. Unsurprisingly, the United States leads the world in per capita municipal solid waste production, and the volume of single-use plastics, rising for decades, has soaredsince the start of the pandemic. (New York Times)