Brooklyn College to hold a virtual graduation ceremony in May
Brooklyn College, part of the CUNY public university system, announced today that it will be holding an online graduation ceremony on May 28 since COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, has put a stop to all in-person gatherings.
CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez announced a week or so ago that no CUNY college will be permitted to hold an in-person commencement ceremony in May or June of this year, which is when most graduation occur.
It was then left up to the individual campuses to decide what alternative route they wanted to take — postpone the ceremony until the fall, hold a virtual ceremony, do nothing to commemorate the class of 2020 at all?
Brooklyn College’s president, Michelle Anderson, announced today that the school has decided to hold a virtual commencement at the end of May.
It is set to feature speeches, music, alumni and faculty messages and the reading of each student’s name and major while their photo is shared on the screen.
“I understand how important this moment is to you and your families,” Anderon wrote in her update. “This is not a replacement ceremony; nothing could replace an in-person commencement. Given the uncertainties of the pandemic, though, we cannot say when we might be able to host an in-person celebration. For now, we will work hard to make our virtual graduation very special.”
The Midwood-based school is not the only CUNY college to have decided to do an online commencement. Baruch College in Manhattan’s Kipp’s Bay has also decided to host a virtual ceremony on June 8, the date of the original commencement ceremony.
Read more about this in this article: Brooklyn College
Pair of Brooklynites create searchable database of food banks and testing sites
Two Brooklynites took it upon themselves to create a searchable database of all food banks and coronavirus testing sites across the five boroughs as soon as they realized that there were no such up-to-date websites.
Timur Seckin and Chanel Schroff — friends, former Berkeley University classmates and colleagues at the nonprofit EndoFound — put this website together without compensation.
“We called nearly 250 food banks across all five boroughs,” Schroff said. “And sometimes we would have to call multiple times because they would be closed, we didn’t know the hours. That was probably the most time-consuming aspect at the beginning.”
The site, which went live on March 22, is searchable by zip code so that people can find these facilities closest to them.
They had found a few other websites that were doing a similar thing, but none of them were updated and therefore were no longer helpful, so the pair went about calling as many places as they could find to get their updated hours and information.
“There is an online database that has the food banks, there are at least like three of them but they don’t have the update hours,” Seckin said. “Their hours were all totally wrong, it was surprising.”
This information was then compiled onto the site and the friends call each listed place every Friday to make sure that things haven’t changed and to update the website if they have.
“Most of the food banks we are finding are changing their hours of operation almost on a weekly basis,” Schroff said. “Some are even closed. So we really have to call them.”
Read more about this in this article: Brooklyn Paper
Queens special education teacher dies of coronavirus after 40 years of teaching
Another New York City public school faculty member, this time a special education teacher who taught in Queens, has died from the coronavirus.
Valerie Fata died on April 11 at the age of 66 at Winthrop Hospital, where she had been placed on a ventilator after becoming ill.
The Floral Park, Long Island native had actually retired from teaching but missed it so much that she went back to it. She taught special education classes for 40 years.
Fata is one of 63 Department of Education staff members who have died from the coronavirus, according to Eyewitness News.
According to the New York State Department of Health, there have been 15,302 statewide COVID-19 deaths as of Wednesday.
According to the New York City Department of Health, there are 134,874confirmed cases, 35,746 hospitalizations, 9,562 confirmed deaths and 4,865probable deaths due to coronavirus as of 1 p.m. yesterday.
Read more about this in this article: Eyewitness News
