[Grads] Stanford "household" ("pods") guidance is only for residences

[Matt Wright]

Greetings again grad students.

I’m sure many of you saw Russell Furr’s Tuesday announcement  New Santa Clara County recommendations on “households” and indoor instruction <https://healthalerts.stanford.edu/covid-19/2020/09/22/new-santa-clara-county-recommendations-on-households-and-indoor-instruction/>.

A few people have inquired about whether this applies to conducting approved research at The Knoll, and for now, unfortunately, the answer is no.  

The specific county guidance is Santa Clara County Public Health Department issued Recommendations for Institutes of Higher Education <https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Documents/recommendations-for-institutions-of-higher-education.pdf> and in particular the section "Socializing and Households”.  This section applies strictly to student housing, a much needed loosening up of the expectations for living at home.

I’ve been in contact with Environmental Health & Safety about this, and learned that during today’s In Persons Classroom Committee it was specifically confirmed that "household pods do not apply in shared spaces, academic, or informal learning spaces. Therefore, separate time and space is recommended even for members of the same household pod.’'

So for now it seems our hope is that our (county’s) collective good behavior will lead to ever-improving COVID conditions and that the county will open things up another notch.

Sorry to bear this news.

Best,
-Matt

-- 
CCRMA Technical Director
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~matt
650-723-4971 x304
Pronouns:  he, his, him


> On Sep 9, 2020, at 6:10 PM, Matt Wright <matt at ccrma.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Greetings CCRMA grad students!
> 
> I’m very happy to announce that after essentially a summer’s negotiations with the Dean’s Office, CCRMA was just today approved to allow a limited number of our most urgent graduate student researchers to do certain research tasks in the building as long as staff are present.  I want to be clear that the staffing requirement was imposed on us, was not negotiable, and creates logistical challenges that we are actively working on.
> 
> The current criteria for research in The Knoll are:
> 
> - “requiring unique facilities”, i.e., work that cannot be done from home
> 
> - “urgent”, i.e., work whose delay would have negative consequences, e.g., paper/grant/thesis/degree-timeline deadlines.
> 
> 
> Here is the link to our “Standard Operating Procedures” document, both a HOWTO for safe usage of the building (should your specific project(s) be approved) and also the specific proposal that the Dean’s Office approved:
> 
> 	https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mCZYJ3CSy-lePr4aV3S-sZUD_XHt_ehahi0BU4cd1lg/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> You may need to log into Google with your @stanford.edu credentials to see this.  The link allows you to add comments and suggestions that will be seriously considered for future discussions.
> 
> 
> Part of the agreement is that "CCRMA Management transparently prioritizes projects by urgency and need for access to unique facilities.”  Therefore we are rebooting the “urgent research needs” survey we first sent out in March, this time just for CCRMA.  Please submit this for each urgent project that requires you to be in The Knoll:
> 
> 	https://forms.gle/u7Rj9ATbr6cU5b7a7
> 
> We will immediately use the survey results to identify the most urgent projects, then follow up with specifics on coordinating and requesting specific reservation timeslots. 
> 
> Best regards,
> -Matt
> 
> -- 
> CCRMA Technical Director
> https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~matt
> 650-723-4971 x304
> Pronouns:  he, his, him
> 
> 

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