Problem:
In this past week, classes were all canceled due to the fire in Butte county. While it breaks my heart to hear about the tragic events happening due to the fire, considering Davis’ current air quality condition and the medical advises given by the air quality experts, I believe that closing the campus for two consecutive weeks does more harm than good to the students for the following reasons:

1) Final exams are scheduled three weeks from Monday, 11/19. A campus closure at this time means a tightened class schedule for teachers and loss of critical lecture time for students. This in turn would put more pressure on the instructors to speed up the lecture pace and thus putting more pressure on the students to self study with extremely limited time and learning resources. The results will ultimately be reflected upon student’s performances on the final exams.

2) Most Classes are held indoors and require no outdoor exertion. While it is reasonable to cancel physically demanding course (ie: Any PE course), this should not be applied to the remaining courses offered at UC Davis that does not require students to be physically active during lecture time.

3) Many students rely on campus facilities such as the Shield library, 24/7 library, Memorial union, and the ARC as locations for daily activities such as gatherings, study session and exercises. Shutting down these facilities means taking away important daily resources that each students have paid for, forcing them to resort to public facilities such as city libraries and local cafes which increase their commute time and expose them to prolonged outdoor exertion.

Solution:
As a student myself, I find it quite helpful to have podcast and particularly video lectures to supplement the physical lectures. Considering that the decision has already been made to cancel classes  for the whole week, I would like to suggest that the board consider advising the instructors to record podcasts or videos (with lecture slides displayed while recording) that covers the materials missed the past week and this upcoming week.

If deemed reasonable, I would also like to suggest to reopen the Shields library and the ARC