Campus & community, Campus news

How UC Berkeley is responding to county shelter-in-place order

Chancellor Carol Christ sent the following message to the campus community Monday afternoon:

In light of Alameda County and the City of Berkeley’s announcement advising county residents to shelter in place beginning Tuesday, March 17 at 12:01 a.m. through Tuesday, April 7, we are rapidly moving toward a “maintenance-only” mode of physical operation of the campus.

Generally speaking, this means that all in-person instruction should cease. All instruction that can be delivered remotely should continue.

Labs should ramp down normal operations, and shift to basic maintenance, ensuring safety and preservation of future capability.

With rare exceptions (including those in student-facing functions that cannot be offered remotely like housing, dining, and University Health Services and critical operations such as UCPD, facilities, custodial, information systems and technology, maintenance of certain critical research specimens, etc.), employees should return home as soon as they are able, and where possible, work remotely.

Generally, employees should assume they will work from home through April 7 unless they hear otherwise from their managers. For those who cannot work from home due to the nature of their job, UCOP is working on systemwide guidance which they will issue shortly.

We are working quickly to gather more information and will provide additional details later this afternoon. Thank you for your patience and understanding.