by Allen K. Easley

As I write this column I find myself facing the challenge of writing something in June that will be published in August about our plans for transitioning from last year to this year, when the COVID-19 pandemic has been a rapidly moving target for more than a year now.

Clearly, however, we have learned some things during the pandemic. First and foremost, we can deliver a quality legal education through an online modality. Indeed, there are some things we can do better online than we could do in person. For example, Zoom allows us to create small group discussions within the class period through its breakout room feature that, in many respects, works better than trying to do the same thing in person in a large classroom. Additionally, for those, like me, who sometimes struggle with learning lots of names quickly, there is comfort in seeing students’ names connected to their live faces on the Zoom screen.

Even outside the classroom, technology has created ways of offering office-hour appointments that allow students to click on a time slot that then automatically creates a Zoom link and populates the faculty member’s calendar with an appointment. This feature has been sufficiently attractive that faculty members have expressed the hope that even after we return to in-person classes, we continue to use this technology to handle office-hour appointments and other meetings more efficiently.

Of course, there are many things we have missed during the past year of being almost entirely virtual. New 1L students last fall never got a chance to meet each other in person. That has made it more difficult to arrange study groups, though here too, technology has helped as our library created virtual study tables during specified hours so that students could gather outside of class to review class materials. Student organizations were also heavily impacted by the lack of in-person presence on the campus and the inability to arrange events and activities. The student bar association addressed this with technology, creating virtual events where student organizations could set up “tables” to attract the interest of their classmates. But all these things are unquestionably more difficult to manage virtually.

Over the past few months, as the pandemic has slowed, and we have learned more about it, we have had several opportunities to experiment with safe gatherings for key celebratory events whenever possible, like swearing-in ceremonies for bar passers and graduation ceremonies.

After the February 2021 bar results were posted, we hosted an outdoor swearing in ceremony in the parking lot of the OCBA offices, with OCBA President, Larisa Dinsmoor, and the Presiding Judge of the Orange County Superior Court, Erick Larsh, as special guests. This avoided the challenges of trying to administer an oath to a group of bar passers on Zoom. Hearing everyone repeat the oath in unison, we have all learned, is beyond Zoom’s considerable capabilities. In addition, when hosting these events via Zoom it is next to impossible to create photo opportunities for family members. But outdoors, we could see everyone, we could hear everyone, and there were plenty of photo opportunities.

During Spring 2020, when in-person events were not possible and many universities experimented with virtual commencements, we felt it was important to discuss the various options with our graduates. A majority expressed a preference for waiting for a more opportune time rather than trying to make do with a virtual commencement, even if it meant joining with the May 2021 graduates a year later.

In May 2021, with the state of California poised to reopen soon, we were able to arrange an outdoor “drive-in” commencement in the parking lot of the Grove of Anaheim (where we would have held an indoor commencement had that been possible). The Grove set up a temporary stage for concerts, with parking spaces rearranged to face the stage in a double-wide configuration that gave each car space beside it to set up lawn chairs. We hosted 250 vehicles and 120 graduates in the parking lot. Justice William Bedsworth from the California Court of Appeals, 4th District, spoke to the graduates. In addition, each graduate was able to walk across the stage in full regalia and be hooded. The whole event was livestreamed on YouTube for relatives who could not attend. It was an amazing blend of technology and creativity in the face of a still challenging pandemic. However, these solutions do not translate well into teaching classes.

As we plan for the fall of 2021, we hope to return to in-person teaching indoors. The current thinking (in June) is to require vaccination for all faculty, staff, and students, with a process for seeking exemption from that requirement for health, religious, or personal reasons. Furthermore, to keep our students and faculty safe, we would require unvaccinated individuals to provide a weekly negative COVID test. We will also keep classrooms capped at half capacity and require everyone, vaccinated or not, to wear masks and follow social distancing guidelines. While the CDC says vaccinated individuals need not wear masks indoors, our preference at Western State is to do what we need to do as a family to make sure that everyone is protected.

Allen K. Easley is Dean of Western State College of Law at Westcliff University in Irvine. He can be reached at aeasley@wsulaw.edu.