murder hornet margaritas, anyone?

[Bill Maurer]

    Dear social sciences lecturers, grad students, staff and faculty,

    Happy Cinco de Mayo! Now, I can't be the only person in our social
    sciences community (looking at you, Gustavo and Li) who read this piece
    in the New York Times today, and started thinking about the possibilities
    for mixing up some murder hornet margaritas tonight! [Disclosure: Profs
    Oliveira and Zhang were the ones to introduce me to the culinary delights
    of insect larvae].
    
    Not much to report--although it still feels like I've been running all
    over the place while standing or sitting in the exact same spot, day
    after day. Discussions continue on reopening research facilities; UCOP
    is weighing whether and how to reopen dorms; and the Fresh Basic Needs
    Hub on campus has provided updated information for helping students
    access CalFresh federal food assistance, which I'll paste below so
    you can share it. We also had a great all-staff meeting this morning,
    with several of our computing services team sporting dizzying new Zoom
    backgrounds. Clearly I have to up my game.
    
    Until tomorrow!
    
    Bill
    


Dear Faculty & Staff,

As an essential service, the FRESH Basic Needs Hub is still offering our
students services during these challenging times, including limited pantry
distributions of non-perishable foods, fresh produce pick-ups at Tanaka
Farms, emergency meal swipes, and consultations with our social worker.

We are also continuing to offer CalFresh application assistance via
Zoom. We are guiding students through the application through the feature
of screen sharing.

CalFresh is a federal food assistance program (formerly known as
food stamps) that provides supplementary income to purchase food from
grocery stores through what is called an EBT card. Students can get up
to $194/month for groceries!

For more information on CalFresh, please visit our website here:
https://basicneeds.uci.edu/get-calfresh/calfresh-home.php

Students may not be aware that we are offering CalFresh services, so
we’re providing resources to you as faculty and staff in case you
wanted to share that information with your students. Please see below
for resources.

For a CalFresh blurb to send in an email, click here.

For a slide to include in a slide deck (such as a lecture), click here.

To request a FRESH staff member to give a brief 5-minute pitch about
CalFresh at the beginning of one of your online lectures, please fill
out this Google Form. One of our staff will get back to you to coordinate
the logistics.

If you’d like to get more information on any of our services during
COVID-19, please visit our website: https://basicneeds.uci.edu/covid19.php