to see you all even virtually, and thanks so much for joining us today. I'm Cliff Lynch, I'm the director of the Coalition for Networked Information, and I'm delighted to welcome you to the plenary days that are concluding the Spring 2021 virtual member meeting for the Coalition. I wanted to say a few things about the meeting and a few words of welcome, and then I'm going to get on to the the primary discussion for this session, which is to give you a quick readout on the executive roundtables. So I'm delighted that we are joined by member reps and guests, and it's also wonderful that because the virtual environment lets us be a little more flexible, we've been able to accommodate some extra participation from our member institutions, and that's a delightful thing too. I want to say a special welcome to the clear fellows who've joined us, and you'll meet some of them on Friday, and also to the ARL leadership and career development fellows who are with us today. I'd like to welcome our international members and guests. Perhaps one of the bits of good news is that I think Zoom has probably made your travel to the meeting substantially less arduous than when you did it in person. I'll say just a couple quick mechanical things. We have got closed captioning available, a transcript, and you can turn that on if it's helpful to you. We are recording this session just as we have recorded pretty much all of sessions at the virtual Spring meeting, and we will be making those recordings publicly available after the meeting. There is a chat, and please feel free to use that. There is also a Q&A tool, and I would welcome questions as we go along, particularly on the report on the roundtable, either in Q&A or the chat. I can also turn people's microphones on if you want to ask a more protracted question by voice. You can just raise your hand or say something in the chat. I think that's all the mechanical stuff that I wanted to mention. Let me just say a few things about the meeting as a whole. Everybody is pretty drastically zoomed out after a year of pandemic, and one of the things I'm hearing consistently from our members is that the demands on their time and even more so on their attention are becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. Also, having a greater ability to schedule your engagement with things has been very welcome for many of our participants. We decided to do things very differently this spring than we have done for the last two virtual meetings. This meeting has a much smaller footprint and particularly a much smaller synchronous footprint. We had about nine total synchronous project briefing sessions last week spread out across the week, and I think those were all really excellent sessions. I was able to get to all of them. At the beginning of the meeting, we also released a substantial number of pre-recorded on-demand project briefings. I haven't had an opportunity to watch all of them yet, but I have watched a number of them, and I can tell you there are definitely some gems in there. I invite you to have a look at those as your time and interest permits. There are a couple that extend or relate to synchronous presentations as well, and I'll mention a couple of those. The plenary days are today, tomorrow, Thursday, and the meeting concludes Friday. Again, we've taken a sort of a view on the plenary days that less is more here, and we've tried to emphasize rapidly developing things that I feel haven't been getting enough attention, or opportunities to really interact with individuals or groups of people. I'll just take a moment to to review that the plenary days for you. Today, I'm going to try and summarize the executive round table, what I heard there, more on that in a minute. Later today, we will have a plenary session on remote access to archives and the sorcery project. This is a very important development that has, like so many other things, been given much greater emphasis by the inability to visit archives and special collections, especially those that aren't at your home institution during the pandemic. It raises a lot of questions, and I think is going to be an important thematic discussion in the coming years, and you'll see when I give you the readout on the executive round tables, how it connects up in a couple of places. We'll conclude today with a panel on the Big Ten Academic Alliance, and their plans for what is essentially a big common shared collection among the libraries in the alliance. We will emphasize the implications of this for electronic material rather than just the physical materials. Tomorrow, we will have two sessions, one that looks at the emerging roles of chief information security officers and chief privacy officers and how those two roles relate to each other, which is complicated. We'll also begin to explore how other parts of our universities can work with these positions, particularly around issues like privacy and the use of information by third parties. Many of our libraries have gotten very active in this area and of course face very complex privacy trade-offs as they license electronic materials, so I think that's going to be a very valuable conversation. We're also going to get a lovely treat tomorrow. I am delighted to bring Carrie Jordan to CNI. She is the executive director of the Carpentries, which is something that many of our institutions rely on, but I suspect is not thoroughly understood, particularly at a leadership level in our institutions and offers tremendous opportunities for collaboration going forward. We will conclude on Friday with a panel of new clear fellows. We'll learn about what they're doing and what they're experiencing, and then I will wrap the meeting up with a few comments and a little discussion of where CNI is going to be, some things CNI is going to be doing over the next few months. We have a question here about the on-demand briefings. The on-demand briefings will be available publicly. They will be available via SCED for registered attendees and they'll go up on all the usual CNI video channels, Vimeo and YouTube. In the week or 10 days kind of thing following the meeting. As for recorded sessions, sure, there's no reason why you can't share them with a few colleagues, but also be mindful that they'll be out there within, as I say, a week, 10 days or so, for the public at large. We certainly welcome you sharing those just as widely as it makes sense. I'm delighted whenever I hear about reuse of those materials. That's a quick summary of the plans for the remainder of the meeting. Any questions about that before I get on to the round table? Hearing none, let me move on. As many of you know, we have been doing executive round tables in conjunction with our meetings for a long time now. Now that we've moved the meetings virtual for the time being, we've also done some additional executive round tables. Some of them designed to really take advantage of the fact that we could bring in members of your institutional leadership who could contribute to a topic at hand, such as research continuity, but in the world of physical meetings might not be willing to put in the time and expense to physically travel to a round table. We normally produce reports, written reports of these round tables, and we will for the one we just conducted. I would guesstimate that that will be available probably mid-April timeframe and we'll announce that when it's available. But the topic was both of such broad interest to our members and also had enough connections to other things that I thought we'd be discussing during the plenary days that I felt it would be useful to give you at least a fast kind of synthesis and readout of what I heard at those round tables. The topic of the round tables was assumptions and strategies for the post-COVID environment, or at least we hope it's going to be post-COVID, going into academic year 2021, 2022, and beyond. And really what we wanted to do was get some insight into how institutions were thinking about the fall, where their assumptions were, where their uncertainties were in planning, and what they thought were going to be the key issues and challenges going forward. We held three convenings of the round table, each one with different institutional participants on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week. It was a very busy week. And I've done my best over the course of the last few days to try and extract commonalities, key themes, and particularly interesting or important observations as they struck me. So I'm going to try and give you that overview now. And I ask for your indulgence. This is not perfectly polished. This is really a fast turnaround synthesis. And I would welcome questions and comments on this as I get to the end of it. So let me begin. So the first thing I want to say is that well, every institution is sort of thinking about how do we go from where we are today to where we need to be and want to be in fall 2021, not every institution is starting from the same place. And it's really easy as institutions become deeply engaged in their own local planning to miss that fact. There are institutions in the United States that didn't close ever or that just shut down for maybe a month in March of 2021. There are other institutions that basically shut down in March of 2021 and have been doing virtually all remote instruction since then. And are now thinking in terms of in fall 2021, we will make our return after more than a year back to in-person education. So depending on where you're starting from, your scenarios going forward are indeed very, very different. Furthermore, the situation in the U.S. is not the same as the situation in other nations. We had a very good participation from our Canadian members and it was really helpful to understand just how different the situation and the working assumptions are among at least the Canadian institutions that participated in our discussions. Sadly, we did not have any participation from our U.K. institutions or from institutions elsewhere, for example, in continental Europe. And so I can't tell you very much about their planning assumptions. I have had a few conversations with colleagues at JISC about this, but I really don't feel that I have a good enough understanding to say much. So that's another important framing comment. My final framing comment is that we focused largely on instruction and on campus kind of operations rather than on the research enterprise in these conversations, although we certainly touched on it. We will be taking a closer look at the research enterprise going forward later on in probably in June. And I'll say more about that on Friday, but that wasn't the primary focus here. What I can tell you is that since maybe April or thereabouts of 2020, research has been slowly but systematically reopening on our campuses to the extent that it was shut down. And our labs at most institutions are operating, at least on a limited basis. There are still many limitations. For example, face-to-face field work is greatly constrained. There are many other constraints, but that wasn't a major focus. And my expectation is that we will continue to see sort of slow and steady progress on the research enterprise. So let me now talk more specifics. So in the United States, the broad assumption pretty much every institution is students are back on campus, faculty are back on campus, vaccines are very widely available. Everybody is certainly mindful that we could have wildcards coming up that change those assumptions, you know, the emergence of a really nasty variant or something of that nature. But the sense is one of optimism. Now, you will find that as you ask more detailed questions that I'll come to in a minute about what the students will be doing and how instruction is going to be conducted and things like that, that there are quite a lot of caveats and I'll explore many of those. The Canadian situation is quite different. Most of our Canadian colleagues indicated that they expect a largely remote 2021 fall semester. And that they are going to be bringing students back in limited numbers carefully and that perhaps they won't see a large scale return to the campuses until spring of 2022. Vaccine rollout in Canada has been going more slowly than in the United States. One useful point is that well, many campuses are in the United States particularly are assuming that students by September thereabouts will be broadly vaccinated. And in fact, it is not entirely clear at this point what assumptions they are making about things like testing among their students and faculty. I have not found any institutions who are willing to say at this point that they are planning to mandate vaccines as a condition of student in person return to campus. And there appear to be two reasons for that. One is that this would be a very politically fraught decision, which in some cases may even run afoul perhaps of state laws that are under consideration in some states, forbidding, for example, employers to require COVID vaccinations. But also because right now all the vaccinations, all of the vaccines are being issued and administered under an emergency use authorization rather than a full license. And there seems to be at least a sense that it may be problematic to mandate them in the way that institutions have mandated other vaccinations in the past as long as they are not fully licensed for use but only available under emergency use authorization. The last thing I will say about the public health situation is that there are big uncertainties about distancing and how that relates to physical space and that has a whole cascade of other things in play. So, for example, if in the fall institutions are still expected to maintain six foot distancing among students in classrooms, that means that you have severe constraints on class sizes, severe stress on physical plant, and it may be necessary to do things like go to unusual scheduling in order to get maximized use of classrooms and things like that. Evening classes, Saturday classes, early morning classes, classes that all the times that students don't like and faculty don't like. On the other hand, we've already seen that the distancing in K through 12 according to CDC guidance has gone down to three feet. And it may very well be that when we get enough vaccine deployed that they will simply drop the distancing requirements, institutions just don't know. And that is making planning complicated. There are also issues about state and county regulations and how choices the institutions make do or don't match up to state and county regulations. So, for example, institutions may have mask mandates in states or counties or cities that don't have mask mandates. And there is some concern that that is going to be a source of increased tension and difficulty going forward. Let me turn to what instruction is likely to look like in the fall. And this is really interesting. So, the first thing I want to say is that we had some significant terminological or taxonomical problems in our conversations. There is a great lack of precision about how to describe some of the situations that we've been in at in various stages of trying to deal with the pandemic and remote instruction. So, I want to try and outline some of the issues here. So, one question we've got that's really central is to what extent are institutions going to continue to accommodate remote students? So, if the assumption is that students are going to be back in person because it is a residential program, are they going to have online versions of courses for those who want online versions? A number of state schools already have extensive online degree programs. Are they going to just direct students who want an online education into those programs and courses? Or are they going to continue the situation that I think many of our institutions who have students back, particularly undergraduate students back in person today, are doing? Where the idea is that all classes can be taken either or virtually all classes can be taken either in person or remotely. Now, there's a third thing in the mix here which is the so-called high-flex classrooms or hybrid classrooms where what you're doing is rather than serving some students that are remote and some students that are in person with it, with a course offering, you are trying to simultaneously accommodate people who are coming in remotely and people who are coming in in person. A number of schools have invested heavily in classrooms to be able to do this at vast expense. They have also discovered that in most cases to be able to do this successfully, you have to hire classroom monitors to help with managing the online and in-person folks. And at least based on all the anecdotal evidence that I've been able to pick up, most faculty hate this and most people think it's really a pretty crummy educational experience. And there seems to be a general feeling at most institutions that this is the situation to be avoided unless it's just a lecture class. I mean if it's just a lecture class, it really doesn't matter that much whether people are in person or remote. That's a lot more manageable than something with a significant degree of class interaction. So that's really a key question is what decisions are people going to make about what's the cutoff point for accommodating remote users when the program is designed to be residential and is fall 2021 going to be that point. Having said that, I want to make a few other points that kind of offset that. When you talk about back in person, most campuses are at least hedging about large lecture courses, very large lecture courses. Now at most institutions, if you look at the percentage of courses that are very large lecture courses and here I'm talking let's say 100 people and above or 200 people and above. These are a pretty small percentage of the absolute number of courses, but they're a significant number of student hours. There's a concern and it's partially driven by space density and partially by the notion that once you get past the first few rows in those very large lecture courses, it may as well be remote that those courses, perhaps the lectures will be done remote. Now it's very common in those big lecture courses of course to have a lecture and then have set problem sessions or discussion sessions which are much smaller. There are lots of them and the presumption is that those would continue to meet in person. But there does seem to be a very real conversation going on about whether it's time to start doing away with those gigantic lecture theaters and just doing those lectures online and recording them so people can revisit them. That's kind of significant and it's really very interesting. People are assuming that foreign students are still going to have some difficulties, that there are going to be barriers to foreign travel, that they may need to either defer admission for some foreign students or move them to other programs or do something and this ties back again to this issue of where do you kind of draw the line in terms of supporting remote users for a program that's designed to be primarily in person and face to face. This really becomes quite nuanced. For example, one can imagine at the graduate level some programs where depending on exactly what somebody wants to study they may be able to put together a year that makes sense that's entirely online if they can't come physically to the campus to the United States to study. A few other observations. At some institutions at least my sense is that there is starting to be a rather nuanced course by course assessment of what makes sense to do in person, what makes sense to do online and some of that is courses that have an in person component and an online component. Some of it is specific courses that the faculty decide work well online and that they'd like to keep online and in some cases they're very good reasons for keeping courses online. So I think that we will see that play out department by department institution by institution and I think that's a very healthy and rejuvenating kind of conversation for the instructional programs at our universities. Two final points. There are some things happening especially at the graduate level, at the research frontier level, at departmental symposia and things like that that are very interesting where we're seeing some signs of the emergence of much greater cross institutional activity around specific research topics. Things like colloquia or ongoing seminars that now draw people from all over the country or all over the world that are taking place virtually and how those proceed going forward is a very interesting question. Other little anecdotes, you know many faculty now are able to make a lot more use of guest speakers as part of their of their courses because the barriers to bringing a guest speaker to the course are much lower than getting them to physically travel to campus. Those those kinds of trends are liable to stay around. The last observation that I wanted to share about instruction is that freshmen and sophomores seem to be in general having the most difficulty with this shift to all remote instruction at campuses that went almost all or entirely remote for their undergraduates and that has suggested things about priorities for in-person courses, priorities for bringing students back to campus. I don't think that anybody has a full understanding yet of exactly what the causes are of those difficulties. It may just be that they have sort of less maturity as students at the college level. I mean for many freshmen the transition from high school to college can be notoriously challenging and in the remote environment they have been sort of adrift for many of the support structures that that help them in in-person settings. A few words about space. I already talked about the density issues. There are a few other things that are going on too though. If we get rid of big lectures and big lecture halls, what are we going to do with those big lecture halls? There is a conversation about remote work which I'll come to in a minute, which is really tied to how much office space we have on campus and who gets it and what it's used for and whether some of that can be repurposed. There are lots of unknowns there. I think that it's going to take a considerable amount of time to really negotiate a lot of these issues around space with campus communities. But one of the things I just want to put, two points I want to put on your radar screen. One of the things that the pandemic has really emphasized, particularly in attempts to do high-flex classes, is the enormous technology debt in many of our classrooms. We have not invested in this and a number of institutions have used this as an opportunity to do more investing. The other is that while it seems likely that there's going to be a considerable amount of rethinking over the next few years about who gets space on central campus, what kind of space, what we do with it, and what our instructional and collaboration spaces look like, there is a significant cost to remodeling and repurposing space. And I don't know of anybody who's really systematically budgeting for that at this point, but I do think that that is going to be a consequence and perhaps an inhibiting factor in the rethinking of and repurposing of space going forward. Let me talk about workforce. And there's a, this turned out to be a bigger subjective discussion and a more intense subjective discussion perhaps than I had originally expected. One thing I'll say is that right now, events and reality have completely outrun policy at most institutions. And institutions are just sort of operating under, based on necessity, based on temporary authorizations, doing things in the absence of policy and on it goes. HR units are really not moving terribly quickly about making sensible policies and clear policies going forward about remote work and about issues involving the remote workforce. One thing that we don't again have a good taxonomy for is what remote means. And I'll just distinguish two very, very different cases. One is the case of someone who works at home, who works at home a day a week, maybe two days a week. And basically comes into the office, comes into the workplace the other three or four days a week. And by the way, if there's a meeting they need to come in for, it's really not a big problem for them to come in generally. Let's contrast that with the situation where you are deliberately hiring remote workers on a national or even international basis with the idea that they will be remote working from where they are. And maybe they'll come to campus once or twice a year by getting on an airplane for some kind of all hands meeting or something like that, or maybe they won't even do that. Those are real, real different scenarios. And it's really important, I think, to differentiate those as we talk about remote workers. We have a whole series of conversations about offices, private offices, shared office, or workspaces more broadly versus shared offices. And those go hand in hand with decisions about remote work. There are some very real concerns that people expressed about equity issues that are involved in remote work. Some jobs are easy to do remotely. Some jobs are impossible to do remotely. And that's a very uncomfortable reality for some folks. Many of our institutions are under hiring freezes. And a lot of them have also absorbed budget cuts by giving up open positions that they had. One of the pressures that this is creating for institutions, for organizations and institutions is that as their portfolio of services change, their portfolio of activities change, they've got an increasing mismatch between the staff they've got and the staff they need. And so this is leading to a lot of considerations about how we reskill or upskill or retrain staff that are on staff. One thing I'll note that has been particularly clumsy for some institutions is we have unions tied up in this which further complicate flexibility to reassign activities. We also, at some institutions, particularly in libraries where the librarians can win tenure, where they're treated as faculty, have some issues there as well that may limit the flexibility that leadership has to reorganize. A few other things that I'll just say about organizations very briefly. Many people commented on the increased communications burden both within an organization like SAIL Library or an IT organization and across entire campuses that has been created by the pandemic. And the sense that there was a greater need for various kinds of town hall meetings, open hours, the demand for communication and the need for communication is very high and very real. Another observation. Many of our supervisors and managers in our organizations never really had to manage remote workers before the pandemic suddenly hit. There actually are a whole series of skills, best practices, bodies of knowledge, and things like that about how to supervise and lead remote workers or organizations with some remote work and some in-person work. And we really need to think about how to develop and get those skills to our managers and supervisors in our organizations. Finally, there were a number of observations and I think this is important that as our organizations come back together largely in person, that those organizations are tired. They have been terrifically stressed that there's really a need for a kind of a time for healing and rebuilding of social capital and that we need to kind of make room for this as our institution, as our organizations try and come back together as we begin to see life beyond the pandemic. A few comments about library services. Many of these won't be surprising. There are a number of innovations that we're putting in place that seem to have been well received and will probably stay. Self-service checkout, pick up lockers, digitization has gotten an enormous boost. Digital reserves are very much the preferred thing now. More digitizing of special collections, more use of OERs, greater prioritization of digital content rather than printed content in acquisitions. One important thing about libraries in particular that was commented on by a number of institutions is that the pandemic has really changed the perception of what libraries can do and also of their importance in supporting the instructional and research missions of our institutions. Another thing, we're seeing more asynchronous instruction as opposed to synchronous instruction by libraries partially in response to the enormously increased demand for instruction in various kinds of particularly research skills. Controlled digital lending has become a much more mainstream idea at many of our institutions and it's really clear that we have a big problem now with audio and visual materials and streaming going forward. And in fact, just to make a kind of a broader statement, a lot of issues around our ability to use and share various forms of intellectual property that's licensed, be it video, audio, or software, specialized software as well, is heavily biased towards in-person sharing and use. And really any kind of instruction or research that depends on this is facing a strong driver to come back in person because we do not have the kinds of terms and conditions that we need to do this successfully in a online streamed and remote environment. Finally, in terms of library services, here's one that just left me with my mouth open and has really been sticking with me ever since. The observation that a participant made that a quarter of our undergraduates have no experience of a pre-pandemic research library as a place, as a center for collaboration, as a source of various kinds of services and expertise and resources, they just don't have it. And depending on their experiences before coming to the university, they may never have had it. They may never have encountered a major research library. They just don't know what they do. This is a quarter of our undergraduate students and we really need to think extremely carefully about what that means when we finally bring those students back on campus. Here's a group of other observations that they'll categorize nicely but are really important and I'll try and get through these fast. Residential broadband for both working at home and for students learning remotely has showed up as a critical issue and it's one that is not entirely under the control of the higher education community although they are doing what they can and this is going to need to be a priority both for individual institutions and collectively. It's been particularly aggravated when other community centers like public libraries are closed in many cases and we see people using Wi-Fi at fast food places because that's the only place they can get it. We actually heard horrible stories for example of actually faculty having to mail thumb drives with material to some students in who were living in places that are both Wi-Fi and cellular deserts. That's really how bad it is in parts of this country. Open access and open science has gotten a big boost. Preprints have gotten a really big boost and I think that momentum will continue. Centralization and consolidation and institutional standardization around both IT and instructional technology systems driven by costs, availability of expertise and cybersecurity issues seems to have really gotten a boost in this environment. Some of it is also the move to the cloud for some of these systems. Some of it's the need to procure brand new classes of system at a large scale. A really good example of this is remote proctoring. A lot of institutions are trying to figure out what to do about that and if they're going to deploy it or continue to deploy it, they'd like to standardize on a single solution for the institution a single contract. Many institutions have really increased their investments in instructional technology support in teaching and learning centers, in consulting with faculty on teaching and learning strategies. Part of this has been in response to an enormous scale up of demand from faculty for services in this area. We've also seen in the last year that faculty expertise in instructional technology has gotten a really big boost. Here's one that we will be exploring at some point in the future in more detail. Video management, especially as regards to remote or hybrid courses but not exclusively by any means, has now turned into a big expensive problem for a lot of institutions and is a problem that often nobody is managing in a very coherent way. That's one that's going to demand some attention. There's a policy question working around which is how important is it going to be to maintain instructional resilience and the capability to return quickly to remote operation for whatever reason into the future? This is one that, for example, some residential liberal arts institutions that are really eager to go back to residential in-person education are really going to need to think about. Digital public health and welfare has become a big kind of IT and service area at many of our campuses. Attestation, weekly testing and test result reporting, contact tracing, often with links to organizations that institutions didn't normally deal with, like county or state health systems. There's also a growing emphasis on student well-being and mental health as we've gone through this whole situation. It's really not clear that these systems are going to go away and they're likely to be a continued big source of investment. A couple of final observations. There's been a considerable loss of privacy. Some of this has been related to the move to remote instruction. Think, for example, of the horribly invasive things that come along with remote proctoring. Some of it is the whole digital public health situation. A lot of this loss of privacy somehow seems to have been normalized by the pandemic. We really need to look at this going forward and think pretty carefully about what compromises we've made and what compromises we want to continue to make. I think that there is a growing understanding that graduate students, postdocs and junior faculty are at particularly vulnerable points in their career, particularly those who have caregiving responsibilities, those who are precarious economically for other reasons. There's a lot of thinking about how to best support these folks and to be there for them and what can be done to improve the safety net on that. And here's a final one I'll leave you with. There were some fascinating variations of opinion about the scale of the lasting effects of the pandemic. It's always easy to privilege what's happening in the current moment. The most pivotal events of a lifetime, the most important election in our history, et cetera, et cetera, the greatest technological innovation of the century. It may be, and some have argued, that we're overestimating the lasting effects of the pandemic and that what we will genuinely see is a kind of a gradual and then fast return to something that looks a lot like life was before the pandemic, that this will have been a disaster that we passed through. There's another argument that was made very compelling by others that this is a sociotechnical change that's probably on the scale of World War II. If you look at things like the levels of government spending and the undertaking of debt, the economic restructuring, the demographic and labor force events, the adoption of new technologies, all of these kinds of things, the sheer level of death that has taken place in the last year, these are things that are objectively at those levels. We'll see, but I do think that it is worth reflecting on the extent of change that we will see starting, let's say, in fall of 2021 and beyond as we come out of this. And that is my very fast preliminary, tentative synthesis. I would welcome comments and questions. Please put them in the chat, raise your hands, use the Q&A tool, the floor is open. What surprises people in that readout? Or for those of you who are there, how did perhaps my summary misrepresent what you think you heard? Natalie's observation here is very interesting. We don't just need a safety net for postdocs and those entering job markets, we might need life rings for some of them. What do these look like for what you've heard so far? I really don't know. I don't think that people have thought that far out. I think that there are some studies coming out that are beginning to give us an understanding, though, of just how damaging this has been to some of those folks, especially to caregivers. I mean, there's a pretty horrifying study that came out of the National Academies of the effects of the pandemic on women in science, technical, engineering, mathematics, and medical fields came out about maybe two, three weeks ago, and there's more on the way. Rob has got a whole series of comments here that are interesting about, we don't know to what extent there'll be a push. We don't really understand the student demand side here very well either. Are students going to want more online, more remote? Are we going to see a larger part of the student body gravitating towards institutions that offer remote instruction? Right now, it's a little too early to tell, but we will definitely need to understand that. And, you know, the flip side is, are they going to want more on site, more in person, as a reaction to this? We don't know. We're going to find out. I mean, one commentator speculated that in fact, we may find there's a social and behavioral change and a version to gathering that even when we can gather safely, when there's a large scale deployment of vaccination, that in fact, people will be reluctant to do that. They won't want to gather. They won't, you know, a lot of people will take many years to be comfortable coming back to big crowds and crowded events. There's a question about how the life of the student will change, how residential campus life will change. We didn't discuss that much. The only thing I can tell you there that might be interesting is that many campuses that had been using dorms, you know, where you had two or more people to a dorm room or a dorm suite, took it down to single occupancy during the pandemic when they did have students back. There was already a growing amount of pressure at many institutions for single occupancy dorms, and we may see that that is a change that sticks at some schools at least, or that sticks to some extent, that there is a greater emphasis on single occupancy dorm life than the whole experience of having college roommates. A very interesting question from Tara Lynn about the discussion of the amount of turnover at leadership levels and the exhaustion, the wave of retirements. We didn't discuss that but there is no question that is a thing. I mean, there are requirements happening at a very rapid rate, and I think that you're going to see another round of those as we start getting through this. While there were some people who just said, you know, I can retire now. I don't want to deal with this, and I am just going to call it a career. There are other people who felt I need to take my organization through to the other side of this, but when I get to the other side, I'm done. So it will be interesting to see how that plays out. Oh gosh, lots of questions coming now. Here's one that I'll share. It's really interesting. At NC State, we've been pondering the same questions about how we can get it do over library orientation for this year's first year students. A lack of physical presence is also corresponding to drop in online library resources, presumably because they can't find out what's there. We're also finding it's not just library services that are experiencing less uptake but academic services across the campus. This will increase the drumbeat for re-establishing the full residential campus experience. That's interesting. We did not share a lot of usage data about various kinds of services in these conversations. I think many people felt that we were in such an anomalous setting right now that, you know, all of those kinds of numbers needed to be taken with a little bit of a grain of soul. What surprised me did not talk about the rise in negative societal views of higher ed and emphasis of higher ed as a private good. We didn't talk about that because we really were talking mostly about institutional strategies for operating in a post-COVID environment. I think that these kinds of questions are really questions to some extent for the top level leadership of our institutions about how they are relating to society as a whole and about the role and mission of their institution. They just really weren't the focus of our conversations. There is a huge question showing up around that and about the implications for the public goods that they support, like libraries, archives. The echo for time for healing and the underscoring of that. Someone sharing the experience of having a child who's now thinking about college and a high school-aged child considering college and really the whole value proposition feeling very different, particularly in the uncertainties here. A question about what is this going to do to town-down relationships? That was something we touched on lightly and I think is a genuine open question going forward with many, many dimensions, particularly when you get into places where there really is a fairly intimate town-down relationship as opposed to being a university in a massive city. I think it's going to be very important to watch how that evolves going forward, especially in the broader social context. We've gone on a little past the hour that I intended to cover and I see we've still got a lot of attendees with us. I would propose we take maybe a couple more comments or observations if there are any and then we adjourn to get ready for the upcoming sorcery session. Any final comments or questions? Hearing none, thank you for joining us for this plenary day and thanks for joining us for this preliminary readout and we will explore all of this more in the report that we will be putting out from these roundtables. As you can see, there are many, many open questions for us to explore together going forward. So thank you so much for joining us today.


Earl Glenn here shot forward in township Chevrolet and just kind of showing off One of our new newest pieces of equipment here. We're pretty pretty proud of and we had a new alignment machine Great time of year too with everyone doing the switch over from the winter tires to the summer tires I had mentioned it in a couple of videos before there about Getting those winter tires off as the weather is getting warmer No better time to have an alignment analysis done to make sure that when you put your new tires on obviously They're gonna drive down the road good and straight and you're not gonna prematurely wear out the tire Especially when we're talking the average cost for tires today is six seven eight hundred dollars for for the average set And of course they they go a lot more expensive than that Sometimes $2,000 depending on what you're driving and what size they are so just give you a quick tour of our machine here This is a hunter machine. We got from the boys up there, and we've got first this This little trigger mechanism here, and this is gonna scan the vin and any vehicle we bring in here And it's gonna preload all the specifications on the machine So it makes a little quicker for the fellas And it's also gonna make sure there's you know, no mistakes being made as far as the information you're putting in there With the machine also we've got a remote so that the guys can operate it Well, they're underneath the vehicle on the hoist doing the adjustments that may need to be done Another great feature too is the heads on this unit now They actually clamp on around the tire and this soft face here would go on the rim So with that being said we're not clipping them on the rim anymore So you're not gonna have to risk damaging the edge of the rim or the paint and some of the bigger trucks with the guys Driving around the the aftermarket wheels and tires it makes it real difficult to get those on so it's gonna save some time there as well Some of the features of the machine that are kind of different than our old one the actual function of it's the same You know you It's not making the alignment job any better.  So Yeah, some of the main features obviously it's got a great print out it's gonna show you what Alignment angles were off if any and it's gonna show you to What it looks like when we were done the hoist itself has some really cool LED lights on it That shine up on the bottom of the chassis of the vehicle so it also Helps illuminate that for the guys when they're underneath they're working And obviously, you know, if there's any issues under there It's a lot easier to spot too so we can get that information to you guys so you guys know what's going on with your car Hunters done a great job to almost I Haven't run into one yet, but almost every car that we do and we can do an alignment on here Any make any model they actually have illustrations of how to make the adjustments and their actual Photographs and pictures of the vehicles so there's no guessing another thing. It's not like a guy's got to go to check another program to see Okay, what do I have to you know? What nut or or what bolt or what adjustment do I have to make to correct this, you know angle? It's it's right there as planes could be everything's one stop shop as far as the alignment goes in this piece of equipment here So it's an expensive piece of equipment, but it's something you got to have And it's a great service to offer our customers, especially when we're doing a lot of front-end work And we're also doing a lot of tires and stuff You want to make sure this is going to complete that whole circle of you're getting the whole thing done So your car is driving on the road like it should We do our alignment analysis is at $29 this machine has really picked up the pace It's you know roughly about 20 minutes to to do an analysis I'm obviously some vehicles are different with the you know the different hookups and and stuff But for the most part it's about 20 minutes to do the analysis and that'll tell you if everything's running straight And it's about $29 so pretty cheap insurance on a set of tires You know that are anywhere from 600 to 1500 dollars that are on your truck or your car That's a pretty cheap insurance policy. You know that they're driving on the road and they're wearing like they should Since we got this machine last week We've probably you know five or six maybe a day and out of those five or six a day. There's about If one there may be one or so roughly That doesn't need an adjustment. So that just goes to show you all these people are coming in You know thinking that the cars great for alignment wise But the roads are so bad this year with the fluctuation in the temperature that a lot of potholes a lot of dips and banks in the road And that's of course gonna throw that stuff out. So If you do need an adjustment on your alignment One of the advisors will go and speak to you And if you need to if you want to come out and see exactly what the issue is right here in the machine That's no problem myself or one of the technicians will bring you out and show you exactly what's going on So you know what you're paying for because it's always a nice feeling too. So if you're getting your tires changed If you're coming in for an oil change or anything at all and you're curious to know if your alignments within spec Just when you make your appointment online Make sure you note that or when you call us here at the service department Let them know and we'll get that set up for you and like I say it's pretty quick so it's not much of any convenience for you and We'll get you down the road and get your car working safe and reliable like that's our main goal here So just give us a call. We look forward to seeing you and just wanted to show off our new toy Another episode of check talk finished up there and we'll see you later


Well if you like most people you're probably wishing this winter would end most people do but not all in this week's Northwoods adventure AJ Feldman shows how a few people are savoring every last snowflake You may be having cabin fever, but a mount ski gall in this walk long winters mean happy riders Yeah, everyone's trying to get their last runs in for the year and it just keeps getting stretched out Everyone thinks that's the end of the year But just one more weekend and one more weekend the season has been extended about a month compared to the past Thanks to the snow and cold winners past this time of year. I mean we wouldn't be open I think we had a pretty good season overall aside from the extreme cold temps We had mid-winter we could have done without that but had a pretty good winter conditions are great here at Mount ski gall whether or not you're a long-time snowboarder or a first-time tuber like me I've been snowboarding here for about seven years now, and I'd say it's never lasted this long Maybe Easter maybe but never a weekend after I love it. Tubing was a popular hit as some of the younger guests enjoyed speeding down the hill Trying to go as fast as they can which hill did you like the fast one or the slow one? The fast one although sometimes it's a little too fast More time on the slopes means more time to add that last trick to your montage Yeah, I've been having a great time It's I've learned a lot new things to overcome it all things switch. It's new approaches front side back side It's been a winter to remember one that might not come again in the near future for this time of year We've actually got great conditions usually when we even make it into Mid-delete March the conditions aren't ideal and right now we've just got ideal conditions Something we might not see again for another year or two But even those who love being out on the slopes won't be too upset once spring finally comes a little bit of both I'm gonna miss riding but I'm definitely ready for summer to come around and hang out on the lake reporting in Niswa AJ Feldman Lakeland news If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS


We are live. This is Marco Mengelstorpe here in what I call the People's Republic of Santa Cruz, beautiful California, where I am teaching this quarter at University of California Santa Cruz. And I am so, so very pleased to start out the month of April with my friend, State Senator Laura Ocasio, who represents the first Senate district, if I'm not mistaken, from the east side of my hometown in Hilo. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mahalo Nui for joining me today. I'm just so, so pleased to have you on Laura. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Marco. It's wonderful honor to be here. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna go hopefully in all kinds of fascinating places during time together. But I think my, my first intro question to you is going to be what brought you into politics. Yeah, okay. So that actually takes me way back to my childhood, actually growing up in a very politically aware family who are very quickly involved. Some of my earliest memories are actually of my father hosting solar power awareness parties in maybe the 1980s, probably 1984. And as just a part of his contribution to the raising of awareness around the need for solar power, and this is way back in the day. So, you know, oftentimes in my family, we need to have talks around the dinner table, we'll be taking us to public meetings and just teaching us to engage civically a typical field trip in my family might be to the water reclamation plant, for example. And so, you know, I also then got my bachelor's degree in geography here in University of Hawaii at Mandoa, and subsequently got into a bit of resource management positions and studying ecology. And it really occurred to me, though, that the future is in our, in our students. And so I began emerging into the field of education. Thank you, well. Most recently, however, well, actually, in around 2016, I really started seeing the need to get involved in our local Democratic Party. And, and be at the table, I recognize that it was quite an exclusive group and a lot of decisions were made without much input from the extended community. And I felt like my voice was not necessarily a part of that. So I wanted to just jump in and be involved and felt like if I don't join the table, someone else perhaps will. And I think that that bringing that voice to that table was really important. So I got involved in the Democratic Party and started learning about local politics, which I had been following myself, continuing as a constituent, but just got more involved. And then in the vacancy of Senate District 1C, when Congressman Cahele will lead to Congress, I put in my name for application and was appointed by Governor Huguet in January 2021. So that brings me to where I'm at now. And I'm so grateful for all I have learned and grown in the last year and a half in this position. Super. So you had, you had a one in three chance, I believe once your name was submitted, right?  I was incredibly surprised in a lot of ways, although I do have to say that many folks around me said that it gave them hope and that they weren't surprised. They appreciated that I was there to represent their voice now in the state Senate. And I think the biggest emotion and feeling that I had was a complete humility and reverence because to be able to represent a larger group of people and, you know, to take that job seriously is an incredible honor, especially if it's like, you know, who had, you know, which has very deep roots and culture and, yeah, I just feel really honored to represent Hilo and the people of Hilo. So one of the questions I'd like to ask everybody who, as the, the kindness of coming on the show, is what in your position now as Hawaii State Senator, and this is your second legislative session, if I'm not mistaken, the first one being last year, what has surprised you the most? Because, you know, we go into, to a new job, a new position with all kinds of expectations preconceived or otherwise about what the job is going to be like. And given that life is, it can be surprising to say the least and unpredictable, what, what has surprised you the most as you've been getting your, your sea legs, so to speak, there in the Senate? Great question. I love this question. So a couple of things come to mind, Marco, and one is that things aren't always as they seem. And what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of times we get a lot of our information via press and media, and they don't always get it right. And so, and they also can potentially put spin, whether it's on purpose or not, just if it happens. And so I think that's an interesting part because being in the Senate, you witness and see a lot of the inside conversations and potential, even baseball, that happens amongst the chambers. And to have that perspective is quite unique. And it really made me grow in my own self, actually, as far as my own assumptions and presumptions about things and kind of take a step back and really analyze. But one thing I do want to say in terms of that surprise is that I'm really surprised at the degree at which legislators, including new legislators coming in are expected to conform to certain protocols that really ultimately serve Senate leadership and for Senate, I'm sorry, the Senate first and foremost, as opposed to having really deep critical thinking on a little engagement on issues, very little discussion and really actually no deep debate. And part of that is that the legislative session is crammed into a really short period of time where a lot of things, a lot of issues come through. And so really having the deep, robust discussion around some of the issues, especially unintended consequences, don't always have the opportunity to come out. And so an example in terms of questioning protocols too is, for example, the unilateral control that a chair has in what bill gets heard and really in terms of how to build, whether it comes out or not, and in what form it comes out. And that was very surprising to me because I don't feel that that necessarily represents a constituency voice. And it also is accepted as politics and a political norm. However, it doesn't question the nature of it being a violation of our constitutional right for equal representation. Meaning then chairs have actually more control or more power, I should say, in terms of the outcomes of legislation than do senators of other districts if they're not chairs. And so that was actually very ideal for me and a very useful tool in terms of being a citizen here and how I go about navigating in that protocol, if you will. Well, of course, what you're talking about is something I've referred to in my own mind, at least as a tyranny of the chair, which it's not unique by any way, a stretch or form to Hawaii by any stretch. That's certainly the case in the US Congress and I'm sure in most of not practically all of legislatures across the mainland US. What do you think is a, would be a practical and realistic and not too much of a polyana fix or solution to that without getting, without seeing the committee process turn into something of a circus. How do you democratize what goes on within legislative committees so that there are more voices heard so that there is more democracy, right, more exchange of views and more input. How would you, if you could wave your Laura magic wand, how could you fix that? That's a good one. I think some suggestions around that would be to, for example, with so many members of the Senate or so many members within the committee would like to hear a certain bill, like maybe they signed on as an introducer and would have a number, let's say 10 or even a majority, like we have 13, we have 25 senators in the State of Hawaii. It's 13 signed on to a bill that it would automatically get, get heard in committee, for example. Again, trying to, again, bring in more of a voice of the rest of the membership, which means the rest of the state constituency that can help determine what gets heard. Another piece is that in the structural shift in terms of leadership would be that members actually do engage and chairs engage more with their membership and come up with solutions and allow that dialogue rather than just having it more than lateral. Another piece, too, would be a more of a robust rotation system where you don't have someone who's been in the Senate for 13 plus years, who's never had a chairperson shift, for example, that people would get given the opportunity at different points to rotate through them. Again, it would have to be designed, obviously, with some pretty deep experience and intentions in terms of not making it a surface like you say. So that's one way. But I honestly think a big part of it is just moving away from those expectations and really being able to basically having legislators who are willing and know that their obligation is to read the bills and do due diligence around all of the language within the bills and to be able to communicate back and forth with their chairs. That's part of it. Well, given, if I'm not mistaken, the power distribution in the Hawaii State Senate is there 24 out of 25 members who are Democrats. I'm not sure if there's a legislative body in the mainland that has that or perhaps even a majority or a unanimity in terms of having all votes, but it's 24 to one with Senator Kurt Fevella being the lone Republican, kind of similar to Sam Slom when he was the lone Republican. And within that group of 24 state senators who are Democrats, there are those who have more power, right, more influence than there are those who have less power and less influence. That's kind of the way of the world to some extent, right? So given that you're somewhat of a newbie there, right, and you are going to be running for reelection in the months to come, what kind of difference do you feel that you are making, that you have made so far in your your time there at the Senate? That's a good question. Thank you for asking. I think a big piece is just coming at it and not and doing my best to not get entangled in those political expectations and to really, excuse me, really move away from those expectations and maybe norms that where I understand how they evolve and the need for mutual respect, for civility, for decorum, those are all very important. And yet, not necessarily going along with things just because that's how it's been done in the past. Part of what has come up for me in terms of even looking at reelection is that there's a fear factor that can come into play if one allows it, which is, oh, if I don't go along with this, then I perhaps won't be re-elected. And when I sit with that for myself, I feel like I trust my path. And so, you know, there's work to do in all realms. And I would absolutely, I'm joyful in the work that we're doing here by reading all the bills. That's part of I think the difference that I'm making is setting that bar and that example of reading the bills and asking the questions during hearings so that we can tease out some of these really important aspects of really how to make a bill better and how to have it be a reflection of something for the greater good, the more common good. You know, and looking at that, you know, approaching these discussions, like I said before, is a big piece to it. But really taking critical thinking skills in all of the legislation that comes before me. And looking at what we can offer those eyes and ears and being those eyes and ears is a true reflection of constituency. Just to tag on to that one tiny bit is that one thing that I feel like I bring is also listening to all of the voices. But even though I personally may have a certain viewpoint on an issue, it is really important that I listen to opposing viewpoints or especially if there's multiple reasons to it because I feel like that's a big part of where the answer lies is in a lot of that and not necessarily in the sense of compromise, but just in being able to really investigate the issue I had and to listen to a constituency. And that's really my job and that's part of the due diligence. I'll do drill, you know, spend a little bit of time on energy issues because that's of course what I've devoted a lot of my life professionally over the decades. And energy of course is a very big deal these days. It's hitting people hard in the pocket book for utility prices are at a record high, gasoline is at a record high, not knowing when that's going to peak because we don't know it's peaking till we're on the other side of the peak. So it is still peaking, right? So what is going on Laura? What's going on in the Senate these days and for the balance of the session regarding energy issues? What's on your plate? What's on the Senate's plate as far as energy? Well, one of the first is that we will be, we're waiting to have a scheduled hearing on the public utilities commission, committee member, Commissioner, that was appointed by Governor E.B. Naum and Kauai. I think right now senators are in process of interviewing Mrs. Kauai and, you know, formulating, doing their due diligence and research as I am myself and taking into consideration as well on public input and voices that have are reaching out from the community in this realm. So I think that's a really big one. So far I have not seen that her nomination is or her governor's message is up for a hearing. Well, actually, if I may, if I may add to that, I actually, I sent you an email earlier today because I got a response. I sent an email to Senator Rosalind Baker on Maui because she's the chair of the Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee. And I got a quick reply from one of her staffers today, very pleased to see government being responsive, right? And I was informed that the plan, I believe, is just said to schedule a hearing in Senator Baker's committee next week, next week. So that's that's the news on that. Just thank you for informing me. It's great. I was definitely, I was on a plane this morning, so out of reception from back internet. Wonderful to hear. And I, my guess, too, on that is to allow the Senate enough time to do their due diligence even before the hearing occurs. Because same thing, here's an opportunity to question, you know, public testimonials and folks who do come on that have support or concerns. And so long as we do our due diligence before, then that's a robust discussion. And yeah, so that's wonderful. And then some of the other things we do have, we're looking at, there's a bill, Senate Bill 2720 that is still moving in the house side, I believe, and it's allowing new electric vehicle charging stations and certain upgrades and helping to qualify for rebate. We also have Senate Bill 2963 relating to energy efficiency. And it's requiring an establishing deadlines for state facilities and does except for smaller facilities, but larger state facilities to adopt cost effective energy efficiency measures within their buildings. And so really coming from the state side, you know, similarly to our agriculture is if we mandate procurement for local agriculture, then we have a huge impact in that in that our commitment is very large. So that's the idea with that one. Senate Bill 3205 is another one that is still moving. And that it authorized the Hawaii Technology Development Corporation to temporarily reestablish the Hawaii Office of Naval Research Grant program and to provide 50, 50% matching grants to Hawaii awardees alternative energy research grants from the Department of Defense and Naval Research. And so again, trying to incentivize and motivate different ways that we get, especially large energy reserves to conform and adopt. Well, I got, I got, I got to say, and this is one of mine, I think you can cue the, the squeaky violins here, one of the biggest disappointments I've had regarding the Hawaii Legislature over the past five or six years is that the efforts to try to establish a tax credit specific to energy storage has failed, failed, failed, failed, failed. It's made it into conference committee a number of times, but never got out of conference. And I don't even think such a bill was in play this past session, which is really, you know, disappointing because with more renewables, you need more storage. And this is a way of incentivizing more storage to get, and we need not just a little bit more storage, we need exponentially more storage, but for whatever reasons, there hasn't been a political will to do that. So that's the way it goes. But I wanted to ask you, you know, in light of Senator or State, sorry, Hawaii County Mayor, Mitch Roth, asking the governor on a number of occasions to declare a so-called energy emergency because of reasons we talked about before as far as the, the bigger chunk, the bigger bite that energy is taking out of people's pockets. Is there anything that you are aware of or can think of that the state government can do, can do, should do right now to be able to mitigate the pain that so many Hawaii residents are suffering now because of high energy prices? Yeah, Hawaii's energy costs have always been the highest in the nation. That's a big thing that we are aware of and we experience here as consumers. Now that the utility is no longer required to pay the avoided costs for renewable energy contracts, the state really should be doing all it can to find ways to take advantage of these, take advantage of homegrown resources, local ownership of energy project projects is really important. We should be able to keep the profits here for further ventures and support the local economy. And I think a big part of that too is in implementing, I mean, energy is also really consumed a lot in the transportation sector as well. So again, moving towards, you know, electric vehicle access needs, etc. That's really important. But also like you said that one of the biggest conversations is around firm renewable energy right now here in the state. And just to your point around battery storage, that shifts a lot of the conversation of solar not being firm to a much more firm and reliable source if you're able to incentivize battery storage from batteries as well. Well, in drilling in the last few minutes we have together here, Laura, drilling down into a couple of big islands in particular issues. One, you know, the good news as far as I'm concerned is that the Public Utilities Commission has conditionally approved the amended and restated power purchase agreement between Pune geothermal venture and telco, which will bring, over time, it will bring down the cost of telco power to the 85,000 or so ratepayers on the big islands. So that is in the works. And then kind of one of the other big issues on the big island of course is the proposed power plant up in Pippa Keo, who Honewa, aka Honewa Ola, which the folks behind that have been added for a long time now, 10 years or so. And the PUC has a decision pending on that power purchase agreement. So to kind of cut into the chase, what is your position on whether the commission should approve that amended and restated power purchase agreement before, before it right now? So there, I'm imagining drawing up their their decision making in the next short amount of time. And I absolutely think that it's important for the consideration, the fact that this is a, they're looking at a third year contract with the Public Utilities Commission, I'm sorry, with the power purchase agreement, which will have significantly higher rates for consumers or for people and then potentially passed on to consumers. And so I think in terms of looking at the consumer advocate with the ECGA and the state's position on protecting the consumer in terms of having higher costs for the next 30 years, to move down to, you know, really take that into consideration. I would support that, absolutely. Folks are already having a hard time with the current prices, and I think that increases it significantly even more so from the Hamilton and Fox Tribal. So to be clear, if I heard you correctly, you are not in support of the current PPA that is before the Public Utilities Commission now regarding who are coming online. Well, there's- Let me have a little show on that subject matter, actually. Yes, yeah, we've had Henry Curtis on a number of times. I mean, I'm no stranger to the subject as well. I've spoken about it as well as Jay Fidel. So I mean, as both someone in the energy arena and someone who is also studying it kind of from an academic perspective, what's going on in our state, what's going on on our island is just so fascinating from so many different levels. And comparatively speaking, we on the big island have it more better as far as power generation, as far as reserve margin is referred to utility business compared to, let's say, Oahu, where the AES power plant, which has been burning coal these past years in, by the way, the coal powered electricity that AES has been selling to HECO over the years has been at somewhere around four cents a kilowatt hour, four cents a kilowatt hour. It's the cheapest power that HECO is buying from an independent power producer. So once AES goes offline definitively in September, automatically there's going to be an increase in Hawaiian electric rates because they're going to have to make up that generation purchasing it from more expensive sources. So it's just so interesting to look from the big island to Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu and Kauai that we're all in the same state of course, but we're all at different kind of stages in our energy transformation, so to speak. And I think it's way cool because I'm kind of biased, of course, I'm a big island guy, is that we on the big island are running kind of neck and neck with our friends at Kauai Island Utility Co-op in terms of the highest percentage of renewables with KIUC being numero uno last year and they are making great strides and the big island is nipping at their heels. So I think that's a great competition to see who can, as I've been saying over the years, it's not renewables at all costs, it's renewables at being cost effective and it's getting more and more cost effective. So, well, State Senator Laura Ocasio, it's been so sweet and so lovely to have you on. I hope we can have you again sometime in the months to come, but in the meantime, Mahalo Nui and Ahui Ho. Thank you, Marco, so much for having me. I look forward to more discussions. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


An innocent victim or a common criminal. These are the two labels that have been given to Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old college student whose life was turned completely upside-down after working with Florida police in a sting operation that went horribly, horribly wrong. Rachel had no idea that a simple routine traffic stop would send her life into a tailspin, and before Rachel knew it, she was facing a weekend in jail. But by April of the following year, things had turned sour. Rachel was now facing years of jail time after detectives tried to pin her for a crime that would have essentially ended her life. She was offered a once-in-a-lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. The only catch was she had to work undercover for the police. With nowhere else to turn, Rachel accepted the offer. Not knowing that this job would be her last. Rachel Hoffman was by no means your average young woman. By the time she was 18, Rachel had done all the things most of us ever dream of doing. Rachel was born in Clearwater, Florida, where she had, best I can tell, a largely ordinary childhood. The only thing that sets Rachel's childhood apart from most is that she had opportunities most of us could never imagine. See, Rachel wasn't a particularly wild kid, but she also wasn't a kid who was willing to settle down. She and her family were always up to something. By the time she was 12 years old, Rachel had already learned ballet, learned to ride horses, and she'd even been a major competitor in a little mermaid contest. Her life never seemed to stop moving forward, and having lived in Clearwater, Florida, it's easy to see why. Because Clearwater is a beautiful place to be, and it's a city that's filled with attractions in all sorts of things for a small family to do. As the name suggests, there are several beautiful clear beaches, all kinds of museums, cruises, sports events, restaurants, parks, everything. The only real issue with Clearwater is crime. While Clearwater certainly isn't a particularly dangerous place to be, there are definitely pockets of the city that you want to stay clear of. It's certainly not a city where you'd need to fear for your life while walking around at night, but it's absolutely a place where you'd need to keep your eyes open and maintain a little bit of common sense. For Rachel, she certainly had enough common sense and confidence to go around, but being the free-spirited woman she was, well, she wasn't going to let anything keep her from doing what she'd set her mind to doing.  By this point, her resume had grown to include being a flute player, a piano player, a skydiver, a Grand Canyon hiker, and so much more. Rachel just didn't know when to quit. After graduating high school, Rachel continued on with her academics and joined Florida State University. She was here from the time she was 18 until she was 23, and after graduating from Florida State, she planned to continue her education by moving to Arizona to pursue a culinary degree. By February of 2007, Rachel was continuing on her path to greatness, but that's when everything came crashing down around her. It should have been a simple traffic stop and an ordinary speeding ticket turned into so much more. Before Rachel even knew what was going on, her life had changed forever. It's stories like this that remind us that danger can pop up when we least expect it. And when you're injured, your injury could be worth millions. Insurance companies often love to lowball claims, but if you become a client of Morgan and Morgan, they will help to fight to get you what you deserve. All law firms are not the same. Morgan and Morgan is as popular as they are for a reason. They've won a lot. 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Thanks to Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring today's video. It was February 27th, 2007. Rachel was in her final days of Florida State University and was already gearing up to transfer to Arizona. But before that could happen, her life changed in the blink of an eye. While Rachel was out driving one day, she got pulled over for speeding. It happens to everyone and it's unlikely that Rachel thought much of it. The officer approached her window and asked for her license and insurance, but that wasn't all. The details of what unfolded next are a bit uncertain, but it seems like the officer knew that something was a little bit off about Rachel. In fact, he could smell it. As soon as he caught a whiff of Rachel's car, he asked her to exit the vehicle. He then asked Rachel's permission to search the car. What he found in the car brought Rachel to her knees. As the officer combed through every square inch of the car, he finally found what he was looking for. He turned to Rachel with a bag that was filled with a certain plant and at this point in history, it was illegal in Florida. Rachel knew that she was in serious, serious trouble. Not only did this crime mean that she may be spending some time in jail, or at the very least, paying a very steep fine, but she also knew that a crime like this could cost her everything, including her getting kicked out of Arizona College before classes had even started. Rachel did everything she could to keep this off of her record, but her best efforts simply weren't enough. After the officer reported the crime, Rachel was forced to enter a rehab program and was told that she would be subjected to periodic testing to ensure that she was free and clear in the future. What's crazy to me is that the state was incredibly serious about these routine tests. Usually the state doesn't care about much of anything at all, but that wasn't true in this scenario. We don't know how long Rachel was required to attend this rehab program, nor how long she was required to take these regular tests, but more than a year later, in March of 2008, we know that she was still going through with these tests. The only problem was, in March, someone close to Rachel lost their life. This meant that Rachel needed to travel all the way to Tallahassee to attend the loved one's funeral. But there was only one issue with this. On the day of the funeral, Rachel was also due to take one of her scheduled tests. She missed this appointment and, as a result, was ordered to spend a weekend in jail in April of 2008. Until dinner time got out of jail and went back home, it wasn't really the end of the world for her. No, that would come just two weeks later, and this time Rachel would be doing a lot more than spending a couple days in a cage. This time, she was in deep. Just two weeks after Rachel was released from jail, she was in her apartment minding her own business when, all of a sudden, there was a powerful knock at the door. She opened the door to see what was going on, and that's when she noticed two police officers who stood there to greet her. There was a familiar, skunky odor that poured out of Rachel's apartment, and she knew her time was up. The officers reported that there had been odor complaints from one of her neighbors. They then asked if Rachel had been using anything illegal that evening. She had. They then asked if she had anything illegal in her apartment. She did. They asked Rachel's permission to search her apartment, and she allowed them to. When they asked her what was going on to cause such an odor, Rachel knew she couldn't hide any longer. She admitted to everything. But what was originally a fairly innocent crime and a somewhat light sentence turned into something much, much more, and in record time. That's because this time around, Rachel wasn't just holding on to a few grams of a plant. This time, she'd been caught with much, much more. Because of the rules in terms of service on these streaming platforms, I can't specifically discuss what officers found, so we'll just say that under Rachel's couch cushions, officers found some illegal medications that very clearly proved that Rachel was looking to party. Not only that, but she had more than enough to share with her friends, so police began to fear that she may be selling these goods to other people. Needless to say, Rachel was arrested, but she could have never imagined what would unfold next. As she was taken to the local jail, Rachel learned that she faced multiple felony charges. If her previous charges didn't risk ending her college career, these charges certainly would. Rachel was set to be put away for a very, very long time. At the age of just 23 years old, Rachel didn't know what to do. She was nothing more than a college student who was looking to experiment, learn more about herself and who she really was, as well as have a good time. But she quickly learned the hard way that this type of a good time is rarely all it's cracked up to be. It was then that Rachel was introduced to Officer Ryan Pender, who offered her a deal that she simply couldn't refuse. All those drug charges, he'd make them go away. All she had to do was work for him. Desperate for any way out of this mess, Rachel agreed. This would turn out to be a mistake that would cost her her life. Rachel's job with Officer Pender was simple. She would work undercover for the local police, helping them to locate and eradicate local smuggling operations. She'd show up to the homes or hotspots of various dealers, make a successful exchange, then report everything back to Officer Pender. The police told her that if she helped to get the weapons and illegal goods off the street, they'd wipe away any trace of her previous arrests. According to her boyfriend, Ben, she was only initially asked to take part in one or two sting operations. But things quickly grew out of control. We don't know the specific number of undercover ops that Rachel went on, but we know that it was far greater than just one or two. But by May of 2008, one of these operations took a dangerous turn that cast the entire state of Florida into a negative light. It was May 7th when Rachel reported to the Tallahassee Police Department for her next mission. She was taken to the office of Officer Pender, who would explain the details of her next assignment. Officer Pender would explain that Rachel was to be given a wire, then given $13,000 in cash. She was instructed to purchase a weapon, 1.5 ounces one substance, and 1,500 tablets of another. She was to bring her haul straight back to the police so officers could link the crimes to the dealers. This sting operation was incredibly large. A total of three DEA agents, 15 police officers, Officer Pender and Rachel had all been assigned this investigation. And according to the Tallahassee Democrat, this was the largest sting in the department's history. The operation was scheduled to begin at 7pm, but from the very beginning, things did not go according to plan. At first, Rachel was set to meet up with the men at a predetermined location. But all of a sudden, they changed the meeting spot. A few hours later, they changed it again. Rachel was driving herself to Forest Meadow Park, where she was to meet up with these two men. But on her way there, she got a phone call from one of the men. Yet again, there was a change of plans. And during this one phone call, they changed the meeting twice more. They asked Rachel to meet them at a plant nursery, then switched to Gardner Road, a dead-end street with no hope of an easy exit. Rachel hung up the phone with the dealers and immediately called HQ to speak to Officer Pender. Officer Pender claims that he immediately picked up on what was taking place here. And he told Rachel to abandon the mission, saying that it was unsafe. He says that he doesn't know if Rachel hung up before hearing this command or if she purposefully ignored his warning. But after this call, Rachel was never heard from again. Police drove to Gardner Road, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rachel. There was no sign of her car, nor any indication she'd ever made it to the meeting spot. Detectives then drove over to Rachel's boyfriend's home, asking if he'd seen any sign of her. He had it. And that's when investigators knew that no matter what, this wasn't good. Either Rachel had run away and made off with the $13,000 they'd given her, or worse, the dealers had found out about the sting. It would be two more days before Rachel was finally found. But unfortunately for everyone involved, she lost her life. Rachel was found dumped in a gully and tangled up in vines in Perry, Florida, about an hour away from Tallahassee. She'd been hit with five rounds, then dumped like yesterday's garbage. A deep and extensive investigation into her disappearance was carried out. And that's when police learned that Rachel had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, sort of. As it would turn out, the dealers had made plans to rob Rachel that evening, taking the $13,000 and selling her aspirin, rather than the substances she'd actually shown up for. But at some point during the meeting, things went awry. One thing led to another, and the dealers ended up grabbing Rachel's purse and searching it. And that's when they found the wire. The dealers did what dealers do best and tied up any loose ends, meaning Rachel lost her life right then and there. But the story isn't so simple. After news of Rachel's demise made it into the local media, the entire state of Florida was up in arms. How could a local police officer send an untrained young woman into the middle of a sting operation of this proportion? The biggest sting in the department's history was no place for a newly acquired informant to be. As it would turn out, just three years prior in 2005, the Department of Justice had issued a very clear and specific set of guidelines for how confidential informants were supposed to be treated and used. The Tallahassee Police Department failed to follow these guidelines, placing Rachel in harm's way without so much as a second thought. Rachel had no formal training and was remarkably unprepared for what she was thrown into. But that's not all.  And he claims that he immediately told Rachel to abandon the mission and return back to the police department. But the thing is, many people have begun to question whether or not this actually happened. Now, I haven't been able to find any evidence to point one way or the other. But many people feel as though Rachel was treated as little more than a disposable pawn in a much larger game of chess. Some people have speculated that Officer Pender never gave any warning to Rachel nor did he tell her to stand down and return home. He claims that Rachel either hung up before hearing his command, heard the command and didn't heed his warning or that their call was disconnected and his commands didn't go through. Either way, after locating Rachel's body on May 9th, officers immediately closed in on the two dealers and they were both charged and convicted for ending Rachel's life. They were each sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. In the ensuing investigation into the Tallahassee Police Department, several officers were suspended from their positions. In the end, the department openly admitted to their wrongdoing, confessing that Rachel had zero training as an informant and admitting that she didn't even have any experience or prior knowledge of the substances that she would have been purchasing that evening. She quite literally went into the operation blind. Naturally, the police department was found to be at fault but there's no mention of whether or not they faced any real repercussions for this. Now, Officer Pender was fired as a result of the failed operation but less than two years later, he was reinstated. So it doesn't seem like the department learned anything from this. Rachel's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the department and they were eventually awarded $2.6 million but that's pretty much the end of it. No further repercussions were faced but there is somewhat of a silver lining here. Rachel didn't lose her life for nothing. In the wake of this disaster in May of 2009, Rachel's law was passed by the Florida State Senate. This law helped to instate some seriously strict guidelines for how Florida officers are allowed to use informants ensuring that a situation like this never happens again. This law requires every single police department in the state to subject informants to extensive training exercises to ensure that they're as prepared as they can possibly be for anything that gets thrown their way. If Rachel had had this type of training, it's incredibly likely she would still be here. If Rachel had had any training at all, she'd probably still be here. The thing we have to keep in mind is that laws like this cannot be substituted for common sense. Yes, Rachel's law is an incredible thing and it's guaranteed to save countless lives but it shouldn't take a lawyer or some college degree to understand that you can't throw an average civilian into the biggest police operation that the Tallahassee Police Department has ever seen. On what planet is this okay? And in what world did anyone think this was safe? I love the fact that Rachel's life wasn't stolen for nothing. There was some good that came of it but she didn't have to lose her life for this to have taken place. Her fate should weigh heavily on the shoulders of all 19 officers who were involved in this operation. Not one of them spoke up. Not one of them suggested, hey, this is a bad idea.  Actions speak louder than words and it's clear to see that the Tallahassee Police Department saw Rachel as nothing more than disposable. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode of True Crime Stories. If you enjoyed this video, check out this other interesting case I covered and don't forget to subscribe. It's totally free and keeps you up to date with all of my future videos. You can also click that join button below and support the channel and see new videos long before everyone else does. But my name is Ty Nautz and I'll catch you guys in the next video.