Announcements

Dear Students,

As the third week of the semester closes, things have been going well. Thank you for your vigilance and commitment to COVID safety protocols both inside and outside the school.

As noted in earlier messages, the greatest risk of COVID exposure is eating indoors or attending social gatherings without masks. We completely understand the desire to get together with friends, especially after this past year of limited options. However, our ability to continue in person learning hinges on our collective commitment to minimize risk as much as possible. Please carefully consider the risks and stay safe when you make decisions about social activities and study groups.

As you likely saw in the message from President Jarrell, the campus has decided to require KN95 masks in classrooms in the near future. Our understanding is this is a proactive measure – designed to give students greater comfort that the classroom environment has the lowest possible risk of transmission. KN95 masks protect the wearer even more than cloth masks. UMB also strongly recommends KN95 masks for all group activities where six feet of physical distance cannot be maintained or where more than five people are present. The UMB website has more information about the new requirement here.

We understand UMB will provide at least one KN95 mask for each student. The law school is looking into purchasing additional KN95 masks for students once we have a better understanding of what the campus will provide.

The other new campus policy concerns food at events. The only type of food allowed at indoor events is “grab and go” which is the model the law school has already adopted for fall events.

Again, we very much appreciate your efforts to keep all of us safe. We will continue to keep you updated whenever there are new developments.

Barbara Gontrum
Senior Associate Dean

Dear Students,

I want to thank all of you for observing safety protocols on campus, especially mandatory masking and staying home when you are not feeling well. Remember to call the UMB COVID Hotline to report symptoms of concern, a positive test, or a potential exposure. The link to the COVID Hotline information is here: https://www.umaryland.edu/coronavirus/hotline/.

The Hotline’s infection prevention team will assist you in navigating your symptoms and making decisions to prioritize your health and prevent the spread of COVID. The Hotline process is there for you to get help, to protect others, and to ensure that you have an excused absence when you have been instructed not to attend class due to symptoms, a potential high risk exposure, pending test results, or a positive case. 

The COVID Hotline team will notify Assistant Dean Hayes and me if they advise a particular student to isolate for any reason. We can assist students with notifying faculty so you can make up any class work. To protect student privacy, the student health team does not notify us of the student’s medical condition or test result. We check on the student and help to coordinate with the student’s professors.

UMB policies and protocols relating to COVID, contact tracing, and notification to potentially exposed individuals were developed based on CDC guidelines, the advice of UMB medical professionals, and input from university counsel. The law school follows UMB COVID policies.  If a student receives a positive test, the campus initiates a contact tracing process which involves interviewing the student about on-campus interactions and opportunities for infecting others. They consider duration of contact, proximity, and whether individuals were masked while interacting. The campus contact tracing team notifies any individuals whom they consider at risk based on the discussion with the positive student. Sitting masked in the same classroom or having other interactions when masked are not considered at risk exposures warranting notification. The process does not include sending general notifications about positive cases.

Our high vaccination rate and mandatory mask policy allow us to return safely to in-person classes. However, students have many interactions outside of class, in study groups, in the library, or in social settings. The primary indoor risk of transmission is not in classrooms when students are masked, but when students eat together or otherwise interact without masks. While we have been pleased with the level of compliance with the masking policy in the building, we urge you to remain mindful that taking off your mask to eat, study, or socialize in or away from the law school increases the risk of exposure. We urge you to be cautious and remove masks for minimal amounts of time to eat without talking to others, then put your masks back on to have conversations.

If you have any questions or concerns about policies or particular circumstances, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Barbara Gontrum
Senior Associate Dean

Dear Students:

We hope you had a fantastic summer.  We are excited to welcome you to the law school for classes next week. To keep our community as safe as possible, UMB has required everyone to receive a vaccine and wear face coverings indoors. UMB and the School of Law are closely monitoring developments and metrics relating to the continuing spread of COVID and particularly the Delta variant. The safe continuation of in-person classes depends in large part on our ability as a community to take the steps necessary to protect ourselves and community members.

Here are the guidelines we all must follow to make our community as safe as possible.

All students, faculty, and staff are required to wear face masks that fully cover the person’s nose and mouth while inside the school building, including during classes.  Faculty members may remove masks while teaching in a classroom as long as they are at least six feet away from the nearest students.

Masks are not required in our two outdoor spaces – the courtyard and the patio on the fourth floor of the library. The only indoor exception to the mask policy is while eating as we understand there will be times when you will need to eat inside the law school building. We recognize this is counter to normal behavior but the new UMB guidelines require separating eating from talking to others. Eat and then put your mask back on while you are talking. In addition to the outdoor areas, spaces in which students can eat indoors in a distanced fashion include empty classrooms and study carrels in the library. UMB protocols prohibit eating during classroom sessions. Beverages are allowed in classrooms as long you return to wearing a mask as soon as possible.  

Do not come to the building if you are sick. This includes cold symptoms. Even if you believe you just have a cold you should call the campus Hotline 1-800-701-9863 to receive guidance. The majority of classes will be recorded so you should not worry about missing class. If your class is not recorded your professor will assist you with making up class work.

As we all know from watching the news the COVID situation is fluid and can change rapidly. We greatly appreciate everyone’s help in making our community as safe as possible as we begin our fall semester of in-person learning.  Please do not hesitate to contact me or Dean Hayes if you have individual circumstances you need to discuss with us.  

Barbara Gontrum
Senior Associate Dean

Dear Maryland Carey Law Students, 

We look forward to seeing you in the halls and classrooms of the law school soon! While we are hoping for as close to a normal year as possible, we know we will be dealing with COVID for a while longer. I write to update you on some recent developments to ensure the health and safety of our community.

Masking Protocols
While we had hoped that having a vaccinated community would alleviate the need for masks, recent reports about the ability of vaccinated individuals to spread the Delta variant to unvaccinated children and others has caused concern. UMB has returned to an indoor mask requirement for anyone coming on the campus.  All students will be required to wear masks while in the law school building, including in classrooms. Professors will not be required to wear a mask while teaching, so long as the closest student is six feet away.

Vaccines
If you have not yet submitted vaccine documentation or applied for an exemption to the mandate, the link to the UMB COVID-19 Management Portal can be found here: https://www.umaryland.edu/coronavirus/vaccine/. A few days after you submit the documentation, you can confirm on the portal that UMB received it. 

Illness Protocol for Classes
While the American Bar Association requires students to attend at least 80% of all classes, we do not want you to come to the law school when you are sick. To facilitate making up work, we are expecting most fall classes to be recorded (except clinics). The recordings will be available to students in the class for the remainder of the semester.  

In-Person Classes
With safety protocols in place, in-person classes will meet in person, with no remote hybrid options.

Delta Variant and UMB
We are very fortunate to be on a health care campus guided by frontline COVID experts in this rapidly changing environment. We are confident that UMB will continue to adapt to changing circumstances as appropriate and we will update you if any additional changes to safety policies occur.

For future reference, schoolwide messages relating to fall semester plans are posted on this webpage:

https://www.law.umaryland.edu/Current-Student-Resources/Announcements/

If you have any questions about COVID protocols at the law school, the vaccine requirement, or other related issues, please don’t hesitate to contact me. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Barbara Gontrum
Senior Associate Dean

Dear Students,

We hope you are having a great summer!

Planning for the fall semester is well underway and we are excited about welcoming you back to the building in August.   In this email, we want to highlight some recent UMB decisions of which you should be aware and remind you of a few deadlines.

COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement

You must receive your final vaccine dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by August 2 to return to campus in the fall.  For the two-dose vaccines – Pfizer and Moderna – you should receive your first dose by July 1.   Information on the requirement can be found here: https://www.umaryland.edu/coronavirus/vaccine/.    Please log into the Covid-19 Management Portal - UMB COVID-19 Management Portal – to do the following:

• Approve or deny Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP) COVID-19 health information sharing
• Upload vaccination dose information (if not using CRISP)
• Request a COVID-19 vaccination exemption

The Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP) is the state of Maryland’s designated electronic health record system. UMB’s agreement with CRISP allows it to directly share (with student permission) your COVID-19 vaccination history with school leaders, department managers, and the occupational/student health clinical team.  Only the clinical team will receive any COVID-19 test results.  The information will be used for public health purposes to help make decisions about preventive measures and identify members of the UMB community at risk of infection from exposure to COVID-19.   When you log into the Covid-19 Management Portal you will be able to approve or to deny the use of CRISP for your records.   When requesting a medical or religious exemption for the COVID-19 vaccine, please factor in a reasonable time period for the campus to process exemptions.  The SMC Campus Center Vaccine Clinic is in the process of shutting down so the most convenient vaccine location near the campus is the Baltimore Convention Center -  https://www.umms.org/coronavirus/covid-vaccine/get-vaccine/baltimore-convention-center-vaccine.  

Questions about the vaccine requirement should be directed to the Office of Student Affairs –  osa@law.umaryland or to Dean Gontrum bgontrum@law.umaryland.edu.

New UMB Policies Regarding Face Coverings, SAFE on Campus, and physical distancing

Effective July 1, fully vaccinated individuals are no longer required to wear a face covering, complete the SAFE on Campus forms, or practice physical distancing on the UMB campus.  UMB students and employees who are not fully vaccinated, including those who have approved medical or religious exemptions, must continue to wear a face covering, complete the SAFE forms, and adhere to physical distancing when removing their face covering to eat or drink.   Please keep in mind that some vaccinated individuals may not be comfortable removing face coverings for a variety of reasons.  

UMB Shuttle

The UMB Shuttle will be operational again starting August 2.   Riders on the UMB shuttle and Safe Ride, must continue to wear a face covering regardless of vaccination status.

Summer Building Access

Because summer classes are all online and law school staff are still primarily on telework status until August, the main entrance doors to the law school remain locked. If you have a particular need to come to the building, you should contact Ann Kim (a.kim@law.umaryland.edu) or Wendy Geist (wgeist@law.umaryland.edu).

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Office of Student Affairs

To: Returning Students

The University System of Maryland has mandated that students must be vaccinated before returning to UMB for the fall semester.   If you have not been vaccinated, please plan ahead as you must receive your final vaccine dose by August 2 to return to campus the week of August 16 and by August 9 if you plan to arrive the week of August 23 for the start of classes.   For the two-dose vaccines – Pfizer and Moderna – you should target receiving your first dose by July 1.   All law school classes except for the handful of online classes will be in-person in the fall so you will not be able to attend class if you do not either receive the vaccine or receive an exemption.

Information on the requirement and on the exemption process can be found here:

https://www.umaryland.edu/coronavirus/vaccine/ .

Forms to request either a medical or religious exemption can be found at the UMB COVID-19 Management Portal. Please factor in a reasonable time period for the campus to process exemptions.

Questions about the vaccine requirement should be directed to the Office of Student Affairs - osa@law.umaryland.edu.

Thank you,

Office of Student Affairs

Dear Students:

As this extraordinary academic year comes to a close, I want to express my admiration and appreciation for your dedication, adaptability, and resilience. Under difficult circumstances, you rose to the moment and invested yourselves in your law school classes and activities.

I look forward to our long-awaited transition back into our law school building next year. As you will see when Registrar Boggs posts the 2021-22 curriculum later today, we will return to in person classes in the Fall, without rotations or hybrid formats. A few classes are designed to be online (one of the Legal Profession sections, Contract Drafting, and Family Law). As you know, summer courses will remain online.

As we prepare to return to campus, the University System of Maryland has required all of us to obtain a COVID-19 vaccination, except for appropriate exemptions that USM will define in the coming months.

While we can learn together in person again next year, we will continue to observe COVID safety protocols issued by the university, state and city, and CDC guidelines. This includes distancing in classrooms as required by UMB. To address reduced classroom capacity, we are making wise use of all areas of the law school and the weekly schedule. Some 1L doctrinal courses will be taught in a reconfigured ceremonial courtroom or Westminster Hall. In the upper level curriculum, we added extra sections of high enrollment classes such as Business Associations and Legal Profession. For second-year day students, there will be four sections from which to choose for Constitutional Law: one taught by Professor Graber, one by Professor Boldt, and two different sections taught by Professor Henry. Professor Henry’s sections will meet in person for two hours per week and include an additional hour of online asynchronous content. 

As you plan for next year, please reach out to the Office of Student Affairs or your academic advisor if we can support you in any way. I wish you all a restorative and enriching summer and look forward to reuniting with you in our beautiful building next year.

Donald B. Tobin
Dean and Professor of Law

Dear Students,

Although I am reluctant to bombard you with information during the exam period, I want to follow up on President Jarrell’s letter regarding mandatory COVID vaccines with the information we currently have.  On Friday, the Chancellor of the University System of Maryland announced a policy, which was approved by the Board of Regents that starting in the fall all faculty, staff, and students must be vaccinated against COVID-19, with appropriate health and religious exemptions. We have not yet received guidance from UMB regarding how health and religious exemptions will be handled.

As a student at UMB, you may register for a vaccine through the University of Maryland Baltimore’s vaccine site.  Vaccine supplies have increased, and if you weren’t previously able to get an appointment, you should be able to obtain one now. Additionally, the State of Maryland has opened up vaccination to all people over 16.  You can check the availability of appointments at M&T Bank Stadium, Six Flags, Regency (Waldorf), and other Maryland MassVax cites here. At the moment, there is widespread availability throughout the State. A spreadsheet with advice and information on many of the vaccination sites in Maryland can be found here. You can also call 1-855-MD-GOVAX.

If you live outside of Maryland, you can still register for a vaccine through the UMB website. You should get vaccinated in time to be fully vaccinated before you arrive on campus.

We are strongly committed to providing in-person education in the fall. One major way to provide a safe in-person learning environment is to have a substantial segment of the Maryland Carey Law community vaccinated. I appreciate your cooperation as we seek a safe environment for the return to campus.

I wish you the best on your exams.

Donald B. Tobin
Dean and Professor of Law

Dear Students,

Earlier today you received communication from President Jarrell regarding plans for the Fall.  I am very pleased that we will soon be able to be together in person.  While we will be back to you soon regarding the law school’s detailed plans, I wanted to make clear to you that we plan to be in-person in the Fall. We are confident that guidelines developed by medical professionals on the UMB campus over the past year will support the safety of our students, staff, and faculty while on campus. Based on previous guidance from UMB, we decided that our classes for this summer will be online.

One way to help ensure safe operation in the Fall is for you to get vaccinated when you are allowed to do so.  UMB has a plan in place to vaccinate students, staff, and faculty, and I encourage you to register with UMB to get your vaccine.  You can register here:  https://www.umaryland.edu/coronavirus/content/university-health/vaccine-available-through-umb.php.  Getting vaccinated does not only protect you, but also those around you.

Also, if you have been vaccinated through a non-UMB center, please let UMB know that you’ve been vaccinated, if you have not done so already.

Thank you for your cooperation, and I look forward to seeing you in the Fall.

Donald B. Tobin
Dean and Professor of Law

Exam Prep Resources & Services from the Thurgood Marshall Law Library.  Maryland Carey Law students can access West Study Aids, CALI Lessons, the Exams Archive, and more remote and extended resources and services from the Thurgood Marshall Law Library to help you as you prepare for your law school exams. Good luck on your exams! 

COVID-19 Information:  UMB has been allotted more doses of COVID-19 vaccines for its students. If you would like to be considered for a vaccine or have already received one or two vaccine doses please see information available here.

UMB is also encouraging students to complete a form that allows testing agencies to report any positive tests to UMB. Information about this program is available here.

Civil Rights and Racial Justice Collections at Thurgood Marshall Law Library:
The Thurgood Marshall Law Library remembers the struggles for civil rights and racial justice by sharing how the Maryland Carey Law community can access resources on civil rights and racial justice in our collections. View the collections.

Law Library Provides Procertas to Test and Train Basic Office Technology Skills: Did you know that the Law Library offers free access to training and assessments so you can improve your basic office technology skills? The entire Maryland Carey Law community can access Procertas Legal Technology Assessment ("LTA ") to get up to speed with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF. Learn more.

COVID-19 Information:  UMB has been allotted more doses of COVID-19 vaccines for its students. If you would like to be considered for a vaccine or have already received one or two vaccine doses please see information available here.

UMB is also encouraging students to complete a form that allows testing agencies to report any positive tests to UMB. Information about this program is available here.