Health Center's expanded hours might not be what they seem

Author

Carly Heltzel
October 01, 2025

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, and I’m reading about what a U.S. government shutdown actually means (we began one last night at 9 p.m.). Onto the five Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Campus Health & Wellbeing expanded its hours, but the healthcare providers’ union warned that it might not help students as intended. While appointments will go until 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and telehealth will be available on Sundays starting yesterday, this means less healthcare providers will be available to help students during regular hours. Services such as the lab, x-ray and pharmacy won’t be open longer, making it difficult to provide adequate care to patients during the expanded hours, too. The union says hiring more staff is needed before hours can expand.

2.

Cal Poly is adding an A+ to the grading scale starting fall 2026 in the hopes it will help law school hopefuls get a GPA boost in their applications. Cal Poly’s GPAs won’t change (A and A+ are both 4.0), but law schools typically calculate an A+ as a 4.33. The change will be up to professors, with no guidance from the university yet on what constitutes an A+. Students have mixed feelings, with some happy and some wishing they could leave the extra stress behind.

3.

At 9 p.m. last night, the U.S. government officially shut down for the first time since the 35-day congressional deadlock that began in December 2018. During that shutdown, 300,000 employees were asked to not come into work and another 800,000 were still working but without pay. In SLO County, there are 600 federal workers. SLO government offices will remain open, as they did during the previous shutdown, and the Department of Education will continue giving out student aid through Pell Grants and Federal Direct Student Loans.

4.

A Cal Poly Humboldt professor discovered a new species of marsupial in the Peruvian cloud forest: the Marmosa chachapoya. She first encountered the small creature in 2018 when she set squirrel-sized traps to record wildlife, and she’s been spending the years since confirming that this is indeed a discreet species. But she said that when she first set her eyes upon the no-more-than-four-inch she “realized immediately that this was something unusual.”

5.

Hollywood icon James Dean died on his way to Paso Robles 70 years ago, and now a local state assemblymember is looking to name that stretch of highway, colloquially known as “blood alley,” after him instead. In the fatal crash, a 23-year-old navy veteran and Cal Poly student turned left onto the Highway 41 from Highway 46, colliding nearly head on with Dean’s Porsche going 70 miles per hour. He was 24. Now, Dean’s cousin said he hopes the tribute will remind people about highway safety.