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Monday, June 15, 2020

COVID Craziness at the University Continues – With No End in Sight


 

One advantage of an executive team for making decisions is that the group is small and therefore nimble.  They can come to a consensus and act.  Even if they don’t agree they can get things done.  Decision making in a large group is painful.  It is slow and cumbersome and problematic.

 

The executive team at our University has made a lot of decisions recently.  They have decided we will be having in person classes, at least at the beginning of the year.  They have also decided, because of budgetary uncertainty, to cut our salaries and to institute across the board savings.  They have also offered buy outs to help reduce the number of faculty and staff to create additional savings.

 

The faculty and staff assemblies are (I think rightly) concerned that though the executive team thinks that have collaborated with us in the spirit of “shared governance” that is intended to be a hallmark of the university, we have not experienced it as this at all – it feels like we have been told that we will have to make do with less or leave. 

 

The response of the faculty assembly has been to revisit the changes that have been rolled out.  We have a more equitable plan for changing the salaries.  We want to be reassured that if enrollment returns our salaries will as well.

 

I get this desire, but I think our efforts are misplaced.  We should, I believe, be looking at what is coming up, not at what has already been decided.  We can revisit that stuff later.  If the imposition of salary changes has been unequitable, then the reinstatement of salaries can be crafted to create a more equitable relationship between those who make the least at the institution and those who make the most and we can work on that.

 

I think it is our job to remind the executive committee why we are here.  We are a public trust.  As a Jesuit Catholic institution, we also have particular obligations to particular constituent groups.  We serve the general and a particular public, and we have a central mission that is invaluable.  In a time of uncertainty, we need to look to our core values and to preserving those as we move forward.

 

The central part of our mission statement is that the University exists to teach.  That’s what we are here for.

 

One of my, but I believe, our central beliefs is that synchronous, in person teaching is the best pedagogical tool that we have.  Conversation as a means of communicating – even though, and perhaps partly because, it is such a difficult way to communicate – is central to the best learning. 

 

Conversations are hard because the ideas we cherish are being questioned and we have to hold onto the idea while also hearing the concerns that others have with those ideas.  This is a tremendously complicated psychological and cognitive task – but it is one that is critical to the learning enterprise. 

 

Conversation becomes more difficult when we are remote.  We can and will assign asynchronous tasks as we always have – papers, long and short and with varying foci will be part of the pedagogy.  So will we assign homework with problems to solve and ideas to react to.  But discussion – the verbal communication between two or more people is at the heart of our pedagogy.

 

Discussions are necessary because we need to see people thinking – to hear the thoughts being formed – and to see how they are shaped in the cauldron of conversation in order to a) not follow our own thoughts into a rabbit hole of logical sense divorced from consensual reality and b) to hear from others so that we can learn from their experience and perspectives.

 

So: we should move towards having in person classes because those are the best kinds of classes to provide the kind of teaching that we value most highly.  And we should do this in the context of protecting the safety of the students, staff, and faculty to the best of our ability.  If we are to open in the fall we should do so as safely as possible.

 

This means that: masks should be available to all students, faculty and staff.  It would make sense for the University to provide both cloth masks for those who don’t have them but also plenty of disposable masks for individuals who forget them.  We should work on signage and other means of getting out the message that “No Masks, No Class”.  We should make it clear that wearing a mask is cool and considerate of others.  Taiwan, with a population of 20 million people, has under 500 cases of COVID and fewer than 10 deaths at this writing, AND THEY ARE NOT USING SOCIAL DISTANCING.  They are using masks.  Everyone is wearing them.  This virus is transmitted through droplets born on breath, coughs and sneezes.  If we are going to breathe the same air, let’s make sure it has been filtered at the source.  Everyone must wear masks.  It has to become basic to our culture as an extension of our valuing consideration of the other.

 

Because social distancing is required where we are, we are being told to prepare to teach to sections of class that are in the room while other parts of the class are joining remotely or not in the classroom.  We need tools to be able to teach in this way.  The classrooms need to be fitted with adequate cameras that will broadcast good quality images and with very good microphones.  Our laptop cams and mics are not up to the task.  We need the tools to be able to use the white board on Zoom as a true whiteboard.  Our laptops have pads that are TERRIBLE for drawing on the Zoom white board.  We need, at minimum, mice that will work well, but ideally some form of tablet that can be connected to the zoom whiteboard.

 

It also means that we should be regularly testing students, faculty, and staff and demanding quarantine for those who test positive – even, or perhaps especially, when they are not symptomatic.

 

Oh, and by the way, we should also meet in person because this is important to the economic health of the University.  But economic health, while an important consideration, is not primary.  What is primary, and needs to be kept primary, is that we have a culture of learning.  And this culture, which is dependent on direct contact in ways that we can’t appreciate until it is taken away (including extracurricular contact between students as well as contacts between students and faculty and students and staff) should be protected in the concrete world as long as we can safely do that, and when we can’t, we should make the best virtual analogue of that so that we can deliver the best possible education we are able.

 

And we should bear in mind that the reason that the economic well-being of the University is important is that it is necessary to support the culture that supports the students doing the necessary and important work that they are doing.  Economic well-being is necessary to our survival, but not the reason for our existence.  The reason for our existence is the culture that we have created that at its best can lead to improving the lives of our students.

 

As a corollary of that, we should continue to do the best we can to work together – executive team, faculty, and staff, to craft the best possible experience that we can for our students – including one that is safe for them, for their families, and for those who serve them. 

 

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For other posts on COVID:
I:       Apocalypse Now  my first posting on COVID-19.
II:      Midnight in Paris  is a jumping off point for more thinking about COVID.  (Also in Movies).
III:    Hans Selye and the Stress Response Syndrome.  COVID becomes more normal... for now.
VI:    Get back in that classroom  Paranoid ruminations.
VII:   Why Shutting Classes Makes Fiscal Sense A weak argument
XIII: Ennui
XIV. Where, Oh Where have my in-person students gone?  Split zoom classes in the age of COVID.
XVIII.    I miss my mask?
IXX.      Bo Burnham's Inside Commentary on the commenter.


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