Since early August, the Syracuse University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors has heard from members and other faculty about serious concerns regarding COVID-19 safety. We have repeatedly communicated these concerns to the SU Public Health Team and other members of the university administration. 

The concerns of faculty have been repeatedly ignored or dismissed, sometimes in flatly disrespectful ways. We find this refusal to answer basic questions from an elected group of faculty representatives a stunning rebuke of basic norms of shared governance (which is one of AAUP’s key principles). 

Accordingly, we have decided the best approach is to bring our concerns to a public forum. We have three specific demands that reflect the priorities of our members as well as many other faculty and staff colleagues across campus.

First, the university must do a better job being transparent and clear in its communications and decision-making regarding COVID-19 protocols on campus. For example, it is not clear to many faculty or students what procedures are actually being followed when there is a positive case in a classroom. 

The university has publicly released protocols, but we know from experience as faculty teaching in these classrooms that these procedures are not consistently being followed in practice. Contact tracing in the classroom, while promised, is not always happening. 

Members of the Public Health Team should host regular open meetings to listen to concerns and answer questions from faculty, staff and students rather than dismiss them as arising from anxiety and ignorance. Given the complexity of an emergent situation, in which there are still many unknowns, we clearly need better communication, dialogue and mutual respect.

Second, the university must give faculty control over their own classrooms, for both public health and pedagogical reasons. AAUP does not endorse the decisions by some of our faculty colleagues to refuse to wear masks in classrooms at the “RED” COVID level. Indoor masking is a basic precaution that everyone should take in a classroom. However, it is a core AAUP principle that faculty have “primary responsibility” over issues including “subject matter and methods of instruction.” 

Faculty are the ones who best know the conditions of our individual classrooms. We are the ones who stand at the front of either a jam-packed or well-spaced room, who open windows or don’t have any windows open. It is the faculty who know when too many students in our class are absent due to COVID-19 protocols and would be better served by a temporary move to Zoom.

In short, it is faculty who know what classroom rules will best protect us and our students and what rules will create the best learning experience for our students. The administration should encourage faculty to institute and enforce classroom rules that go above the floor of indoor masking — including temporary moves to Zoom and an indoor mask mandate that does not change with the university’s color-coded scheme — to fulfill our responsibilities as educators.

Finally, the university must embrace an ethic of care when it comes to addressing the varied needs of faculty, staff and students during this trying time. Many faculty members, including those with unvaccinated children, elderly parents at home or in the area, or other at-risk family members, have needs that are not addressed by the university’s rigid refusal to permit online teaching during the pandemic for anyone who does not fit the narrow standards set forth by the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

An accommodation to teach online should be a decision made between faculty and chairs with their specific knowledge of the departmental, classroom and curricular implications. There is no need to require faculty to appeal to the upper echelons of the Provost’s or ADA office in order to receive this basic measure of institutional support. Faculty do not all have the same risk factors in their lives and negotiating those risks can take a heavy toll on mental health. The administration must respect the different needs of our different faculty and enact an ethic of care at the university.  

Despite the university’s treatment of faculty and dismissal of faculty concerns during this pandemic, we have heard great enthusiasm from faculty who are energized by being back in their classrooms. We are all eager to put the pandemic behind us and engage more fully in the joys of communal activities in the classroom and outside of it. But we must acknowledge both the very real persistence of pandemic dangers for our community as well as the varied needs and circumstances of our faculty colleagues.

Our concerns are driven by our commitments to provide an education that is lively and relevant, engaged with the world around us, and embedded in a context defined by respect and compassion. Accordingly, we demand a commitment to greater transparency and clearer communications from the administration, embrace of an ethic of care that reflects the varied needs of our community and encouragement of faculty policies that raise the bar on public health, safety and pedagogical practices in our classrooms.

Syracuse University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors

Published on October 17, 2021 at 11:44 pm