Matching Blue & Lemon
Dear Governor DeSantis:
Today, I sent my 9-year-old twins back to school, fully onsite, to begin fourth grade. This was not my choice.
I could not bring myself to post their back-to-school photos on social media, as I have done every year, even though my daughter picked out a new blue dress with lemons on it to perfectly match her lemon face mask. I could not shake the guilt of knowing that a face mask cannot fully protect her from the infection risk she faces at school in a state where coronavirus infections have spiraled to more than a half-million confirmed cases. I cannot suppress the knowledge that, no matter how diligently her school has worked to plan and prepare to face the inevitable outbreak, virtual learning was the only truly safe option.
Though I have fought for my children’s right to a happy and healthy life from day one, I cannot let go of the shame that, in this case, I have absolutely made the wrong decision for protecting my children. Yet, beholden to my employer’s wishes, I had no other choice. Though virtual learning could have been an option for my children, it was not an option for me.
This is what crisis decision-making looks like in a vacuum of high-level leadership. This is what crisis decision-making looks like when we put profits before people. This is what crisis decision-making looks like when employers value the work parents provide but not their roles and responsibilities as parents.
My story of coronavirus response in Florida higher education is one of two very different institutions with two very different records of decision-making.
My husband teaches for a large, regional, multi-campus two-year college. Administrators at his college have taken coronavirus response seriously; listened to officials and experts; and valued the input of faculty, staff, and students. In the spring, this was one of the first higher education institutions in our area to take preemptive action and close their campuses.
Throughout the spring and summer, multiple college taskforces worked diligently to address COVID-19 concerns and included representation from all sides of college operations. Faculty and staff were consulted to understand their perspectives, concerns, and course needs. The result was a detailed return-to-school plan for the fall semester that includes designated COVID contact people on each campus, procedures for social distancing, guidelines for reporting and contact tracing of sick students and employees, PPE kiosks, etc.
Most importantly, though, more than 80 percent of this college’s courses will be offered online in the fall, except for courses identified (in consultation with faculty) as having necessary face-to-face components, such as medical labs.
Though enrollment has suffered at this college, as it has everywhere, administrators have nonetheless prioritized their obligations to keep students, faculty, and staff safe. Although this college is facing a potentially massive budget shortfall for the year, they committed to the safest course delivery option available: online. Meanwhile, they are still prioritizing the allocation of funds to hire extra janitorial staff on every campus for sanitization and providing all faculty, staff, and students with face masks, hand sanitizer, and cleaning supplies.
Though I respect the challenges that leaders everywhere have faced in this unprecedented pandemic, I see my husband’s college as an example of leadership done right.
In contrast, I teach for a small, private university. Though they were perhaps one of the last universities in the state to do so, my university went virtual in March when there were still no reported cases of coronavirus in our county. In the weeks prior, our university president had downplayed other Florida institutions’ decisions to go online as baseless and “giving into fear.”
As administrators at my university planned in isolation and behind closed doors for the fall semester, faculty, staff, and students were not consulted once, about anything. Our voices were not solicited, appreciated, or heard.
Now we have the distinction of being one of the only universities in the state—perhaps the only Florida university—to not offer one single fully online class to students or professors in the fall. Now, as I prepare to return to campus, there have been more than 15,000 confirmed cases in our county. To be clear, some entire states have not seen this many total confirmed cases.
Our administrators eventually made the correct decision to go virtual to protect us all when the threat of infection loomed in the spring. Now, however, superseded by the financial interests of preserving enrollment and maintaining sports programs, faculty, students, and staff will soon march back and pile into buildings to protect the bottom line.
Our students, many of them international, have expressed concerns about the health risks of returning to campus and have begged to remain online. The university has responded by cutting their financial aid and scholarships.
Though some social distancing and other health protocols have been put into place, they will rely entirely on everyone’s complete compliance, every second of every day (and we see how well that has worked in our own communities). Returning students have no coronavirus testing requirements. Students returning from abroad will have no quarantine requirements. Students will share dorm rooms and play together unmasked on sports teams. They will eat together and hang out together, as students do, and then they will sit face-to-face with me in my classroom.
Yes, I could quit. I could refuse to go back (and nearly did). As my university president recently stated in a campus-wide email, directed to anyone who disagrees with his decisions and policies, “students are free to select another school and employees are free to choose another employer with policies more to their liking… we’re not the right place for everyone.” Comply or leave. End of story.
Meanwhile, our university president has consistently painted my decision to return to campus as a “voluntary assumption of risk.” If I am being compelled, within the context of my employment agreement, to accept risks, policies, and decisions without input or alternatives, is that a voluntary choice? If my only option is to accept these risks or offer my resignation, is that voluntary? Being forced to accept risks or suffer a significant financial and professional loss is not voluntary; it is coercion. And at the moment, this coercion is being allowed capriciously without state or federal oversight—not just for me, but for countless other educators (and students) nationwide.
“Nikki Grandin” has memorably called the lack of choice teachers truly have—the “choice” to risk and potentially lose their lives or to quit and most certainly lose their livelihoods—a hostage negotiation. Indeed, we are being taken hostage by individual administrators’ whims when state and federal leadership fails to take decisive action in a crisis. The lack of consistent federal and state mandates to deal with this pandemic is directly responsible for the dramatically disparate experiences I have seen with these two different higher education institutions.
And so, I will return to my campus and send my children back to their school campus, and I will pray that our lives will be spared when we inevitably become ill, because I have no other choice.
Many teachers seem compelled to qualify their request for virtual learning by expressing how much they care about their students, as though they must apologize or justify their concern for their own health and eventual risk to their own families and loved ones. I have no doubt that teachers care, more than we know, but I see no need at all to deflect away from their own concerns for their own lives and health. What other professionals would we hold to this standard?
I offer that the question should not be whether I care about my students when I ask for the best available protection during a health pandemic. The question, instead, should be if virtual learning is the only way to protect 100 percent of the people, why isn’t it available to 100 percent of the people? Why does this question even need to be asked?
Many disagree about the specific role of government in our lives, schools, and businesses. Surely we can agree, though, that federal and state governments have a fundamental responsibility to protect citizens—and ensure equal protection to all citizens—in life-threatening situations. Our federal government has failed us all in its response to the novel coronavirus that has now infected more than 5 million Americans. And without a consistent policy for protecting all people at all educational institutions in Florida, our state government also continues to fail us.
We are asking for consistent policies for both the K-12 system and all colleges and universities to ensure that administrators are required to put our health and safety first—whether we are a student, teacher, or staff member. Otherwise, at the individual institutional level, while some benefit from excellent leadership, others are bound to the whims of poor and/or unethical leaders.
Teachers are begging you to listen. Hear our voices. Hear our pleas. As we risk our lives to do our jobs, make our lives a priority as you do yours.
With hope,
Marian Wright Robinson is an assistant professor at a private university in Florida. “Marian Wright Robinson” is a pen name for the purpose of this blog; she has chosen to remain anonymous. Click her name to learn more about the inspiration behind her choice of pseudonym.