Weekly Briefing: What Some Instructors Did in Response to Lax Covid Precautions

As the Delta variant increases hospitalizations in Georgia, some faculty members remain worried. Others are taking action. ADVERTISEMENT [Academe Today Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. Taking matters into your own hands. What if you were in a situation that made you uncomfortable, maybe even put your health at risk, but you couldn’t do anything to change it? That’s the predicament some instructors and staff members face at Georgia’s public colleges. The University System of Georgia does not allow instructors at its 26 colleges to require masks in their classrooms or unilaterally change their courses’ modality. The system also provides provosts with a template for disciplining faculty members who move their courses online without prior approval. Violators may be given a verbal warning, have their duties and pay reduced, or be suspended. During a recent Board of Regents meeting, Teresa MacCartney, acting chancellor of the system, defended the policy, saying that students and state leaders expect face-to-face instruction. As the Delta variant increases hospitalizations in Georgia, and vaccination rates lag, some faculty members remain worried. Others are taking action: - Joseph H.G. Fu, a mathematics professor, told students that they must mask up for lectures or office hours and that he could cancel in-person interactions and conduct them on Zoom. Fu’s dean sympathized but told him that he had to comply with the system’s policies, and that students had complained about online instruction. - Cornelia Lambert, who was a lecturer at the University of North Georgia, quit her job because of the risk associated with in-person teaching. - Supriya G. Reddy, an assistant professor of public health at North Georgia, contracted Covid in early September — a breakthrough infection. She said that while her department’s leaders had been supportive, they preferred that she continue to teach virtually instead of asynchronously. She complied, but usually kept her camera off because she felt sick. - Ted Friedman, an associate professor of film and media at Georgia State University, talked to his school’s director about getting an accommodation through the Americans With Disabilities Act to change his courses’ modality. Friedman has diabetes, which makes him more likely to get severely ill from Covid. The school allowed him to teach his first week of classes online. At the end of that period, the director told him that he needed to start teaching in person or his classes would be reassigned to another faculty member. Friedman refused. His classes were reassigned, and the dean told him his pay would be docked by 80 percent. Other faculty members are teaching in full classrooms where they can only plead with students to wear their masks. Some feel as if they’ve lost the freedom to determine what’s best for themselves and their students in the classroom. One faculty leader at Georgia’s flagship put it plainly: “Morale is in the ditch.” [Read Emma Pettit’s story here](. SPONSOR CONTENT | UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA [What Actually Happens When Your Mind Wanders?]( ADVERTISEMENT Lagniappe - Learn. What’s it like [to be a delivery worker]( in New York City? (The Verge) - Read. An old woman makes a journey to a relative’s wedding. She spends the time slowly dying, halfway to the other side, but never quite there. Olga Tokarczuk’s short story “[Yente]( is death and life in slow motion. (The New Yorker) - Listen. Straight from Nigeria’s disco and boogie renaissance is the album [Viva Disco]( by Tunde Mabadu. (Spotify) - Watch. I didn’t watch anything noteworthy this week. I hope I will this weekend. Instead, here’s a podcast recommendation about the family in New Mexico that saw [Jesus on a tortilla]( in 1977. 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