The Surest Sign that Public Health Protection is Being Sacrificed for Purely Marketing Objectives

Like many of my faculty colleagues, I was granted a workplace adjustment for the fall semester because of medical conditions that put me at increased risk of more severe infection if I contract COVID-19. This adjustment allows me to teach my courses online instead of in-person.

So far, so good.

However, I received a note from the School stating that according to policy, I had to find either a teaching assistant or another faculty member to be present in (what would have been) the classroom for the entire class period in order to operate the hybrid equipment and "facilitate learning" for the students.

Now if I am not going to be present in the classroom, what possible didactic goal is achieved by having students in the classroom (and sitting in fixed desks all facing the same direction with masks on for three hours)? Since I'm teaching from a Zoom meeting room online, the best and in fact only way for the students to fully participate in the class is for them to be online as well in the same Zoom room using their laptop computer.

Students sitting in a classroom would be severely disadvantaged because:

1) I would not be able to see them well -- it would be much better for them to simply join via Zoom.

2) I would not be able to hear them very well - their audio would be from one or two overhead microphones as opposed to a laptop microphone directly in front of them.

3) They would be unable to participate in class activities. I have class activities every session in which I break students in breakout rooms to discuss issues or do exercises. The students in the classroom would essentially be stuck while everyone else was in the breakout groups.

4) They would not feel like they are full participants in the class - unlike everyone else, they wouldn't be able to have a gallery view to see each of their classmates.

5) They would be putting themselves at risk of exposure to COVID-19 for no good reason.

Even worse than this, however, is that in order for me to be safe in my online environment, I would have to essentially force another faculty member or a teaching assistant to be potentially exposed (i.e., in harm's way) for three straight hours. And for absolutely no legitimate didactic purpose.

So this raises the question: what in the world is the purpose of requiring a faculty member or teaching assistant to be present in the "no longer a classroom"?

It is quite clear to me that the purpose of this is simply to be able to say that we are offering hybrid classes for all our courses. In other words, this is solely a marketing purpose -- it's to enable us to say certain things about the School to put us in what is apparently perceived as a better marketing light. Or perhaps is to try to save face after having made a poor, premature decision to hold online classes without really having thought the decision through very well. Rather than say "well, after working this through, we realized that 40% of our faculty have pre-existing conditions that place them at high risk so we're going to have 40% of our classes online," the School will still be able to say "as we promised in April, we are holding all of our classes in a hybrid, in-person/online format."

Why would a School of Public Health knowingly require faculty or staff to put themselves in harm's way (three hours of potential exposure to COVID-19) for absolutely no valid didactic purpose?

The answer: purely for marketing purposes.

In other words, the School is sacrificing public health protection for what are purely marketing objectives.

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