SU professor: I won’t endanger my students by teaching in-person

I am a faculty member at Syracuse University, and I suffered from COVID-19 during the spring 2020 semester.

Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to get tested while I was sick. Despite my self report to my department, there were no reports of faculty illness at the university, and so my illness remains undocumented. I personally documented more than three weeks of intense sickness through a nearly 20,000 word diary reflecting on my daily experiences (which aligned with other anecdotal accounts of confirmed COVID-19 cases), and I received a presumed positive diagnosis from the doctor who refused to test me. Four months later, I still experience lingering effects on my brain and body.

When I was sick with COVID-19 in March and April, I went from being a person with a full and meaningful personal, professional, and physically active life to barely being able to take care of myself. My students did not get the educational experience they deserved, as I was the sickest I had ever been for three weeks straight. We were kind and compassionate with one another, but it was awful and scary for everyone.

We still know very little about the disease as it actively ravages the body, and even less about how it will impact those of us who survive it over our lifetime. What we do know is that (at the time of this writing) there are 4.83 million confirmed cases and 159,000 fatalities in the United States — and counting.

I am disappointed, disgusted and terrified by the decisions SU’s upper administration is making to actively endanger our health and well-being in the colossal health crisis we can all see coming. It is unethical to bring students back to campus in a global pandemic without careful, clear and safe directives in place. The plan for return is sloppy, unclear and poorly communicated. Furthermore, it unfairly places the burden of controlling this virus on our students — who are already returning and violating their mandatory quarantine orders. This is no offense to our students, but the parts of the brain responsible for rational decision making do not fully develop until age 25. The vast majority of our undergraduate students are under 25 years old. While this is not an excuse for risky behavior, it is a biological fact that our community must reckon with in critically evaluating our university’s plans to reopen campus.

To force students, faculty and staff into shared spaces designed for proximity and flow is dangerous. To place the responsibility of containing the virus on our students is cruel and misguided. To willfully endanger the low-wage, disproportionately Black and brown staff who most directly interface with the largest numbers of our student body (many of whom likely do not qualify for health care benefits) is institutional racism at work.

The adults employed by our institution in decision-making capacities are morally and ethically bound to protect those the institution employs and serves — rather than service them solely as “customers” (as Vice Chancellor Mike Haynie recently referred to our students and their parents) and milk them like cash cows.

SU is a nonprofit educational establishment with a $1.39 billion endowment. What is our Board of Trustees thinking? When is the time to use accumulated wealth, if not now? How is it that we can be sent home before there were any confirmed cases in our city, and yet we’re being told to return with cases in our country at an all-time high?

We have a moral and ethical obligation to speak up when we see our leaders behaving badly or making dangerous decisions. To merely continue to do our jobs without questioning the instructions of a death machine is complicity at best, evil at worst. As stated by 20th century political philosopher Hannah Arendt, “Under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not… Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.”

Though I would love to return to embodied learning, I cannot in good conscience willfully endanger life. I will be teaching online this semester and for as long as I must. I urge my colleagues, both faculty and staff, to refuse to comply with a return to campus and to do your work online wherever and whenever possible. I urge students and the parents of my students to do the same.

Having already suffered from and survived COVID-19, I do not want to get it again — as there is no evidence that I won’t and no guarantees that I will survive it. I don’t want any of you to contract COVID-19, either, as there are no guarantees that you’ll survive it, too. The only thing we do know for certain is that some of us will not.

I am not willing to endanger life for $4,275, my salary for the fall 2020 semester.

What’s your price?

Jess Posner

Part Time Faculty

School of Art

College of Visual and Performing Arts