My University “went virtual” as all the kids on Twitter are calling it. That is, they moved classes to online and prepared to send students home. This is how that went down, from the perspective of someone involved. #COVID19 #FlattenTheCurve [thread]
UML contacted me three weeks ago to weigh in, as the on-campus public health ethicist, to discussions around two emerging issues: travel restrictions and “academic continuity,” which is state employee-speak for getting classes online and sending students home.
I was the last person added; much of the work had been started. The list of players was long: the provost and vice-chancellor’s office; health system; emergency management; fin aid; student advocacy; housing; research and travel offices, and international student office.
My role was to provide input as a bioethicist who has studied liberty-limiting measures deeply, and as someone up to date on the outbreak. I'm grateful to the folks at the university who thought of, and advocated, ethics as part of these discussions.
First task was to refine travel policy as the first step in prevention. We started about was the contingent nature of this policy, as—at the end of the day—the writing on the wall was eventually the US could be the threat, and not everywhere else.
As state employees, we’re bound by the Governor and the UMass President’s rulings, which at the time were already converging on total travel bans for staff and students.
Students in high risk areas were being repatriated, primarily from China, Italy, and South Korea, because of US Department of State rules. (We didn’t have any kids in Iran, though we do have students *from* Iran.)
The rest of the world was a giant question mark. UML maintains strong ties with universities in Portugal, which was (and AFAIK still is) less risky than MA as far as absolute and relative case numbers. We did have a long chat about our duties to not spread from America to there.
The resultant policy was a) to repatriate from Level 3/4 travel advisories; b) give everyone else the option to return as they desired; c) maintain a risk-based approach by maintaining a dossier of countries with UML staff and student, monitored for relative risk of travel.
The additional elements were to engage staff immediately to develop alternate assessment structures for returning students, so that if audited no one’s fin aid, visa, or other needs were in jeopardy.
The next was continuity. This was challenging not least because ADA compliance online is more time consuming (e.g. captioning, timing and proctoring, readability) than the day school, and the university needed to adjust programming for any student with particular needs.
There were also conversations about what was obligated of staff under the union contract, because UML is a unionized faculty—made more complex because adjunct and TT faculty are different unions.
(This, tbh, was the biggest flaw in the meetings, as there wasn’t a union rep to guide decision making) #unionstrong
The end result was to give instructors time to source from their students any accessibility needs so they could meet accessibility for *the cohort they had*, recognizing that general ADA requirements were almost impossible to achieve in the time frame, when it came to closures.
(I emailed my class that night to start that process ahead of time, because I could see folk starting to blink.)
The IT department started populating shells on our course management system ahead of any decision or announcement, in order to prepare for the extra load on the servers when the transition hit.
Okay, so yesterday Harvard goes off halfc- er, “acts proactively,” and MA starts to come apart at the seams. We’re not at full implementation, but too late, the Ivy spoke and now it's above our pay grade.
So where are we today. All classes are moved online. There is a portal for instructors to ship their work to Blackboard, though 60% of the day courses are already online so it’s just a matter of figuring out Zoom and/or the Blackboard chat feature.
The portal also contains broader guidance for instructors to modify assessment structures for non-recital (UML-ese for tutorial style) classes such as labs. It’s acknowledged this can’t be perfect.
True to public health ethics, we have a provisional deadline to recheck and reauthorize the pause on day school classes - April 6. If the situation isn’t better, we do the rest of semester—including exam period.
University activities are cancelled. Per Commonwealth’s decision, travel is suspended. Not in our control. I think the latter unduly limiting, but a) conferences are being cancelled so there's nowhere to go, (cont)
b) in light of 45’s recent announcement the risk is (to me) obviously political risk. (That or our policy is actually good for everywhere else as the US bungles this outbreak.)
CRITICAL: students are being sent home, but anyone who wants to stay can. There’s, AFAIK, no triage process being done. If you are an international student, disabled, can’t get online home, your family isn’t safe for you, you are homeless, you can stay. #Covid19
A dining hall will remain open to provide needs for remaining students. These are huge wins, because while there are small increases in risk in a still-populated campus, those small increases are outweighed by the benefits to these students
The library opening hours are still in flux. My rec has been to keep them open; @rocza’s addition was to close the stacks because the info commons can be wiped down much easier.
That’s what we had when Harvard dropped their news yesterday. It wasn’t done, & we were pushed into it early. But I think we have a solid, equitable system that promotes stated benefits of this social distancing measure without unduly burdening our most vulnerable communities.
And that's what this is about, for me. If you can't make your measures minimally invasive, you aren't trying hard enough. I'm normally not a personal responsibility fetish guy, but I get that way if you're a powerful institution and there are people in your care.
If you can't #FlattenTheCurve without unduly burdening marginalized communities, you aren't behaving ethically. Not in this outbreak. Not now. You think this is the Big One? Whoo boy have I got news for you. This is a practice run to me. And we're not passing. /end
