Send to every prof: "We write that reopening colleges and universities to in-person classes this fall is Unsafe at Any Campus, and sincerely hope that our Essay triggers critical thinking, evidence-based decision-making, and mindful reflection."
2: "Some colleges and universities may be willing to experiment with the lives of students, staff, local communities, & faculty. These essentially largescale biomedical clinical research studies have been neither approved, nor even reviewed by any IRB as is legally required."
3: "Rushing to reopen campuses offers only the illusion of safety. In contrast, offering an effective online alternative provides the reality of safety. Just because it is different, online education is not necessarily inferior."
4: "Sorrell said 'rushing to reopen our society and our schools is a mistake that will ultimately result in hundreds of thousands of citizens falling sick and worse. We should not let our own financial and reputational worries cloud our judgment about matters of life and death.'"
5: "Sorrell: “We face fair questions about higher education’s business model, cost, & long-term prospect & about whom higher education ultimately serves. Do we serve students & families who appear at our doors each fall full of hope & faith? Or does self-preservation come first?”
6: Sorrell concluded by stating, “coronavirus is our test. Whether we pass will not only determine our testimony, but also shape our legacy. May history judge us kindly.”
7: "Believe me, I miss the dynamism of the classroom, too. But is it worth risking my life over? Hell, no! In a global pandemic, fierce in-person intellectual debates cannot take priority over safety and health. What good is winning a debate if you’re ill, or dead?" Levantovskaya
8: "Colleges and universities are not meatpacking plants and should not be treated as such by administrators. Students, staff, local communities, and faculty are not and should not be cannon fodder, to be sacrificed for the sake of reopening campuses."
9: "Women and minorities are more likely to be more stressed and less voiced as untenured faculty, while minority women faculty face multiple burdens."
More. 10: "Our paramount duty is and should be to ensure the health, safety, and wellbeing of students, staff, and faculty. Our decision-making should be guided by
this overriding principle: people matter more than education or money."
poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?I…
this overriding principle: people matter more than education or money."
poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?I…
11: "Paxson wants to reopen campuses subject to public health constraints. We believe this is backwards because it conflates constraints with objectives. Whether campuses reopen should be determined after mindful analysis, not assumed to be a goal before doing so."
12: "Some elite schools effectively are hedge fundsm attached to a less profitable legacy business of being a university."
13: "We can redesign our courses to teach the agency (motivation to pursue a goal) and pathway (capacity to brainstorm multiple strategies to achieve the goal) thinking in our disciplines to develop academic self-efficacy in our students in online environments."
14: " We can expressly teach the process of learning how to learn the domain knowledge and skills in our fields of expertise, but leverage online tools in this process."
15: "It is much better for campuses and their local communities to be figurative ghost towns rather than literal ghost towns."
16: "The extraordinarily complex, hopefully well-intentioned, likely vetted by general counsel, and untested nature of the guidelines and protocols required to reopen campuses underscores the tragedy of their failing...
17: "... and raises the fundamental question of why are colleges and universities insisting on going through all the trouble of doing this? Is it public-spiritedness or private greed? Is it education or economics? Is it other-regarding or selfishness?"
18: "Nostalgia, precedent, and tradition are not sufficient reasons for our choices in higher education. We now have the opportunity to make better decisions. Higher education (and life itself) should be evidence-based and science driven. What is higher education all about?"
19: "The pandemic is likely to exacerbate this inequitable trend, endangering public higher education. Starving states of federal funding...will reduce classes, courses, degree programs, staff, & professors, just when public higher education could help millions of unemployed..."
20: "Just as the U.S. federal government financially rescued the airline and other industries, the U.S. federal government can financially rescue higher education institutions."
