This article is well worth your time for the diverse perspectives. I think it also illustrates how institutional leadership has already failed, even if opening to F2F instruction does not trigger outbreak and disruption as many of us believe will happen. washingtonpost.com/local/educatio…
One thing that is clear at UNC is that the community has been fractured by this process and the decision to provide as much F2F experience as possible. Tensions clearly existed on campus before this crisis (e.g., Silent Sam), but this appears to have created more division.
Students and faculty are pitted against administration. Sometimes different factions inside those groups are pitted against each other. The claim that opening is consistent with the institution's "public mission" falls apart when you consider all of the stakeholders.
I was recently introduced to the concept of "vocational awe," which in essence is a condition where we lie to ourselves about the sacrifices being made (by us, by others) in order to pursue and support a particular "vocation." inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocationa…
When experiencing vocational awe, we are more vulnerable to exploitation via self-sacrifice, because the mission is so important, we may overlook broader questions of well-being and overall purpose. The original essay is on librarianship, but it applies to teaching too.
I think there may be a corollary condition among high level administrators I'll call "institutional awe." The well-being of the institution is what matters above all, and if that takes sacrificing the well-being of individuals who labor in the institution, that's the price we pay
In the case of UNC, it is staff and maintenance personnel who are most prominently being sacrificed. Faculty can opt-out and teach remotely. Staff must show up in person. They've filed a class action lawsuit against the university. Fracture.
The UNC Chancellor is the father of a UNC student and uses this as an inoculation against criticism, saying “I would never ask the parent of another student to do something I wouldn’t do as a parent for my child,” this is substituting his judgment for that of all parents.
Other parents are not the chancellor of a university and so are not making the same kind of calculation for their children. I believe this is an example of being in the thrall of "institutional awe."
We cannot put the institution above the well-being of the people who labor inside the institution and the people the institution is meant to serve. Opening to F2F instruction clearly does this. It says sacrifice is necessary for the institution, rather than the other way around.
The UNC chancellor is clearly well-meaning, but I believe the mindset shown here and elsewhere (Notre Dame, Purdue), is severely warped and inconsistent with the purported values of higher education institutions.
"Institutional awe" has been at work for decades as we've seen adjuncts sacrificed to the institution, as everyone has been asked to "do more with less" in order to preserve the institution. At some point, you have to stop this cycle. If a pandemic isn't enough, what is?
Higher ed institutions should've been well-positioned to lead from an ethos of caring for the community. Some have done this like @michaelsorrell at Paul Quinn College. Instead, many leaders have privileged maintaining "operations." These fractures will never heal.
Illustration of the fracture caused by UNC putting operations first and the people second. There's no healing from this.
