Some simple thoughts as semesters start and anxieties rise.
The vaccine works. Folks need to remember that. It doesn’t keep you from being exposed, it doesn’t make you completely invulnerable, but it does substantially reduce the chances of a serious case of covid-19, even with delta. I understand that this is little comfort to someone who feels really sick with a breakthrough covid case and no comfort at all for the rare person who has a breakthrough case become very severe. The thing to remember is that if you are not that person, your chances of becoming them if you’re vaccinated are very small. Anxiety is normal, but if our anxiety edges us towards acting like the vaccine is doing nothing—or as if we expected 100% protection from a vaccine and we’re feeling let down—we’re hurting our own case for vaccination. I also think people who are worried need to watch out for drifting into cherry-picking data that intensifies their worries. I’ve been in a lot of online discussions in the last two weeks that verge on that, including some where people asserted without evidence that the CDC or other professional associations are conspiring to hide negative data that favors some particular institutional approach or policy. Let’s leave that kind of thinking to the anti-vaxxers.
It’s the unvaccinated who are most at risk on campuses that have vaccine and mask mandates. It’s not worth worrying that much about a student or colleague faking a vaccination certificate: that’s a self-harming act on their part. You can and should demand that students in your classes follow a mask protocol if your campus has one (or lets faculty impose one at their discretion), but leave the question of whether students are fully doing as they ought elsewhere to your colleagues in student affairs unless or until you think nobody is enforcing protocols or rules that have been stated by your administrations—and even then, that’s a conversation to have with administrative colleagues.
On the other hand, I really dislike anything that sounds like a gag rule. Sure, you shouldn’t grill an individual student about their vaccination status, but the idea that faculty can’t talk about moral norms or social obligations in their classes like the need to vote, the need to get vaccinated, etc., runs counter to the basic ethos of good teaching. If the issue comes up, whether in a class on moral philosophy or microbiology, it’s fundamentally wrong on several levels for administrators to assert that the issue can’t be or mustn’t be discussed. Faculty everywhere need to continue to push back on any constraint that goes beyond “don’t grill an individual about their medical status or treatment”.
Any college or university that doesn’t have a vaccine mandate is shamefully betraying a basic commitment to truth. They should be the target of collective action by faculty and staff—and students should support that action.
Try to recognize when you’re in the domain of actual judgment calls where there’s a valid case to be made for multiple policy approaches. I was frustrated by alumni of my own institution who were intensely disapproving and very certain about their views over students not being compelled to mask at a brief outdoor ceremony that’s held in normal years for first-year students, on a campus that has a vaccine mandate and some considerable safeguards otherwise. A lot of highly-educated folks, including some faculty, have carried over the legitimate righteousness they feel about the national need for vaccination, masking and caution about being in crowded, poorly ventilated interior space into being demanding about intensely specific managerial strategies everywhere and anywhere. As with many things on a college campus or in progressive-dominated communities, I think we actually tend to become more intense and confrontational in our preferences on many policies because we at last are talking to people who have to hear us and whom we actually can influence. But the result is that rather than modelling a reasonable discussion about ambiguous evidence and lightly divergent policy approaches where there’s a good case to be made either way and the probabilities of consequences are pretty proximate, we end up rhetorically in almost the same register as when we’re talking to true adversaries. That seems like a mistake.
I understand why some faculty want to continue to teach virtually at institutions that prior to covid-19 were 100% in-person. I think there are a few health-related situations where that’s appropriate, especially on campuses where the administration has been too cowardly to adopt a vaccine mandate. I think in those cases, I’d also support a paid leave of absence for those individuals. I don’t particularly appreciate faculty who have shown little to no interest in instructional technology or digital culture up to this point suddenly professing an urgent desire to express their academic freedom by daring experimentation with virtual instruction. Or faculty who more baldly state that they think Zoom instruction is their natural metier and they will argue strenuously for continuing it indefinitely forward, covid or no covid. At least at residential undergraduate institutions, that’s pretty well lighting the whole institution on fire and walking away. Quality online instruction—which takes more than just clicking on a Zoom URL—has its legitimate uses, primarily for campuses that are dealing with working students who live in a widely dispersed area. For residential campuses whose student body are overwhelmingly between 18-24 and are attending full-time, increased online instruction not only is the opposite of what students are seeking, it’s a deadly invitation to further deprofessionalization and further adjunctification.
Image credit: Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash