[Pols-announce] letter to Provost

Mon Aug 17 14:10:17 CDT 2020

A number of chairs and directors signed this letter to the Provost and Chancellor today, just FYI

 8/17/20

Dear Provost Bichelmeyer and Chancellor Girod --

As chairs and directors, we are writing to express our concern following an article in the Lawrence Journal World regarding KU’s survey administered to students. We have been told multiple times by KU that this survey gathered information about students’ preferred course modality and that the students “overwhelmingly” preferred to have in-person instruction. KU’s chairs, directors, and faculty have been asked to make instructional arrangements based on this information. The Lawrence Journal World article suggests, however, that any conclusions about student preferences--conclusions upon which administrative decisions were ostensibly made--are not supported by survey data, since the survey asked about student expectations regarding the form their instruction would take, rather than preferences about the form instruction should take. We have been put in a situation where many of us are now committed to in-person courses, even as students are regularly coming to request online adaptations or, in some cases, decrying our decisions to teach in person. This lack of transparency about relevant data further erodes trust in administrative decisions.

The need for absolute transparency in this matter is heightened given the inevitable effects that an open KU will have for the wider Lawrence, Douglas County, and Kansas communities. We should fully expect that an open KU will affect, among others, the Lawrence Public School system, local libraries, local business, and other area institutions. Because the entire Lawrence community must be treated as a stakeholder, any obfuscation or lack of transparency regarding policies that will impact the lives of local residents is morally unacceptable.

We are also concerned that KU, after making the decision to reopen campus, is now relying on KDHE and the State of Kansas to carry out essential COVID-19 safety measures. Peer institutions like Ohio State University have trained their students, staff, and faculty over the summer to do contact tracing and will be testing students on a weekly basis -- forbidding those who do not comply from attending classes and residing in dorms. By contrast, KU will largely rely on the CVKey app to monitor health on campus, which operates on a voluntary basis and does not perform contact tracing. We understand that this app prioritizes privacy and that the State of Kansas has passed the COVID-19 Contact Tracing Privacy Act, which makes contact tracing voluntary. However, we are aware<https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-13/Striking-a-balance-between-contact-tracing-and-privacy-protection-RhrkcsXoIg/index.html> of multiple ways<https://github.com/DP-3T/documents/blob/master/DP3T%20-%20Best%20Practices%20for%20Operation%20Security%20in%20Proximity%20Tracing.pdf> that contact tracing can be carried out that do not compromise privacy. As the State of Kansas flagship university, a home to many experts essential to our fraught times, and a thought leader in the region, KU has an ethical responsibility to its employees, students, and the community at large to make decisions that prioritize their health and safety.

We believe that it is unacceptable for a faculty member and a classroom of students to have a COVID-positive case in their midst and not learn about this exposure from KU until the student has asked for a course adaptation. Faculty are teaching in person to help their university at the behest of KU; the university must assume a more active role in the event of COVID cases on campus and make information about risks transparently available.

Because of these concerns, we respectfully request the following:

  1.  A public commitment to making all future relevant survey data pertaining major decisions affecting our health and welfare broadly available.

  2.  Continuous testing of everyone who enters campus spaces.

  3.  Contact tracing conducted with a pool of KU tracers trained<https://www.coursera.org/learn/covid-19-contact-tracing?edocomorp=covid-19-contact-tracing> to work with campus populations. These tracers can supplement and work in partnership with KDHE to establish mechanisms whereby instructors, students, and staff are expeditiously and anonymously notified when there have been exposures in their spaces.

  4.  Leadership in data-based protocols, made available to faculty, regarding tipping points that would send us online, or tipping points for mitigation measures (e.g. a course goes online for two weeks), based on the number of COVID-19 cases on campus and in the region.

 Respectfully,

  1.  Ani Kokobobo (Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literatures & interim Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies)
  2.  Marta Caminero-Santangelo (Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies)
  3.  Dale Dorsey (Philosophy)
  4.  Katie Conrad (English)
  5.  Nick Syrett (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)
  6.  Hume Feldman (Physics and Astronomy)
  7.  Florence D. DiGennaro Reed (Applied Behavioral Science)
  8.  Nina Vyatkina (German Studies)
  9.  Margot Versteeg (Humanities)
  10. Jonathan Perkins (Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center)
  11. Shawn Alexander (African and African American Studies)
  12. Henry Bial (Theater and Dance)
  13. Mary Banwart (Leadership Studies)
  14. Joan Sereno (Linguistics)
  15. Renee Perelmutter (Jewish Studies)
  16. Kelly Chong (Sociology)
  17. Don Haider-Markel (Political Science)
  18. David Cateforis (Art History)
  19. Stacey Swearingen-White (School of Public Affairs and Administration)
  20. Milena Stanislavova (Economics)
  21. Alesha Doan (Spanish and Portuguese)
  22. Faye Xiao (East Asian Languages and Cultures)
  23. Susan Egan (Molecular Biosciences)
  24. Pamela Gordon (interim, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)
  25. Jay Childers (Communication Studies)

  1.  Sarah Crawford-Parker (University Honors Program)
  2.  Liz MacGonagle (Kansas African Studies Center)
  3.  Luciano Tosta (Center for Global and International Studies
  4.  Tanya Harman (Visual Arts)

  1.  Robert Warrior (American Studies)
  2.  Dave Mechem (Geography and Atmospheric Science)
  3.  Luis Corteguera (History)
  4.  Mike Vitevitch (Psychology)
  5.  Robert Hurst (Film and Media Studies)
  6.  Bruce Hayes (French, Francophone and Italian)
  7.  David Darwin (Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering)
  8.  Michael Zogry (Religious Studies)
  9.  Maria E. Orive (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)

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