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Oh wow Purdue just WENT for it. What the actual heck? A plan to separate their campus along an age 35 divide?
First and foremost, this looks to me like a plan to ditch any regular contingent faculty (who average in their 50s) and staff for fresh PhDs. https://www.purdue.edu/president/messages/campus-community/2020/2004-fall-message.php
First and foremost, this looks to me like a plan to ditch any regular contingent faculty (who average in their 50s) and staff for fresh PhDs. https://www.purdue.edu/president/messages/campus-community/2020/2004-fall-message.php
And that may well be legal. Age discrimination in hiring gets tricky, and the argument would be that here "age is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business."
But let's go through the wild spitballing that is this letter. "Our campus community, a “city” of 50,000+ people, is highly unusual in its makeup. At least 80% of our population is made up of young people, say, 35 and under."
1) Have you checked in with your actual city, not your campus community "city," about how they feel regarding this? And your local residents/neighbors? Your local healthcare system?
2) "young people, say, 35 and under" yeah this is not a precise science, is it now?
2) "young people, say, 35 and under" yeah this is not a precise science, is it now?
"All data to date tell us that the COVID-19 virus, while it transmits rapidly in this age group, poses close to zero* lethal** threat to them."***
*hopefully
**do you not care about long-term disabilities?
***except for a large % of our already disabled students—ADA issues much?
*hopefully
**do you not care about long-term disabilities?
***except for a large % of our already disabled students—ADA issues much?
"The roughly 20% of our Purdue community who are over 35 years old [...] We will consider new policies and practices that keep these groups separate, or minimize contact between them."
uh
um
oh boy
uh
um
oh boy
So I'm glad you realize the folks you're endangering are ~mostly~ not your students.
Are you, like, Skyping teachers into rooms?
Are students staying out of older faculty's labs? Grad students? Postdocs?
Have you, like, been in a campus library ever? How do you see that going?
Are you, like, Skyping teachers into rooms?
Are students staying out of older faculty's labs? Grad students? Postdocs?
Have you, like, been in a campus library ever? How do you see that going?
Who's feeding your "young people"? Who's cleaning their dorms?
How many of those staff, even if they themselves are under your magic number, live with people more at risk? I say more at risk, because we're ALL at risk.
How many of those staff, even if they themselves are under your magic number, live with people more at risk? I say more at risk, because we're ALL at risk.
Are your staff and faculty gonna have childcare? That doesn't expose them via their kids?
How will instruction work when instructors AND students are now much more likely to miss a random 2-4 weeks laid up with a miserable bug (best-case scenario)?
How will instruction work when instructors AND students are now much more likely to miss a random 2-4 weeks laid up with a miserable bug (best-case scenario)?
You know some students aren't under 35, right?
And some live with families and commute.
Or have to go back regularly to help out.
Especially in these weird conditions.
And some live with families and commute.
Or have to go back regularly to help out.
Especially in these weird conditions.
"Closing down our entire society, including our university, was a correct and necessary step.[...]But like any action so drastic, it has come at extraordinary costs [...]at some point, clearly before next fall, those will begin to vastly outweigh the benefits of its continuance."
That's some remarkable certainty there, that clearly before next fall we will reach the cost-balance tipping point of lockdowns. "Vastly outweigh." As if a resurgence is unimaginable—or no longer worth containing.
Which gets me to what I think is bothering me most about this letter, beyond its crude imagining of a successful age segregation: this is about openly endangering "the roughly 20%"—faculty and staff—for the sake of "the education of tomorrow’s leaders." Futures over lives.
We're supposed to see that as a noble sacrifice, an investment in a shared future, even if it's not *all* our futures. It's the same rhetoric as asking grandparents to #DieForTheDow.
And even so it disregards the number of otherwise healthy young folk who will catch this. Badly.
And even so it disregards the number of otherwise healthy young folk who will catch this. Badly.
So I guess my last question for President Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. is this:
Which science lab have you repurposed for the Purdue and West Lafayette Morgue Extension?
Which science lab have you repurposed for the Purdue and West Lafayette Morgue Extension?
