Thread by @PhD_femme, people who aren’t in higher ed may be unaware of a really [...]

people who aren’t in higher ed may be unaware of a really weird situation unfolding in academia right now

colleges & universities (hereafter just colleges for brevity) are almost universally claiming the following:

- students will be back in dorms in the fall
- classes will be in-person
- faculty will be teaching face-to-face
- courses will also be offered online

just FYI, the colleges saying this are the same ones churning out the research data that shows why it will be unsafe for students to return to dorms, for classes to be face-to-face, etc.

colleges are informing faculty to prepare “hyflex” versions of their courses, which are both face-to-face and online; students then choose whether to come in person or not.

it’s a HUGE amount of work to create & run a “hyflex” course & no, colleges are not offering a paybump

while a percentage of courses every semester have fewer than 20 students enrolled (very small seminars),

most college class meetings are probably going to qualify as super-spreading events, particularly

- large lectures w/ 200+ ppl
- every dining hall meal
- PARTIES, etc.

There is literally no way to make in-person college safe for the kids, teachers, or staff.

It is impossible.

And these super-spreading events will hyper-charge the virus out into these college towns and then, from there, the ripples will continue outward.

So that’s the official plan: college will be open in august, la la la.

BUT— here’s where the rumor mill kicks in.

The RUMOR MILL has it that college will NOT be open in the fall, and that we’ll be online like we have been this spring

The RUMOR is that colleges are telling all of us that we’re coming back in august in order to try and

- save their funding
- keep enrollments from dropping off a cliff
- ???

Here’s the thing: if this is all a ploy... basically every single fucking college is doing it.

Faculty and staff—many of whom have medical conditions that would make being on campus very dangerous—are left to wonder what’s really about to go down.

It is high drama of the worst kind.

It is just BANANAS that many thousands of faculty are sitting around right now legit speculating that the entire american higher ed establishment is scamming us and our students all summer long and is going to bait-n-switch at the last minute on august 10th.

/end.

addendum:

it is also bananas that something similar could be happening in [public? public and private?] lower ed as well

https://twitter.com/geceosan/status/1276730317097885696?s=21 https://twitter.com/geceosan/status/1276730317097885696

https://twitter.com/geceosan/status/1276730317097885696?s=21

addendum 2:

are you wondering why i say bananas all the time? for the past year or more, i have been trying to replace ableist language and slurs like “crazy” in my everyday speech

thus, many, many things are “bananas”

to me