This thread apparently stirred up some feelings. I appreciate the desire to find a way to come back to campus and I am in fact still part of the process to figure out a way to make that happen. Please allow me to contextualize my post... (1/?) https://twitter.com/profjdiaz/status/1309146821252517892

I did not mean to imply we can’t come back to campus in some way - rather, today I am pessimistic. It is true that we have identified essential workers and perhaps there is an argument that teachers are essential too. But let’s unpack that a bit. (2/?)

When resources are limited (testing kits, PPE, personnel) we have to identify who gets access to those resources and who don’t. The only reason essential workers have been able to function is because everyone else stayed home and freed up the limited supplies (3/?)

In order to safely expand the population of essential workers, we have to increase resources to support them. The whole point of lockdown is SUPPOSED to be to buy time to build up capacity so that we can safely increase the population returning to operations. (4/?)

This is where the US has completely fucked up. We treated lockdowns as the solution instead of as a time-buying mechanism to ramp up systems like testing and contact tracing. Now people are exhausted of restrictions but we don’t have the resources to safely open back up (5/?)

Childcare and schooling have been big factors in our ability to reopen. Families and especially women are experiencing hits to productivity as childcare and school have demanded attention and resources. I agree that teachers and child care should be considered essential (6/?)

But you don’t return workers to operations just because they are essential - you have to put in place the resources needed to make their return to work manageable. Since federal, state and local gov’t haven’t been able to build those resources, we must do it ourselves (7/?)

And this is where I am pessimistic. In order to return to campus *and stay on campus* for a whole semester, we as a university will have to invest in a testing and surveillance strategy that can actually control community spread. (8/?)

Despite my pessimism I am working hard with many other passionate folks on campus to find a way to make this work. But today I am not optimistic. Maybe I’ll feel differently after more exploration of our options. (9/?)

I made the personal choice of running my spring courses as completely online exactly because of this pessimism. An added benefit of this decision is I free up classroom space to make it easier for those who ARE on campus to do so safely. (10/?)

Even if we come back to campus it won’t be 100%. The question is - who gets priority to return to campus and who doesn’t? I decided to make that decision for my students and in doing so am hopefully increasing our chances of returning in the fall (11/?)

One final note: given the resource shortage I described, I think it’s disingenuous to say college faculty are just as essential as primary school teachers. Clearly young children are more adversely impacted by isolation than our adult students. They should be prioritized (12/?)

This is not to say our students aren’t suffering too. In an ideal world we would have enough resources for all students to return to school. But we don’t. So we either make hard decisions about who deserves those resources or we continue to abuse the vulnerable (13/?)

I know how badly we all want to return to campus. My constant refrain of concern is because I am scared of the magical/wishful thinking I’ve seen. We CAN do this if we are honest about the challenges we face. (End)