If your campus reopening plan includes systemic planning for faculty falling gravely ill and dying, your plan gets it wrong. 1/ https://twitter.com/EileenHBotting/status/1288171996782768129

At least one university labels this practice more honestly than @NotreDame. @Universityofga reportedly asked faculty to identify “next-of-academic-kin” to take over when faculty are knocked out by COVID-19. https://www.cbs46.com/news/uga-professors-outraged-by-next-of-kin-teaching-requests/video_fc7550fd-af5d-5beb-8017-fb07d926a5f3.html 2/

If a university is planning for widespread faculty incapacitation/death, faculty should receive pay commensurate for the very great risk the school is deliberately creating. 3/

Faculty-university employment contracts are not written with this situation in mind: faculty certainly did not bargain for being asked to risk their health and their lives to the point of the university now asking for designated “understudies” to take over teaching. 4/

Faculty might well want to consult labor lawyers to find out their options when confronted with responsibilities that go well beyond the scope of their contracts - including identifying “understudies” or being asked to serve as one. But the real horror here is an ethical one. 5/

A university that asks faculty to designate “understudies” as a response to a life-threatening pandemic simply does not appropriately respect the lives of those central to its mission. 6/

Such an institution does not deserve anybody’s allegiance, let alone their tuition dollars. 7/7