It is appalling that Notre Dame’s president acts like cases originating among students gathering “off-campus” are not the university’s fault. 1/

While nobody expects a business to control premises it does not own as it can control premises it does, businesses have ethical and legal responsibility for off-campus setting they knowingly create and from which they benefit. 2/

Nobody can know whether people at student party were sickened by a guest who themselves got sick on campus. But even if you could tell, the distinction between students gathering at nearby residences and students on campus is ethically meaningless. 3/

The distinction is also of little legal significance. Notre Dame knowingly (and therefore recklessly and carelessly) encouraged, even summoned, students to the campus and its environs. 4/

The President of Notre Dame cloaked this knowing invitation for students to risk their lives rather than study remotely during a pandemic as a manifestation of courage. 5/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/opinion/notre-dame-university-coronavirus.html

What a disgrace. Courage does not involve rashly and foolishly bringing together people on campus and in nearby residences when there is a life-threatening infectious disease rampant, one with unknown but possibly serious long term side effects. 6/

Just despicable for Notre Dame’s President to play on the typical college student’s desire for adventure by cloaking a return to campus as some sort of courageous stand for the good of higher education. 7/

We in higher education should be striving for and modeling wisdom in our effort to pursue learning, research, teaching, scholarship in the midst of a pandemic which our country has not checked, but could have. 8/

Wisdom, not magical thinking or foolish bravado. Wisdom means reconciling ourselves to safe though far from ideal forms of teaching and studying. Wisdom knows that patience with measures that save lives should be cultivated. 9/

Look at the COVID-19 stats from Notre Dame today. The U president could show courage by taking responsibility for the wretched circumstances he has created. Instead, he cravenly and meaninglessly suggests he and the U … 10/ http://wsbt.com/news/local/notre-dame-coronavirus-dashboard-shows-over-300-cases

… are not casually (and therefore not ethically or legally) implicated in the sharply rising COVID-19 rate because some transmission is occurring at student residences near but not literally on campus. 11/

It is if the president of Notre Dame has developed literal as well as moral myopia. He somehow can’t see that places around the campus frequented by students are just like the places on campus where students are together. 12/

The main similarity between off-campus and on-campus gatherings of Notre Dame students: they are happening bc the U president decided on an aggressive in person operation of the U in the middle of an uncontrolled pandemic. 13/

The degree COVID-19 hitting Notre Dame students - and presumably staff and faculty - is substantially and proximately caused by the university operating as its president decided it would. 14/

While Notre Dame as a business entity would bear legal liability for knowingly, recklessly, and negligently causing all this illness, the moral blame attaches entirely to Notre Dame’s president, The Rev. John I. Jenkins. 15/15