Let's talk about the staff at @UMich for a second. We focus on students and faculty a lot, but it is staff workers who make this university run. They clean and disinfect our classrooms; they keep offices running; they make sure there are enough desks; they distribute safety kits.

And they are endangered as much as if not more than anyone by the influx of students to campus without a proper plan for testing and contact tracing. Often, they have no choice to work remotely. Yet their labor, and the risks they are forced to take, is often invisible.

Or, rather, that labor is invisibilized -- we are encouraged to forget about them, but they are there in the passive phrasing of an email when we're assured that a classroom has been disinfected or a student has had a meal brought to them in isolation.

These workers deserve protections. They deserve to be considered in any safety plan. Their lives deserve to be valued by the administration.

When we say we're fighting for a safe & just campus, this is what we mean. We can't allow @UMich to treat anyone here as expendable.