(Gothamist) After Initially Giving Them A Choice, Columbia University Pressures Faculty To Hold In-Person Classes

Link to original story: https://gothamist.com/news/after-initially-giving-them-choice-columbia-university-pressures-faculty-hold-person-classes

Columbia University officials are strongly encouraging its college faculty and teaching assistants to hold in-person classes in the upcoming semester, after originally saying that instructors could elect to teach exclusively online.

In an email sent Monday night, Amy Hugerford, Columbia's executive vice president of arts and sciences, called on instructors to "mount a more robust offering of in-person or hybrid courses to meet important student needs."

"This again has become essential for our international students, and beyond this, would significantly enhance options for in-residence first and second year students in the Core curriculum," she added, referring to required courses for undergraduates.

She went on to note that the "vast majority" of faculty and instructors had thus far elected to teach online. Exceptions include teachers in the economics and foreign language departments.

"The policy of voluntary return assumed a level of consideration for personal circumstances that embodied our respect for faculty choice and judgment about their particular situations," she wrote. "But that policy also assumed consideration of the needs of our undergraduate and graduate students. It is the latter that we want to expand upon today.”

The email asks all instructors to reply by this Thursday.

Along with New York University, Columbia first announced in May that it would seek to offer some in-person classes as early as the fall. But several major universities, most notably Harvard, have elected to hold only online courses. The availability of in-person courses has a huge impact on first-year international students. Because of a gap in federal visa policy, newly admitted foreign students are not eligible for a visa if they only take online courses. As a result, universities planning to only offer online learning, including Harvard, have told their first-year undergraduate international students that they cannot come to campus.

Hugerford's email specifically mentions the visa status of incoming international students as one of the reasons Columbia needs to have more in-person course offerings.

On Tuesday, several Columbia professors and grad instructors told Gothamist they felt stunned at the email, describing it as a change in tone for the university. Many cited safety concerns and worries about getting sick or passing COVID along to family members as reasons for wanting to teach online only.

At least one person tweeted the email, along with their own critical commentary.

Aaron Fox, an associate professor of music, said he felt that before the email was sent out Columbia was working with its faculty to create a safe plan for the fall semester. Faculty were asked to fill out a survey a few weeks ago to see if they wanted to teach online, in-person or have a hybrid model. 

“It seemed like a good-faith gesture intended to lock in a preference,” Fox said, in a telephone interview. “What happened in the interim, the preference was overwhelmingly to teach online in the fall for all the same reasons educators across the country are saying.

He added: "If you can’t keep a baseball team safe, what makes you think you can keep hundreds of college students in New York City safe?”

In her email, Hugerford assured faculty of the school's public health protocol, which must still be approved by state officials. She said that lab researchers have returned to campus with no known positive cases of coronavirus since June.

“We will be safer in class than in grocery stores," she wrote.

But some faculty members are also concerned about the risk of spreading the virus beyond campus into the Morningside Heights community, Fox said. 

“Any sort of thinking about Columbia’s strategy that treats the campus wall like an impermeable barrier is dangerous for the people on campus and it’s also disrespectful for the people who live right around us,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Morningside Heights Community Coalition wrote a letter to Columbia expressing concerns over its plan to offer on-campus housing to 60 percent of its undergraduates.

"Columbia, unfortunately, once again, has not engaged with the community adequately," said Robert Stern, a member of the coalition, on Tuesday. "They have decided to go their own route and create a plan without input. And then they will present it as though they are being transparent."

The concerns may be warranted. A recent New York Times survey showed that more than 6,300 coronavirus cases have been connected to U.S. college campuses.

A graduate student who teaches for the sociology department said she wasn’t surprised by Columbia’s stance.

“It just is clear that money is what's important and not people safety, and it's just insane to send us an email pretending that things are fine or they're very clearly not,” she said. 

She plans to teach an introductory course with possibly up to 300 students.

A Columbia spokesperson declined to comment on the reaction to the email.

Another professor who would only speak anonymously because of fear of retribution said the email accused the faculty of not caring about the students.

“I think that the email was accusing faculty members of being inconsiderate for wanting to teach online, as though there was some kind of almost malice behind their decision not to teach in-person,” he said.

He felt the letter wasn’t helpful in moving the conversation forward on how to give students the best education possible.

“This is obviously a sort of really difficult time for everyone in education from kindergarten teachers to university faculty members,” he said. “The students come back in a few weeks and I know that we all feel pretty unprepared. School starts really soon and we still don’t know what we’re doing.”