Sarah Nelson
The Gainesville Sun
Arguments over a return to face-to-face classes at the University of Florida next semester came to a head Friday afternoon between community members and the university’s board of trustees.
Several community groups, residents and students told the university’s appointed overseers that they feel UF’s administrators and highest governing authority have ignored their concerns about returning to in-person courses next spring.
“The carelessness and the profiteering with which UF’s board has approached student wellbeing is morally reprehensible,” said a third-year student, drawing a smattering of applause.
Student and faculty union members have held several online and outdoor protests about spring semester since UF President Kent Fuchs publicly announced that the university intends to hold the same level of face-to-face courses in spring as it did last year. The spring semester begins in a little over a month.
Student and faculty groups said their pleas to continue classes mostly online have been unsuccessful.
“We believe that it’s not right to force faculty, staff and instructors who have preexisting health conditions, to force them back in classrooms that are going to be inherently unsafe,” said Paul Ortiz, chair of the university’s faculty union chapter. “We see a lot of our students are not following COVID safety protocols.”
Many mentioned that Midtown bars have been packed with unmasked students in the months since Gov. Ron DeSantis lifted restrictions from bars and restaurants. Off-campus gatherings, particularly bars, are cited as culprits behind many of the positive COVID-19 cases.
One Gainesville elected official said outbreaks from those gatherings can bleed into the surrounding community, beyond campus.
“As of today, 103 of my neighbors here in Alachua County have died from this,” said Gainesville City Commissioner Harvey Ward. “I don’t want to come back to you in six months and say 206 people in Alachua County have died because we invited super-spreader events to our community.”
At the end of public comment, the protesters were ushered outside of the board room — which had limited capacity for social-distancing purposes — and began to chant about being ignored “once again,” to the trustees’ apparent annoyance.
“It’s unfortunate we gave them the respect of hearing them, they’re not giving us respect to hear us,” said Trustees Chairman Mori Hosseini.
Trustee David Brandon called the chanting an example of “bad parenting.”
UF administrators and health officials responded that they understand the concerns, but said that the university is following safety protocols to achieve pre-pandemic levels of in-person courses to the best of its ability.
“I fully understand and empathize with the anxiety,” said David Nelson, UF’s senior vice president of health affairs and UF Health president. “But it’s not really backed up by the facts. We have done so much. We have so many contract tracers, we have so much testing. We have gone out of our way to make sure that our faculty and our staff and our students who come to this university, to get whatever kind of in-face or virtual education, are going to be safe.”
Come spring, UF students will be required to undergo COVID-19 testing every two weeks.
Provost Joe Glover added that no student will be forced to attend face-to-face classes, and a process was created for faculty with health concerns to ask for accommodations — a process recently criticized by UF’s faculty union.
Hosseini concluded that the “easiest decision” is to just wait and prolong the return to the classroom.
“As you know, life will always take these tough decisions with risk in it,” Hosseini said. “What about our nurses, what about our doctors, what about the ones who take care of our sick patients with COVID?”
“Should we shut them down?”