Sarah NelsonThe Gainesville Sun
November 5, 2020
University of Florida faculty say their demands to continue teaching remotely next semester have been ignored, and the path to remain virtual is so tangled in red tape that approval is nearly impossible.
The university’s faculty union filed a grievance Monday on behalf of the bargaining unit’s members, asking administrators to “cease and desist” from requiring members to hold the same level of in-person courses as they did in March .
UF administrators informed college deans in late September that the university intends to ramp up its face-to-face classes for the spring semester, matching levels the school had in spring 2020, and asked deans to plan course sections accordingly.
UF’s dashboard for tracking coronavirus shows 37 new cases among students and staff on Wednesday, bringing the total so far this month to 91. Since the pandemic began in March, 507 staff members and 3,445 for students have tested positive.
Since the announcement, members of UF’s chapter of the United Faculty of Florida say administrators have ignored their pleas to teach online, and have made the process “unreasonably long,” “complex” and “bureaucratic.”
“I think this is reckless behavior,” said Tom Auxter, a philosophy professor who initiated the grievance. “UF administration has made it impossible for faculty who are at the greatest risk of the virus to get recognition for the danger that they face.”https://260e60d292cedfd008806c6be999be16.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
UF spokesman Steve Orlando said the university cannot comment on the existence or receipt of a grievance.
Some 3,000 UF faculty, students and staff have signed a petition supporting the continuance of online courses. The grievance said the petition has garnered no response or acknowledgement from university leaders.
At the same time, faculty hoping to continue teaching remotely say they’re facing barriers at each turn among the documents UF is requiring to consider their request.
To receive accommodations, faculty must submit forms from a doctor and complete an accommodation request that verifies they have a disability or condition making them at “increased risk” as defined by the CDC, and specifies how their condition impacts them from doing their job.
The accommodation request form lists cancer, chronic kidney disease, obesity, sickle cell disease, type 2 diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, weakened immune systems and serious heart conditions as qualifying medical conditions or disabilities.
In the health care provider’s form, the physician must state whether they consider their patient’s condition a disability, and lists the ADA definition underneath as physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities: working, talking, hearing, seeing, thinking, communicating and other major bodily functions.
The UF website regarding the medical documentation states that accommodations cannot be given without a doctor’s documentation of their disability.
The unionized faculty members also are taking issue with age not being considered as a high risk category.
Auxter, a 75-year-old who describes himself as a healthy person but within the high risk category for complications if he contracts COVID-19 due to his age, said he took the form to his physician and explained the only way his classes can remain virtual next semester is if his physician processes Auxter’s form as having a disability.
“He said it’d be malpractice to sign the form in order to recognize this,’” Auxter said.
Some doctors, the grievance memo states, aren’t signing off on UF’s required form for faculty because they do not have an explicit ADA-defined disability, even if the faculty member has a medical condition considered high risk by the Centers for Disease Control.
Auxter said he began working to file the grievance as soon as he realized what was “going on.”
In June, the CDC reported that risk associated with COVID-19 increases steadily with age. Though age is an independent risk factor for severe illness, the report states, it’s also in part because of the increased likelihood that older adults have underlying medical conditions.
Members from UF’s chapter of the United Faculty of Florida said they “certainly” don’t want age alone to be the disqualifying factor for teaching and much less deemed a disability.
“But this whole COVID situation seems to call for rethinking on how to deal with faculty who are not “disabled” due to age, but run significantly higher risk factors,” said Steve Kirn, chair of UFF-UF’s COVID-19 task force.
The grievance also takes issue with the accommodation form denying remote teaching for those that are exclusively requesting online classes because they live with a high risk individual.
UF officials initially said in September, when the order to increase face-to-face classes first came out, that each of Florida’s 12 higher education institutions were being “encouraged” by the state to rapidly ramp up in-person classes. Faculty union leaders have since said no university was heeding the call nearly as much as UF.
Karen Morian, president of the United Faculty of Florida, called UF an “outlier” in its attempts to return to in-person classes at a press conference earlier this month.
“While there is an increased pressure on all of our institutions to have more of our face-to-face offerings, no one is trying to go back to normal like UF is,” she said.