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Monday
My colleagues and I set foot on campus for the first time since March. We had to schedule a time to visit as it is still too dangerous for too many people to be present. This gives us an hour to understand how things work on our “Covid safe” campus, just a few days before students start to return.
Most of us are quite nervous about visiting campus for personal reasons (children at home, elderly parents, partners working for the NHS). We are also concerned about reports on the role of universities in new cases. Several colleagues had something that swept through our crowded offices in February and early March, which many of us now believe was coronavirus. Staff members and students’ families have died from the virus.
The university management has assured us that everything is ready for face-to-face teaching: everything clean in depth, numerous hand sanitizer stations, social distancing in the classrooms, necessary masks in shared areas, one-way systems.
But that is not reality. Carpets and walls in many classrooms look dirty. Our offices are as we left them, dirty teacups and all. It looks like a ghost town. There are only a few hand sanitizer stations scattered throughout the building.
Shields in some classrooms look very handcrafted; A protective shield in a seminar room could be a transparent shower curtain. We are supposed to teach students whose desks are too close to us behind a makeshift sheet of plastic. In another, the partitions that separate the desks are made of a kind of painted plywood. The students sitting there couldn’t see their lecturer.
The university tells students that while it is required in hallways and common areas, masks will not be required in classrooms. We are in the classrooms for hours, often working very closely with the students. The university has told us to buy our own face shields if we want them.
The only thing that has been fully completed is the placing of signs everywhere declaring the building to be Covid safe, as if saying it makes it true. Trying to figure out the route to my classrooms, I follow the arrows on the new one-way system only to find a “do not enter” sign. I stare at the red circle, confused as to my next move. How will hundreds of students handle this?
Tuesday
I host a Zoom question and answer session for returning students. Many are deciding to stay home and continue their classes remotely. Many think that cities are not safe or that Britain is not taking this seriously enough. Some have doubts about preparing for college. I agree with them, but I’m supposed to pretend that everything is fine.
Most of my students are not partygoers, contrary to what is seen in the media coverage. They are taking this seriously and have deep concerns. In March, several of themHe nervously asked me to start teaching online as Covid was spreading through the hallways of the residence and they needed to return home to their families. As a result, I went online before the government and the university asked us to do so. If the UK had closed that same week, tens of thousands of people might not have died. The current musings of scientists about doing too little, too late this time fill me with an unsettling deja vu.
Suddenly, the government has announced new precautions, including the rule of six. All of our schedules will have to change, and smaller groups will mean that we will have to teach the same class multiple times. Nobody has told us about workload. Several of my colleagues are beginning to have anxiety problems. Again. The semester hasn’t even started and I’m exhausted. Again.
Wednesday
One of my students asks if we can chat on the phone. Normally students stop seeing me in June, but not this year. We have had to provide a lot more support, for which we are not trained. All summer long, students asked me an academic question and then quickly moved on to talking about their loneliness, financial worries, family dysfunction in close quarters, anxiety, depression, and fears about the future. I am not a counselor, but I do what I can.
The student I am talking to has already lost several members of his family to the virus. She calls because she can’t afford a better internet connection and a computer. You are concerned that it is affecting your studies. I tell him that now he can come to campus to use the computers. She is silent. I ask him what happens.
You are ashamed to say that you are afraid to come to campus, because you do not want to start another Covid cycle in your family. She asks if people will wear masks. I tell him that I require it in my classroom, but the university only waits for it in the hallways. That brings up a mockery: “Hmmph.” Ask if the university will monitor temperatures when students arrive. I say no. She laughs and says, “Well, I’ll bring my temperature gun and we’ll play a game.”
Thursday
Our focus for rookie week is a combination of online and offline activities. There is more emphasis on freshmen being on campus for induction and teaching so that they can have the “college experience.” My colleagues and I have noticed the obsession of the management team with this idea. They think that by offering a lot of face-to-face teaching we were able to be more competitive with the universities that were more conservative when opening their campuses.
Given the new direction of the government, the rookie plans of our student union are canceled. We just avoided a 100-person barbecue with drinking games, a networking event at a popular bar, a foam party at a nightclub, and a karaoke night for about 24 hours. Although we all feel bad that young people are not having as much fun as we did in college, my colleagues and I were not thrilled to be face to face with people who had attended a series of parties.
Friday
Other universities have locked up their students in dormitories and the return of students to university areas appears to be causing outbreaks. Is anyone really surprised? Another troubling headline: Scientists believe universities should only have a third of their students on campus. We have more than two-thirds of our student body returning, so we may have a lot of work to do to redo schedules.
Today we were all supposed to attend a freshman induction event on campus, but only half of us are here. Some of my colleagues objected, citing the latest government directive on doing everything possible from home.
I came to avoid the inevitable hassle of being penalized for complaining. Many of my colleagues who have raised health and safety concerns have been given extra work or had weirdly scrutinized teaching readiness efforts.
I have to take public transportation at rush hour to attend. It is crowded despite new instructions from the government. When I arrive, the students get bored with the endless PowerPoint presentations. In the end, I hear one who says he agrees with others: “I’m glad I risked my life for that. They should have done all of this online. “
I see another group of students who have followed the one-way arrows and made it to the end of the hallway where I found myself trapped on Monday. “How do we get out of here?” they scream.
I’m not sure how to answer.
