This is the NY Times lead story of the day. Not Americans being stuck in the hellscape from Surrender Joe’s ill-planned Afghanistan adventure, or what’s going on with people post-Ida. Or kids having to wear masks that have almost no decrease in the chance of getting COVID (FYI, the single page headline is different from the front page, reading The Masked Professor vs. the Unmasked Student)
‘An Emotional Hellscape’: Frayed Nerves for the Teachers of Unmasked Students
Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 Delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor — vaccinated and masked.
So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked.
It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. “It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals, it’s more of an emotional hellscape,†Dr. Boedy said.
North Georgia is not requiring its students to be vaccinated or masked this fall. And as in-person classes return at almost every university in the country, after almost a year and a half of emergency pivoting to online learning, many professors are finding teaching a nerve-racking experience.
What’s he worried about? The main purpose of being masked is so that you don’t get COVID, right? That’s why so many wear them when in their own cars alone and outside. Sure, The Experts! say that they help stop the spread, but, they say to wear them so you don’t get it. Even though lots of people get it when everyone is wearing a mask. Oh, wait, we aren’t supposed to say that.
Certainly, some professors are happy to go maskless. A smattering have resigned in protest over optional mask policies. Most, like Dr. Boedy, are soldiering on. But the level of fear is so high that even at universities that do require vaccination and masks, like Cornell and the University of Michigan, professors have signed petitions asking for the choice to return to online teaching.
“Morale is at an all-time low,†warns a petition at the University of Iowa.
What about the morale of the students, who pay lots of money to attend class in person, rather than what has shown to be not very good learning on-line. Some colleges do a great job with this, because they set it up this way. You see their ads on TV all the time. Traditional colleges don’t. And still want to charge full boat for the classes. Including ones that require hands on learning, like scientific laboratories. Can’t do that at home.
Dr. Atzmon helped organize a petition asking the university to be more open to online teaching. It was signed by more than 700 faculty members and instructors.
In a response to the petition, Michigan’s president, Mark Schlissel, said on Thursday that, given the “stellar†rate of vaccination at the Ann Arbor campus (92 percent for students, 90 percent for faculty), the classroom was “perhaps the safest place to be†on campus.
So, wait, even though 92% of students are vaxxed, these weenie teachers want to go back to on-line, because some aren’t wearing masks? What was the point of getting vaxxed, then? Goal post shifting.
A few have sacrificed their jobs. Cody Luedtke, a biology instructor and lab coordinator at Perimeter College, part of Georgia State University, said she cried at the thought of teaching in a classroom where masks were not required.
When she refused to teach, she was fired, she said. “I just couldn’t perform a job duty that went against my morals and my desire to protect my students and the broader community,†she said.
There are multiple stories of teacher’s losing their sh*t and quitting/being fired in the piece. Oh, well, suck it up. A lot of people had to actually go to work during the height of the China created pandemic.
Meanwhile
- Liberal city could lose hundreds of cops over vaccine mandate (that would be Seattle)
- American Airlines ends coronavirus pandemic leave for unvaccinated employees (vaxxed employees will get paid sick leave, unvaxxed will have to use their sick/vacation days)
- Las Vegas substitute teacher accused of taping mask to student’s face, report says
- PHE reveals it has spotted 53 cases of ‘Mu’ variant in UK which is feared to be resistant to vaccines and is already spreading in 49 US states
- Pa. parents, lawmakers sue to stop Wolf mask mandate
- LANL Workers To Protest Vaccine Mandate Tuesday (that’s in Las Vegas)
- Reports of possible sickout by some Seattle City Light workers frustrated over COVID vaccine mandate
- First responders nationwide resist COVID vaccine mandates
There’s so many it’s hard to know where to stop.
The University of Kentucky is requiring masks in all indoor spaces, meaning that all in-person classes are masked. But venture to the eateries on South Limestone Street, which is on the campus border, and, other than the staff, which I assume are under management mandates, the only time you will see a mask is on the sidewalk where someone dropped one.
Among college students, allegedly some of our smarter people, the fear of the disease simply isn’t there.
I’ve seen several articles about how many of our “well educated elites” including medical doctors and PhD’s are quietly not getting the vax. I imagine those elitists with degrees in African Dance or Leftist Activism are all in on vaxxing but it seems the non AA elite aren’t totally sold.
Of my closest friends and their spouses 4 have degrees and 6 don’t. Two of the ones that don’t are vaxxed, none of the others. In fact my best friend Roy (PhD in engineering) was against me getting the Fauxci jab but I got it anyway to keep my wife quiet.
It’s not scientific but it is an observation.