BY CAROLYN BETENSKY

Could we have a winner in the administrative malfeasance contest, COVID-19 division?  I think we may!  Of course, it’s too early to say.  The entries keep rolling in.  But this one is a contender.

National University is requiring faculty to attend graduation at the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park in downtown San Diego and requiring them to sign a waiver assuming all responsibility if they contract COVID or have “any incidents or accidents associated with crowds of people or the negligence or misconduct of other participants.”  This is the first time National University has required faculty to sign such a waiver.

The faculty “Commencement Packet” states:

All faculty are required to attend NU’s 2021 Commencement.

Any faculty unable to attend must contact their dean and obtain an excused absence prior to the ceremony.

Any faculty with an unexcused absence will have it noted in their personnel file.

The “National University 2021 Commencement Admittance Waiver and Release Terms,” meanwhile, is very clear about the risks to faculty:

Holder […] acknowledges and expressly assumes all risks that are in any way related to or arising from being exposed to or contracting COVID-19 or other Communicable Disease in the Venue.  By using this ticket, Holder is acknowledging and confirming, both now and in the future, that Holder understands and expressly assumes the risk that Holder, Minor(s) and/or Accompanying Parties may be exposed to COVID-19 or other Communicable Disease.  Holder expressly understands that these risks include contracting COVID-19 or other Communicable Disease and the associated dangers, medical complications and physical and mental injuries, both foreseen and unforeseen, that may result from contracting COVID-19 or other Communicable Disease.  Holder further acknowledges and understands that any interaction with the general public poses an elevated, inherent risk of being exposed to and contracting Communicable Disease, including, but not limited to, COVID-19, that it cannot be guaranteed that Holder, Minor(s) and/or Accompanying Parties will not be exposed, and that as such, potential exposure to or contraction of COVID-19 or other Communicable Disease are risks inherent in Holder’s decision to use this ticket that cannot be eliminated.

It should be noted that National University has been in the vanguard of administrations that have used the pandemic opportunistically.  In spite of growing enrollments and healthy finances throughout the period of the pandemic, the Board of Trustees declared (in March 2020) the university to be operating under an “emergency condition.” The administration has consolidated and shut down campuses, as well as furloughed, laid off, and disempowered scores of faculty and other employees. They have also done multiple end runs around any conception of shared governance.  The AAUP sanctioned National University in June, 2021 for “a trinity of egregious violations of widely accepted governance standards”; the AAUP further specified that “the governing board and administration at National University have thoroughly and brazenly violated AAUP-supported principles and practices of academic governance.”

Please let me know what’s going on at your university or college.  I hope you can tell me nothing to rival National University’s latest outrage – but if you do, I’ll write about it.

Contributing editor Carolyn Betensky is professor of English at the University of Rhode Island, an AAUP Council member, and a cofounder and executive committee member of Tenure for the Common Good.