BY AMIT BAISHYA, MICHAEL GIVEL, AND JULIE ANN WARD
Last week, the University of Oklahoma (OU) AAUP chapter wrote an Open Letter to University Decision-Makers, published on our website and promoted on social media with over four hundred signatures from faculty, staff, students, and community members, to address OU decision-makers’ inadequate and deeply disappointing response to the grave pandemic situation in our state. There has been no response to the letter from the administration.
The State of Oklahoma is in a public health emergency. The COVID-19 Delta variant is driving up the number of infections and deaths across the nation. We at OU-AAUP believe that all Oklahoma academic workers and students deserve a safe and healthy environment for study and work. Faculty from the OU College of Law have undertaken a legal analysis of two statutes that power brokers hide behind to justify their inaction: SB-658 and Executive Order 2021-16. The expert legal analysis (available here) shows pathways for the university to take swift and necessary action to ensure worker and student health and safety.
The major demands that the open letter makes to the university leaders include enacting vaccination and mask mandates, flexible work and study options, hazard pay, and a transparent pandemic plan. Despite the mass support for the letter, the Biden administration memorandum to the states, and the fact that the FDA has approved the Pfizer vaccine, OU decision-makers continue their macabre farce of going “back to normal.” Their stance of “encouraging” rather than requiring the use of masks and COVID-19 vaccinations has the effect of putting thousands of people’s lives at risk. If we are all in this together, then such matters cannot be left to personal choice.
OU-AAUP urges upper administration to explain why they put forth the most restrictive reading possible of SB 658 and Executive Order 2021-16, essentially tying their own hands. What is their logic for following misguided legal interpretations of these statutes instead of CDC guidelines supported by science? With fall semester classes having started this week, students, faculty, and staff look to university administrators to demonstrate with scientifically based public health practices that our campus is safe. Instead, all operations are back to supposedly “normal” as though the pandemic had ended. What is the justification for putting the OU community in these super-spreader conditions?
Our students, their families, faculty and staff, and the OU community deserve answers.
Amit Baishya is associate professor of English and director of graduate studies at University of Oklahoma and secretary of OU-AAUP. Michael Givel is professor of political science at OU and president of OU-AAUP. Julie Ann Ward is associate professor of Latin American literature at OU and vice president of OU-AAUP.
