BY STEVE O’KANE

Politics and morality are strange bedfellows. The famous sentence from Anna Karenina comes to mind: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Sometimes the night passes in restful harmony, the temperature is just right, the pillows are soft, the lights are out, and not a snore is to be heard. Other times . . . well, any ol’ thing can disrupt the peace.

When all is aligned, laws, policies, and budgets are such that public tranquility and personal health flow from the just occupations of the politicians. However, when the effluvium of the bodies political is awry, as Paul would say, politics and morality are “unequally yoked,” the stronger ox nearly always being the political one.

Here in Iowa, politics of late continues to drift rightward and currently the party in power occupies the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s chair. The three state universities are governed by a board of regents (BOR) appointed by the governor. Iowa law states that “no more than five members can be of the same political affiliation or gender.” Currently, five BOR members are Republicans, three are Independent, and one is a Democrat. Not surprisingly, the BOR hews a political line consonant with the wishes of the state’s legislature and governor, a not unsurprising posture given that the later provide the budget for the BOR to fund the state’s Regent Universities. The legislature and governor have been, to put it mildly, resistant to deploying the mask and vaccination mandates that peer-reviewed scientific research unequivocally shows is effective in quelling the spread of Covid-SARS-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Only last week, for example, US District Court Judge Robert Pratt found it necessary to place a temporary restraining order on the recent Iowa law that bans mask mandates in schools. It is interesting to note that Iowa law does not ban mask mandates at the universities. However, as the University of Northern Iowa’s administration recently proclaimed, “The Board of Regents, State of Iowa guidelines prohibit all public universities from requiring masks or vaccinations on campus. . . . Students, faculty, staff, and visitors to campus are not required to wear a mask or other face covering in our campus spaces, with the exception of particular health care settings or research labs.”

Every philosophy that I am aware of places happiness and its concomitant, health (with death being the epitome of ill-health), at or near the apogee of its moral framework. Here’s where our bedfellows have a falling out. Iowa’s legislature and governor seem to be expending Herculean amounts of energy to please and appease the base of the political right. Consequently, the BOR finds themselves bound to a political juggernaut that demands loyalty and holds the “Damocles’ sword of funding” above their heads. Thus, our universities are forbidden to require that students, faculty, and staff wear masks. Given that diseases, in particular the Delta-5 variant of COVID-19, readily and rapidly spread unless constrained, it is a near certainty that the BOR’s decree has caused deaths and long-COVID among the population. For example, a non-symptomatic student passes the virus to a roommate, who spreads it to an off-campus friend, who gives it to his grandma who dies. I surmise that disallowing mask mandates is both morally and ethically wrong. Our two bedfellows, politics and morality, are experiencing a severe bout of insomnia.

Early this semester I walked into my plant systematics class, took in the room and the students seated there, and had an epiphany. In a matter of seconds my mind hashed through this: not all students are masked; masks are helpful to the wearer but really are designed to prevent the wearer from spreading virus-containing droplets to others; unmasked students, even if vaccinated, can spread the virus; they could spread it to other students, faculty, staff, the community, and (a bit grandiose I admit) the nation; they should really be wearing masks; and, therefore, I must ensure that they do so despite university policy. Just as rapidly, in a flash really, I mentally did the calculus—stick or carrot? All university efforts to date, as near as I could tell were failing miserably in convincing students to wear masks. The carrot was out. The stick then.

By this time, I was at the front of the class, my brain had slowed down, and I thought: “doing the right, the moral thing has to start somewhere.” My mental machinations lead me to hope that my example would spread to other professors, other classrooms. Then this came out: “If you don’t wear a mask in class (it’s a laboratory where we literally work cheek by jowl) you will not earn any daily lab points.” One student balked and I asked him if he’d be willing to wear a mask. He again balked and I offered to get him a mask. He hesitantly said “yes,” and I rounded up a paper mask. I’ve had to remind that student daily and another student nearly as often, but my class is masked.

How do I get the word out? I thought. Send an email stating what I am doing to the faculty union, the provost, the dean, and my department chair, of course. Attentions were quickly focused. In a series of meetings, I was asked if there was anything that could be done to make me feel more “safe.” “Of course there were,” I explained, “but the point isn’t my health I’m worried about”—although I do have health concerns that make COVID-19 particularly dangerous for me. I’m worried about the big picture. Just ‘locking down’ my classroom essentially does nothing for the larger university community. I was adamant that I would not under any circumstances rescind my mask mandate. Leaving out a number of further discussions, I was informed that the university must discipline me because of the BOR proclamation concerning mask mandates.

The disciplinary action imposed on me is thus: (1) I am relieved of my duty to teach my beloved face-to-face course, (2) I must continue to teach my large online course, (3) I must complete a course “that will address [my] professional responsibilities as a faculty member, including the need to follow university policies,” (4) I will receive a “Needs Improvement” in my teaching evaluation (even though my teaching is always rated as excellent), and (5), because of the previous disciplinary action I will receive no merit pay. Note that besides my heartfelt disappointment in not teaching my course, the real recipients of punishment (1) are my students. They’ve let me know that they miss me and admire my principled stand. I am currently working out where I go from here with the help and guidance of United Faculty.

Politics and morality are strange bedfellows. Sometimes we find ourselves in a position where politics and what flows from it is immoral. We sometimes must decide which course to tread, the one of political expediency or the one of moral rectitude.