BY ALICE FREIFELD
After 27 years at the University of Florida, I retired on the first day of class this fall, effective immediately. This despite the fact that I flew back to Gainesville anxious to get back into the classroom. I love teaching.
The delta variant was on the upswing, and I was delighted by the email from the vice president of student affairs providing an option to teach our classes online for the first three weeks. I signed on immediately.
It seemed like a perfect solution. Three weeks would allow the variant to peak and decline without the added fuel of tens of thousands of college students in classrooms without windows. I revised the syllabi to front-load the lecture material and imagined the extra enthusiasm there would be when we did meet for discussions face-to-face.
Late on a Friday night, the week before classes, an email came from UF President Kent Fuchs. I first thought Fuchs’ email had been hacked, but it turned out to be for real. We were commanded to teach in person, with no social distancing; masks, testing or vaccinations were “desirable” but not required.
Testing is available, of course, but my students last school year seemed to prefer to check the box, “I do not wish to take a test at this time,” since they were then cleared for classes immediately. Vaccines are easy to get as well, but not required, and students who choose not to mask are often also not vaccinated.
I have always appreciated teaching UF students. They are not only bright but bring a range of political positions and social experiences to the classroom. This forces everyone in the room to build arguments from facts and learn critical thinking and strategies for effective discourse.
I seek to create a petri dish in my classroom, but the goal is to ferment ideas not germs. Would I be able to maintain that tolerance when COVID-deniers are potentially endangering the health of their classmates?
Two years ago, I was an invited fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Working with students through the new material is exciting for them and instructive to me as well. I am fully vaccinated, but it seemed hypocritical for me to teach history while I was potentially aiding the spread of a serious virus within the classroom.
After sulking and fretting through the weekend, I gathered a doctor’s note and documents for sick leave. But I was advised that my age (over 65) and anxiety about teaching face-to-face in a pandemic were not a cause for accommodation. Barrett’s esophagus, which new research indicates increases vulnerability to COVID-19, was also insufficient.
Anyway, imagine taking a class during COVID from a professor who coughs a lot? I luckily have two former Ph.D. students who are in town and trained in the precise areas of the courses I was scheduled to teach. August 30 they met the classes, and I retired.
UF has done a remarkable job in moving up in state school rankings of research-1 universities. Some of it is just gaming the U.S. News and World Report parameters, but the university’s status is grounded in a top-notch student body, faculty with national prominence, and centers and labs that pull in national grants.
The rankings may be impressive this year, but UF’s national reputation as the No. 1 COVID university will color the perception of UF in the years ahead. Hiring top candidates is essential. When potential faculty and students weigh their options, will they be reluctant to commit to an institution that has not made their health and welfare a top
priority?
Both left and right-wing news sources agree that UF is a behemoth with powerless leadership. President Fuchs has used “powerlessness” as his defense in a Chronicle of Higher Education article and, undoubtedly, he would have been overruled by the Board of Governors or Gov. Ron DeSantis if he had instituted a mask or vaccine policy.
The general mood of the faculty is sullen, depressed; they, too, are frustrated by their powerlessness. The consequences of a top-down administrative structure, more beholden to politics than education or its employees, are on display.
UF could be made safer. I can retire. Younger faculty can’t. Staff needs to keep their health insurance. The faculty and graduate student unions are, perhaps, the weak organizations remaining to voice student and faculty concerns and educational priorities.
As I write — and in my dreams — I still am talking to my students, but now it is not a two-way communication, enriching both them and me.
Until her retirement Alice Freifeld was Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for European Studies at the University of Florida. This essay appeared originally in the Gainesville Sun, September 13, 2021.
