Opinion: Faculty group will continue to press Penn State for mandated COVID-19 vaccines
As a proud member of the Penn State faculty and of the Coalition for a Just University at Penn State, I am appalled and angered by the actions of the Penn State administration and the board of trustees in the face of the continued spiking of the pandemic.
The administration had initially decided to deny the still-present danger to students, staff, faculty and members of our community. Following repeated appeals and resolutions from the faculty and student senates, the mandating of return to campus vaccines by the leadership of our academic peers, the overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of the vaccines — one of which has now received full FDA approval — and a tidal wave of letters from different community organizations, the administration has doubled down on its refusal to mandate the vaccine. Instead, it has opted to use punitive measures against students and faculty who object to its reckless behavior.
CJU has been at the forefront of calling the administration to account, demanding that it put public health above football and pizza. We were forced to engage in a series of actions: a rally in front of Old Main on Aug. 13, and a “Zoom-In” protest on Monday and Tuesday in which 265 faculty from across the commonwealth pledged to participate.
We are holding another rally, a “Student-Faculty Unity Rally to Vaccinate Penn State,” on Friday. We are committed to escalating our pressure. In response, the administration has issued threats that those who participate in the the Zoom-In will be punished. Meanwhile, it is neither requiring nor allowing faculty the option to provide online instruction for those students who get sick. The university is punishing both faculty and students for its failure to plan properly and ethically in the face of the ongoing pandemic.
We have been failing to stop this pandemic for the better part of a year and a half. Many have died. We must mourn them, because we could have done better. These deaths are not war deaths — the comparison to a Vietnam, for example, is misplaced and misleading. When we go to war, we know the odds, dangers, and projected mortality rates. We know who the enemy is. A pandemic is not a war against an enemy that is calculable and known, but a war against our own will, knowledge, ethical commitments, civic loyalty and courage, all of which are incalculable. A pandemic is a health crisis about who we chose to be. We could have stopped this virus, curtailed it, constrained it, and eventually domesticated and neutralized it. We in the U.S. failed and refused to do this. Why?
I am a proud educator at Penn State, one of the nation’s — and the world’s — top public education and research institutions. How could I not be proud? I am proud to teach the next generations of educators, scientists and government officials. These are our children, and the children of our children, the children we bestow on the future. This is why I care, and also why I put myself on the line to demand that Penn State issue a vaccine mandate (and the more just university that CJU has been calling for since its birth), because I, and we, stand on the shoulders of giants who cared for our collective well-being. I care about what we leave as our bequest. I care about all those who did not and do not have to die. I care about the world that our children will inherit. My students are my children, and my children are someone else’s students.
Who are we when we refuse to demand of each other that we care for each other, that our students, colleagues, co-workers, be safe? Who are we when we subordinate our collective will to the will of a political party that has monetized hate, prejudice, racism, anti-science, anti-education, and anti-public health? Who are we when we look at ourselves in the mirror and see how our choices, and failures to act, have allowed the continuing and fatal spread of this pandemic?