UNC faculty urge Chapel Hill students to ‘stay home’ in COVID-19 letter. Here’s why.

Thirty faculty members at the University of North Carolina have a message for undergraduates who are coming to Chapel Hill this fall: stay home.

In a 750-word “open letter” provided to the Editorial Board this week, the tenured faculty say that although they would like to join students in the classroom, “We need to stay safe from Covid-19 by staying at home – and we need you to stay home in order to protect yourselves and your fellow students, your teachers, the many workers who serve you on campus, the residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and your own family members and loved ones.”

The letter says that UNC leaders erred in assuming a second, smaller COVID-19 wave would hit this fall, and that reopening “too quickly and completely” would be a mistake. “Under current conditions, it is not safe for you to come to campus - to live in dormitories and apartments, to sit in classrooms, and to socialize with your peers in the way that college students usually do,” the letter says.

It’s an extraordinary statement, one that illustrates the tension COVID-19 has brought to college campuses. While university administrators across the country are balking at the cost of students staying home, teachers and staffers are fretting publicly about the health risks of having thousands of young men and women together in dormitories, classrooms and elsewhere.

At UNC, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz told the Faculty Executive Committee earlier this month that nearly 56 percent of fall classes are scheduled to be taught in person, with some offering a remote option. “We’re reading about the new numbers of hospitalizations and deaths each day,” said UNC history professor Jay Smith, “and it’s terrifying.”

The faculty letter originated from the Chapel Hill chapter of the American Association of University Professors, Smith says. AAUP is not the official representative of UNC Chapel Hill faculty — that’s the Faculty Council, which through Chair of the Faculty Mimi Chapman also has expressed serious misgivings about UNC’s plans to re-open. “The belief that we can safely return to campus together with 30,000 students is quickly eroding,” Chapman said in a letter last week to the UNC Board of Governors.

Smith and the AAUP group targeted 50-60 faculty members representing schools across the UNC campus, and about half replied. That’s a fraction of the total tenured faculty on campus, but Smith said his group could have gathered more signatures if it had the time.

Smith acknowledges that moving to remote-only classes would create a budget crisis at UNC — “We’re realistic,” he said. “We understand cutbacks will be part of the calculation.” But he believes UNC could mitigate potential losses with its multi-billion-dollar endowment. Smith and Chapman also urged state lawmakers to support higher education institutions through a legislative “rainy day fund” that had more than $1 billion as of March.

University representatives say reopening is the best path forward, and that the plan is constantly being refined so that students can attend as “safely as possible.” But as with the turmoil surrounding K-12 public schools in North Carolina, there are no good decisions with COVID-19. Reopening brings health risks to students, faculty and staff on campus, but keeping college students home brings financial consequences that could result in substantial job losses.

We urge state and federal lawmakers to make those decisions less consequential financially by guaranteeing support for universities and colleges through this crisis. We also urge university administrators — at UNC and elsewhere — to prioritize health over the bottom line. We, too, understand the value of having students back at school, but if a COVID-19 outbreak makes that an unsafe proposition this fall, schools need to bow to reality and quickly send students home once again.

This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 2:12 PM.