President Deni’s Galileo’s 6/1/2020 Letter to Administrators & Faculty

Faculty Colleagues,

This letter was sent this morning to President Assanis and Provost Morgan to express our concerns, and those of multiple faculty, about the university’s distribution and use of the Accommodation Request Form to determine which faculty might be exempted from teaching in-person classes in the fall.  As a result of this communication, I already have been assured by the Provost’s Office that use of this form by faculty is completely optional, and in cases where the form is not used, department chairs have been strongly encouraged to accommodate the needs of faculty in assigning fall teaching responsibilities.  I also was told that further clarification on the use of this form and related issues will be forthcoming to faculty from the Provost’s Office.

A good alternative would be to allow faculty to use their own good judgement to decide whether or not they would be taking an unnecessary medical risk by teaching in-person classes in the fall.  To this end, there will be a resolution considered in an upcoming Faculty Senate meeting that would allow faculty to make such a decision.  That resolution currently has 17 co-sponsoring Senators.  If you feel that faculty should be able to make such a decision about their own medical risk, then you should contact your Faculty Senator and ask them to support that resolution.

Sincerely,

Deni S. Galileo

AAUP-UD President