Reacting to St. Joe’s lack of action

We knew it wouldn’t be easy coming back to campus in the middle of a pandemic. We know St. Joe’s leadership, faculty and staff worked hard all summer to make it possible for us to come back to campus in order to have as much of a “normal” semester as possible. We acknowledge all of this work and for that we’re greatly appreciative. But the university’s lack of transparency and inability to follow through on promises made to ensure our safety has put all of us in a potentially dangerous situation.

The Health and Safety plan released about two weeks before students were to return to campus that promised cleaning procedures and health precautions that upheld the Jesuit values the university was founded on.  The university assured us that measures would be taken to reduce the risk of the spread of the virus in order to continue in-person instruction “for as long as possible”.

These promises appear to not have been fully upheld. We are disappointed in this lack of follow through of not holding up the university’s end of the iCare pledge that all members of the community were required to sign. As we begin our second week of classes, based on our conversations with students, faculty and staff, we have identified three major shortcomings in the university’s plans for the fall semester

Inconsistent sanitation agenda

The university laid out explicit guidelines in the Health and Safety plan, including “ high touch surfaces, such as elevator buttons, handrails and door handles, being cleaned several times per hour and classrooms being cleaned twice a day”. Along with this, there was the promise of “sanitizing wipes being available in all classrooms and buildings on campus”. 

We have not seen these cleaning measures being consistently fulfilled and many university members have had difficulty finding wipes in every classroom and building during our first week of classes. Who is to say these standards will be upheld later in the semester if they weren’t even fully in place during our first week on campus? We have numerous eye-witness accounts of students sitting in the same spot for extended periods of time and not seeing a single door handle or table cleaned once, let alone “several times per hour” as promised in the Health and Safety plans. If the university knew it would not be able to sustain basic health and safety preventatives necessary to keep us safe, they should not have had us return to campus. 

Last minute pivot to mandatory testing

At 2pm on Aug. 24, the first day of classes, the university suddenly announced that anyone living, working or learning on campus was to take a mandated COVID-19 test. For the two weeks prior to returning to campus the university’s message was that students were “strongly recommended” to take the university’s free test for “campus arrival”. By this point, students had already moved back to campus, been to classes and moved around in high traffic areas. This puts everyone involved at risk, including the community surrounding St. Joe’s campus. Moreover, the amount of students moving back to West Philadelphia, on and off campus, is a concern for the families living and working in the area.The communities surrounding campus are largely Black and brown, at least on the Philadelphia side of St. Joe’s. Emerging research indicated that BIPOC communities are 3 times as likely to contract the coronavirus as white people, and nearly twice as likely to die from the virus. This alone goes against St.Joe’s Jesuit values of “making ethical decisions” by blatantly putting a high risk community in harm’s way. 

We’ve considered the risks of allowing students on campus to begin with, and concluded that mandatory testing should have preceded students, faculty and staff’s return to campus. We understand the expense and logistical issues the university is facing at this time, but this is an exceptional challenge that requires exceptional solutions. Now we are left to wonder if we were in contact with someone who tested positive before they took their test and wait for the next cluster of cases to break out. 

Chaotic class modalities

Students who have chosen to return to campus are taking a mix of face-to-face, hybrid, hyflex and online classes. When considering outside limitations such as transit, safety and required courses, a mixed modality plan has proven to be, to put it lightly, rather impractical. 

Having 15 minutes to get from a face-to-face class to an online class is unrealistic if a student doesn’t live on main campus, which most students don’t unless they’re a first-year. St.Joe’s response to this problem was to provide “study spaces” on campus for students to conduct their online courses, but this defeats the purpose of having an online class because students still have to be in a public space and deal with the fear of being in an unclean facility. It would appear that this wasn’t completely thought through, and now students are left to deal with the repercussions of the university’s ill-planning. 

By allowing students to return and making options for completely remote learning challenging, St. Joe’s is putting the on-campus community, and our neighbors, in a precarious situation. We know many students are uncomfortable with this. 

In order to keep our community safe and uphold the Jesuit values we promote, St. Joe’s must be more transparent with its plans to keep everyone safe. All members of our community deserve to know what is happening on campus. We could start with daily COVID-19 infections updates on campus through a more user-friendly dashboard. The promises made to entice students, faculty and staff back to campus should be kept. The university should do more to uphold the Jesuit values in order to follow through on the mission of “with and for others” by taking responsibility for any possible COVID-19 outbreaks and not putting the full blame on student behaviors. 

Students are willing to cooperate with the university so long as it is willing to do better. 

—The Editorial Board