The Pandemic + Enema U = Pandemonium

Well, classes have started again and since it had an entire summer in which to plan for the resumption of classes, the Administration over in Judeca Hall was given dozens of suggestions on how to prepare:

• Keep the campus closed and move all classes online for a semester.
• Delay the start of the semester for a month or more.
• Allow the campus to reopen, but test all students upon returning to campus with random testing conducted regularly.
• Install cameras in every classroom, allow professors to teach from behind a plexiglass barrier and require most students to watch the lecture online, and the few students present in the classroom to maintain adequate social distances.
• Prepare most campus classes to go online, be televised, or devise some other method of delivery system to minimize contact between students and faculty.
• Close some of the dorms and use them for isolation for students who test positive or have been in contact with those who test positive.
• Above all—do lots of testing.

Predictably, Enema U did absolutely none of this.  What it did do, was…well, nothing much.  No testing of students, faculty, or staff.  They encouraged as many of the students to return to campus as possible, allowed most classes to be taught online, but required a few to be face-to-face.  Why?  Well, if there were no students present on campus, how could they continue to rent dormitories and sell meal plans?

I can almost hear the howls of protests now.  “That’s not the reason:  The classrooms were kept open in the sincere belief that was the best method of teaching.  You’re just being contrary.”

Well, of course I’m contrary.  I’m beyond contrary, deep into the range of curmudgeon.  It would be damn near impossible to write this blog otherwise.  In this case, however, there is ample proof that I’m right:  The university president sent an email to the various deans, mandating that no more face-to-face classes be turned into online classes for fear of students living on campus demanding a refund before they went home.  

The deans—and I have to give them credit for this—all realized they were holding a future Exhibit A in their hands and promptly forwarded the contents of the email to department heads who sent it to the faculty….and by now, every lawyer in a hundred-mile radius probably has a copy and is just waiting for the bereaved family of the first dead student or faculty member to file the appropriate lawsuit for negligent homicide.

The process of turning a real class in which students actually show up and interact with a real professor into a boring Zoom meeting is called “flipping a class”.  Supposedly just as good as “real” teaching, in practice it changes very little.  Good students still read on their own and learn, while the bad students are able to sleep through lectures without getting out of bed. 

A few departments got it right—the Art Department did an incredible job of preparation.  Other departments...not so much.  And the school as a whole decided that instead of general testing,  it would sample and test campus sewage.  (I’ll pass up the easy target and let you insert your own joke, here.)

A few areas of the campus didn’t need to plan:  they are just shut down.  The campus bookstore, the library, and the football stadium just closed.  (Students automatically purchase tickets to the football games as part of their “Activity” fee.  Will they receive a refund since there are no games?)

The library closing is the hardest hit to education.  There are no books placed on reserve, there is no browsing the stacks, and there are no study areas.  Students can request a book and pick it up a couple of days later, but the simple enjoyment of browsing the stacks while researching a topic—the educational sine qua non—has been eliminated.  In my book (pun intended), that alone is reason enough to cancel the semester. 

The library is rarely crowded, so couldn’t the students just be required to put the books they have examined on a cart for quarantining/cleaning them adequately before returning them to the shelves?  As I understand it, the virus lives on paper for only a few hours at most.  I cannot see why a cafeteria is safe but a library is dangerous.  A university where it is far, far easier to buy overpriced coffee than it is to read a book needs to reset its priorities.

Knowing that online teaching is, at best, a poor method of teaching, few of the faculty are happy with the sudden need to deliver their classes online.  Some of the problems involved are unsolvable.  Take discussions, for example: It is far, far harder to engage students in a discussion while they are all staring at a computer screen—perhaps simply because too many people are trained by watching television not to respond.  Professors try to stimulate discussion by using the Socratic method, asking questions and waiting for a reply (a technique that almost universally believed to be good).  It is only during the interminable silence after this is done online that one is forced to remember that Athens executed Socrates.  

So why is the Administration pushing Enema U into this sorry situation?  Simple.  It is not just about the money (though the university is as greedy as a desperate crack whore).  A while back the university went from having a Chancellor and a Provost to having a Chancellor, a President, AND a Provost, and any two of the latter cost more than both of the former.  So unlike MacDonalds, this institution has three top clowns drawing a staggeringly high salary plus bonuses...But, they were hired to increase enrollment—something extremely unlikely to occur in the face of a pandemic, so they are destined to fail.

Well, to be honest, an enrollment increase was unlikely before the pandemic, but a decline in actual enrollment is now certain. (I say ‘actual enrollment’ since suddenly enrollment data is top secret and we are being given “interpreted enrollment numbers”.)  Enrollment is not going to increase unless the administration starts registering names out of the cemeteries.  Any chance of meeting the contractual terms of those bonuses is obviously unlikely, hence, this point, the new administrators are just trying to put the best face on it they can.

The simple truth is that the best way to increase enrollment would be to expand academics by offering more courses taught by more faculty while cutting costs by reining in an out of control athletic program and eliminating an overabundance of plutocratic administrators.  While you’re at it, lower the cost of tuition and quit allowing the cafeterias to be run exclusively by a company that specializes in providing bad food at high prices in airports, prisons, and universities.  

Instead of seeing the students as an endless resource that should be strip-mined, the administrators at Enema U would be shocked to learn that essential services are run at some universities in such a way as to make the students happy.   What a strange concept!