‘I can’t teach when I’m dead.’ UGA staff, students hold die-in over reopening plans

Dozens of students, faculty and staff sprawled out across the University of Georgia campus Thursday afternoon, playing dead to protest the university’s reopening plans as the threat of COVID-19 still looms large -- larger than it did when schools first closed during the spring semester.

Cardboard and paper signs rested on their bodies, some depicting gravestones, others declaring “I can’t teach when I’m dead,” “How many will UGA let die?” or “When I said I was dying to get back to my classroom, I didn’t mean it literally,” video by the Athens Banner-Herald show.

In-person classes are scheduled to resume Aug. 20 at the Athens, Georgia university, but many staff and students are at odds with the school, and the University System of Georgia, according to an open letter.

Mask are required on campus, but that’s not enough, according to the United Campus Workers of Georgia, the group that organized the protest.

“Leaders across the University System of Georgia are showing callous disregard for health and safety and workers’ rights in their plans to reopen campuses for in-person teaching in the fall,” the group said in a July petition. “They are putting revenues over people.”

In a letter to administrators, opponents of the reopening plans call for several guarantees, including that instructors be allowed to opt out of in-person teaching without repercussions, that grad students be given additional time and funding for research projects, and international students receive greater support from the university.

The letter has over 1,000 signatures as of Aug. 6.

“Under the circumstances and given our mission to educate students, it is not practical or prudent to allow individual employees to decide whether to work from home or campus,” UGA president Jere Morehead said in a statement, the Athens Herald-Banner reported Wednesday. “In order to plan for and deliver the high-quality educational experience our students expect and deserve, and to be fair to all employees, the University must apply consistent standards for work schedules.”

As K-12 classrooms and higher ed institutions alike reopen, many plans have been met with pushback.

Protesters staged a die-in over face-to-face teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill on Wednesday, the News & Observer reported, demanding the first five weeks of school be held remotely, at minimum.

Some expressed worry the return of UNC students could put the rest of the town at risk.

“If people are so afraid to be around the students, then don’t go near the university,” County Commission Chair Penny Rich said. “I know it’s difficult in some instances … but the university is going to open, the students are here, so we have to move past the fight of trying to get them not to open. We have to move past that and work with them to try to keep it safe.”

Parents and educators demonstrated outside of a Little Rock, Arkansas elementary school Tuesday, McClatchy News reported, and planted faux gravestones bearing the names of real people they said could die as a result of resuming in-person instruction.

“Opening up schools and sending over 400,000 students into buildings is absurd, it’s absurd,” parent Veronica McClane said. “It’s a little morbid but we’re showing that people are going to die when we open these schools up.”

The school year has only just begun and already there have been coronavirus outbreaks big and small in the US, McClatchy News reported.