Real talk: Why Miami leadership is illogically sunny about safe campus return

We all know that mindfulness about protecting the vulnerable is a big ask to make of young people who want to be at a residential school exactly because they want to have fun together.

So R2C is likely to be unsafe for our community no matter how careful we are in the classroom. That’s why Miami AAUP has been arguing for individual worker and student choice for R2C. Now, it’s starting to look like there’s a chance we’ll end up going online again, given scary outbreak news of late. That would be safest.

But if we do go remote, Miami will be in a fix. Students may take gap years or take their business to schools where they can study online for less, and Miami is 80+% tuition-driven with under 10% coming from the state. Without a federal bailout, Miami and higher education everywhere could see more job losses. (Maybe Miami will even have to scale back on the high-paid vice-president positions that have increased in recent years.)

At any rate, it’s obvious why our leadership talks in weirdly and misleadingly over-hopeful ways about COVID-19 safety. If they’re sleeping at night, it’s not much.

It’s important to note that Miami’s current internal liquidity crisis as well as longer-term demographic trends affecting revenue could have been at least partly offset by better spending choices over the last 20 years (large administrator salaries, building debt that is going to get more expensive, athletics). Similarly, years of tax reductions and giveaways for the wealthy and big business have left Ohio without much leverage in this crisis.

But—as we fight for community lives and safety, and as we build faculty power to push for better spending decisions—we also have to demand federal bailout money. Without it, we’re in trouble however we wind up teaching in fall. If you would like to help with that AAUP is working on it and here is a link. And join AAUP!