We, parents of Vanderbilt University students, are eager to see our children join a safe campus in the Fall. Realizing the enormous and unprecedented challenges presented by Covid-19, we commend the Administration for its tireless efforts to re-open the school carefully and are committed to supporting the University in its difficult path forward in any way we can. We do, however, have concerns about key aspects of the school’s current plan. Of course, we understand that best practices are still evolving and that much is still unknown, but it seems to us that even in the current fog, there might be ways to provide stronger protection to students, faculty, staff, and the greater Nashville community. In this open letter, we respectfully ask the University to review and respond to the following four recommendations:
A robust Covid-19 surveillance testing program that can identify infections before they spread;
Acknowledgment of the inherent limitations of self-reporting/contact tracing;
Comprehensive disclosure of the risks of infection through aerosols as well as measures to mitigate these risks;
Real-time transparency on the status of Covid-19 on campus.
If you are a member of the Vanderbilt community (parent, student, faculty, staff, alum) and would like to sign this letter, please click on the button at the bottom of this page.
Update: Today, August 11, 2020, we applaud Vanderbilt University for making important improvements to the school’s Return to Campus Plan. These improvements are crucial first steps toward addressing our concerns, outlined in our open letter below. As we continue to have questions about key aspects of this plan, we made a second urgent plea to Chancellor Diermeier and Provost Wente for further improvements.
Open Letter
For a downloadable version with live links click here.
Signatories
Greg Berumen, student, 2024
Alyssa Burkhalter, student, 2023
Shanker Dixit, parent, 2023
Zach Feldman, student, 2022
John Fish, parent, 2023
Jay Geller, parent, 2021
Maddie Geller, student, 2020 (BS, Peabody) & 2021 (MEd, Peabody)
Cindy Johnson, parent, 2021
Yianni Kokolakis, alumnus, 2020 - Between midterms and finals Vanderbilt already has many tests. What’s a few more for safety?
Joseph Kuster, student, 2023
H L, parent, 2024
Yanna Lambrinidou, parent, 2024 - There’s still time to get this right and we absolutely must.
Sebastian Lara, student, 2024
Hyun Lee, student, 2024
Ivey Li, student, 2021
Sebastian Ramirez, student, 2021
William Richard, parent, 2023
Amy Seitlin, parent, 2021
Evgenia Smirni, parent, 2023 - As a parent and an alumna, I am very worried that the current opening plan of Vanderbilt will result in several outbreaks.
Andreas Stathopoulos, parent, 2023 - The benefits of often testing greatly outweigh any cost.
Joanna Stathopoulos, student, 2023
Anthea Walker, student, 2024
Tom Walker, parent, 2024 - These are responsible and reasonable requests and still possible to act on. Going to college should never be fraught with this level of risk for anyone.
Wang Wei, parent, 2022
Sarah Zhang, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2023 - I would love to have a semi-normal semester and unfortunately, 4 weeks is a huge gap which can allow a lot of people to contract the virus. There is no efficient way to control the virus if we are given a test 4 weeks after arriving on campus. I would rather not return home after a few weeks of being on campus due to the virus being spread without any testing measures. Please make testing more regular.
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2022
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2024
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, student, 2023
Anonymous, parent, 2023 - Disappointed with Vanderbilt's vague noncommittal response to the start of 2020 Fall semester. Leaving families to risk their children's lives.
Anonymous, parent, 2024
Anonymous, student, 2024
Anonymous, parent, 2022
Anonymous, parent, 2024
Anonymous, student, 2021 - As a graduate student at high-risk for COVID complications, it is imperative that Vanderbilt do its best to protect all students and staff from contracting COVID while allowing teaching and research activities to continue; allowing in-person classes and on campus living runs contrary to this goal. In addition, it is completely unacceptable to tell faculty/staff and graduate student teaching assistants that they must take a leave of absence if Vanderbilt cannot accommodate their requests for alternative work environments/schedules. Vanderbilt should be trying to show the world that it is accessible to people of all disadvantaged backgrounds. However, its decision not to accommodate all individuals demonstrates that Vanderbilt is not concerned with accommodating faculty, staff, or students with disabilities or medical conditions that may require temporary alternative work conditions. With its actions, Vanderbilt is essentially stating that the education, careers, and academic activities of medically disadvantaged students/faculty/staff is less important than those not at high-COVID risk.
Anonymous, student, 2021 - I'm a PhD student at Vanderbilt with chronic health issues, including extremely relevant ones like a compromised immune system and an autoimmune disorder. I have been very productive, mentored other undergraduate and graduate students (I am always helping people prepare for exams and defenses, reading their documents, editing them etc), published high impact papers, and gone above and beyond to help with recruiting prospective students every year. The university's official statement is that all TA'ing is expected to be done in person, in addition to the fact that anyone whose requested accommodations render them unable to meet "previously laid out expectations and goals" will be forced to take a leave of absence. This is very problematic, because the official statement says that any accomodation that prohibits your presence in the classroom will also prohibit your presence in the lab. Even though all I need to do is write up papers and my thesis to finish, because I'm nominally an experimental chemist (even though I actually do a lot of computational work that I taught myself and teach other students, including those in groups that only do computational work), the university could say that because I can't TA in person, I can't be in lab, and because I'm an experimental chemist, that means I would have to take a leave of absence. The university loves when I do great work and pump out papers and teach and develop students so the faculty (whose job it is) don't have to, but the second it becomes mildly inconvenient to accomodate me (let me teach online!), it is a huge problem that must be met with the strongest possible reaction. It's completely unacceptable that simply asking to be treated like a human being who has a body (which I have no control over!) could result in me essentially being kicked out of grad school.
Anonymous, parent, 2021
Anonymous, parent, 2021
Anonymous, parent, 2022
Anonymous, student, 2021 - I am a graduate student, and we have been told that it is mandatory for us to return to Nashville, even if we are teaching online. Nashville is one of the worst places in the country right now in terms of the virus. Many of us graduate students have asked for an exception this semester so that we can teach remotely online, but we have been told it is mandatory that we move back to Nashville (many of us have returned to our home states or to live with parents/relatives). Forcing students to leave their homes and return to Nashville to teach during a scary global pandemic lacks compassion and is exploitative and dangerous. Many of us do not feel safe returning to a city that is currently dealing with a serious outbreak of cases. All graduate students should be allowed to teach online if they wish, and they should be allowed to teach remotely, from wherever they feel safe. So much concern is rightfully being given to accommodating our undergraduates and making sure they feel safe and are able to learn from their homes, why is this compassion and care not being extended to graduate students?
Anonymous, student, 2022
Anonymous, parent, 2023
Anonymous, parent, 2023
The Yale School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital study—which concluded that “symptom-based screening alone was not sufficient to contain an outbreak, and the safe reopening of campuses in fall 2020 may require screening every 2 days, uncompromising vigilance, and continuous attention to good prevention practices”—was published on July 31, 2020. Here is the Washington Post’s coverage of it.
Nashville, TN Covid-19 Case Tracker
11.10.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 635—Total Number of Reported Cases: 38,010—Current Transmission Rate: 1.07—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.11.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 252—Total Number of Reported Cases: 38,262
11.12.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 540—Total Number of Reported Cases: 38,802—Current Transmission Rate: 1.15—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.13.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 299—Total Number of Reported Cases: 39,101—Current Transmission Rate: 1.15—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.14.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 310—Total Number of Reported Cases: 39,411—Current Transmission Rate: 1.18—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.15.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 432—Total Number of Reported Cases: 39,843
11.16.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 590—Total Number of Reported Cases: 40,433—Current Transmission Rate: 1.17—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.17.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 978—Total Number of Reported Cases: 41,411—Current Transmission Rate: 1.17—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.18.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 142—Total Number of Reported Cases: 41,553—Current Transmission Rate: 1.19—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.19.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 451—Total Number of Reported Cases: 42,004—Current Transmission Rate: 1.25—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.20.20
11.21.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 342—Total Number of Reported Cases: 42,604—Current Transmission Rate: 1.20—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.22.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 391—Total Number of Reported Cases: 42,995—Current Transmission Rate: 1.17—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
11.23.20: Number of Cases Confirmed Today: 400—Total Number of Reported Cases: 43,395—Current Transmission Rate: 1.14—Current New Case Trend: Increasing
For more information about Covid-19 and indoor air quality, take a look at the July 16, 2020 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) webinar “SARS-CoV-2 in Indoor Air: Principles and Scenarios,” featuring Dr. Linsey Marr, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech and expert in the airborne transmission of infectious disease, and Dr. Richard Corsi, Dean of Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University and indoor air quality expert.
On July 9, 2020, the Vanderbilt chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a press release and petition to the University’s Administration for a More Just, Equitable, and Safe Response to Covid-19. For more up-to-date information on the Vanderbilt AAUP’s work, you can follow the group on twitter at @VanderbiltAAUP.