An Open Letter to USF President Rhea Law

I trust that your Holiday Season has gone well.

I am writing, as president of the USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, about the upcoming spring semester at our university. As you may be aware, the Omicron variant is proving highly infectious: hospitals - including pediatric hospitals - are experiencing surges in patients. Both the immediate and long-term severity of Omicron infections are uncertain, and projections for our region and for our state in general are rather grim. We are facing a likely explosion in COVID infections between January and March.

In view of recent and longstanding CDC recommendations in confronting this pandemic, the UFF strongly recommends that the University of South Florida embark on an all-hands-on-deck public relations campaign to urge members of the USF community - students, staff, and faculty - to take reasonable precautions during the spring semester. This campaign should include signage outside and inside of buildings, social media posts, and regular messages from you and the Office of the President encouraging our campus community to come together to fight the scourge of COVID-19. This means loudly and repeatedly urging everyone who can to receive vaccinations (or if they have already been vaccinated, boosters) as soon as possible. This means loudly and repeatedly urging everyone to wear N95 masks - and making N95 masks readily available on campus.

And I am writing to offer the assistance of the United Faculty of Florida in this campaign. In fact, I am writing to urge a more aggressive approach, and to offer UFF’s support for such an approach. We recognize that USF has been under intense external pressure to treat the pandemic lightly, but our primary concern is the health and safety of the USF community, and we believe that USF should take the following steps:

• First, as the one thing we are sure of about Omicron is that it is highly transmissible, but that other factors are uncertain, we recommend that USF join Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and numerous other institutions and hold the first few weeks of classes online. This would reduce transmission on campus and give us more time to assess the behavior of the variant - and decide how to deal with it during the rest of the semester.
• Second, as people will be on campus whether classes are face-to-face or online, we recommend that vaccination for eligible people, periodic testing, and masks be mandated. Again, we would support such mandates.

The United Faculty of Florida stands ready to assist our university in keeping our campus as healthy and safe as possible during these challenging times. Please feel free to call on me at any time with concerns and ideas.

Again, I wish you a Happy New Year and I look forward to working with you on this common cause,

Sincerely Yours,
Professor Arthur Shapiro
President USF/UFF