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Mercy College’s adjunct faculty union on Wednesday publicly asked the institution to “allow adjunct faculty to teach remotely if they wish to.” Professors “know our students. We know our disciplines. We understand that in-person instruction is best for our students,” the union said in a statement. Yet Mercy “needs to stop hiding behind our students' preferences to avoid prioritizing the health and safety of the entire campus community.”
Calling Mercy’s COVID-19 reopening plan, which is heavy on face-to-face classes, “risky,” the union called for “adult leadership from college faculty and administrators -- leadership which puts the health and safety of students and staff first.” The union added that the “worst possible situation for our students is to start in one modality and switch to another. We did this last semester and we saw in real time how our students struggled.” Fall classes started Wednesday. The Service Employees International Union-affiliated union is currently negotiating its first contract.
Mercy president Tim Hall said in a written statement that the college has scheduled “a limited and tightly monitored reopening for its campuses this fall, built around the same kind of hybrid model of instruction” used by local peer institutions. Just about 4 percent of courses this term are entirely face-to-face, he said, while the rest are hybrid or completely online. At the same time, a “clear majority” of students who responded to a survey on the issue said they wanted at least some face-to-face classes, and the “underserved students that Mercy mostly serves fare less well in fully remote environments.”
Face-to-face class options are also “likely to preserve the greatest number of jobs within the college, including adjunct jobs,” Hall said. It would be “imprudent” to offer more all-online sections at this point “simply because some individuals want to work but not on campus. No one else in our academic community, including me, gets this privilege.” Hall noted that he worked remotely through mid-August and is now back on campus. As for the future, Hall, said events “beyond our control may force us back online, either temporarily or for a longer duration. But we have done the work necessary to protect our campus community as specified by state and local laws and officials and by the prevailing norms of higher education, especially in New York.”
