Faculty and staff at the University of North Carolina system’s 16 campuses are preparing a lawsuit to postpone the start of classes this fall.
North Carolina is among several states that have recorded record-high numbers of Covid-19 cases in recent days, and the White House Coronavirus Task Force has tabbed the state as a “red zone.”
Bringing 10,000 people to campus and into the community just seems like a terrible mistake.
Early this month, 37 people in the Chapel Hill campus’s athletics department tested positive for Covid-19, resulting in a pause on voluntary football workouts. (Housekeeping staff responsible for cleaning areas where the infected people had been living and working were not told about the infections.) The system, meanwhile, is preparing to open for in-person instruction, although specific plans differ from campus to campus.
None of those plans comport with the state’s obligation to keep its employees safe, said Gary Shipman, a lawyer who is an alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a former member of its board of trustees. He cited North Carolina employment law, which outlines the state’s “non-delegable duty” to ensure its employees “conditions of employment and a place of employment free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious injury or serious physical harm to his/her employees.”
For the system to claim it can meet that duty, Shipman said, is “foolish.” “I’m ready for UNC to parade Dr. Fauci, or somebody like him, to look at my clients, to say, ‘You’re fine, you’re good,’” Shipman said. “They’re not doing that, because they can’t.”
System officials did not immediately respond to The Chronicle‘s request for comment. But a spokesman issued the following statement this week to a North Carolina television news station in response to the expected lawsuit: “The UNC System is prioritizing the health and safety of all of our students, faculty, and staff. We have consulted with the foremost medical professionals and disease researchers, including at our member institutions, and are taking the necessary precautions to ensure our campuses are safe places to teach, study, live, and work.”
Shipman said he had heard from more than 100 system employees — faculty and staff members — in the past week, representing nearly all of the system’s 16 campuses. “They wish they could go to work. They wish they were not faced with the risk of not having a job. And they wish more than anything that they were not faced with the risk of getting sick,” Shipman said.
Faculty and staff members have been sounding the alarm about that risk for weeks. An early July faculty petition calling on the system to move online for the fall semester gathered nearly 4,000 signatures, and 30 tenured faculty members on the Chapel Hill campus published an open letter to undergraduates Thursday imploring them not to return to campus.
A Duty to Keep Workers Safe
Shipman’s law firm wrote on Tuesday to the North Carolina Department of Labor, asking it to request the UNC system to “halt” a return to campus “until they provide the Department of Labor with plans for each campus” that uphold the state’s duty to keep its employees safe. On Thursday, he said, Department of Labor officials indicated they couldn’t get involved.
That evening, Shipman followed up with an letter to the system’s general counsel, Thomas C. Shanahan, asking him to suspend students’ return.
“No one doubts the sincerity of those who, campus by campus, have put together plans in the face of the unknown and imperfect to make the best out of a life-threatening situation. But as we’ve seen, day by day, no campus, whether in its residential dorm spaces or its classroom spaces, is prepared to fully comply with even the ‘baseline’ CDC recommendations in many instances,” Shipman wrote to Shanahan in an email he provided to The Chronicle.
The Chapel Hill campus said its residence halls would operate at full capacity this fall, which could see up to eight students sharing a suite. That meets the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s highest-risk category for shared living environments. Several campuses announced plans to shift their academic calendars to allow students to return home at Thanksgiving break, and the Pembroke campus plans to observe three feet of social distancing in classrooms.
Shipman said that he hoped to hear today from Shanahan agreeing to discuss the issue, but that “I suspect we’re going to have to resort to the courts.” Shipman is prepared to file suit as soon as Monday, seeking declaratory relief. One faculty member and one staff member from each campus are expected to serve as lead plaintiffs in the case, which will seek class-action status.
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
“Does the university system have an obligation to provide a workplace free of recognized hazards?” he said the suit would ask. “Is Covid-19 a recognized hazard, is Covid-19 an illness that is known or likely to cause death or illness? Has the UNC system complied with their obligation? Until you decide whether they have, we want you to stop any students coming to campus.” Such a case, Shipman hopes, could prompt the system to call off an in-person fall semester altogether.
“As adversarial as getting sued sounds, I’ve tried to make it clear to all involved that I come with a big ol’ white flag in my hand, on behalf of thousands and thousands of employees and faculty members across the state,” Shipman said.
That’s the sentiment held by Wendy Brenner, an associate professor of creative writing on the Wilmington campus who signed the faculty petition and has been working with Shipman to organize faculty and staff members’ involvement in a potential lawsuit. She sees suing the system as a “safety net” for employees and students.
“Bringing 10,000 people to campus and into the community just seems like a terrible mistake. We know that young people can get it now. We know that young people can die from it. We know that they can make others sick. So I just feel a sense of dread, not for myself as much as just for my community.”
Brenner said she has tried to ask administrators on her campus for clarity on reopening plans, including details on how community members would be informed when someone tests positive and whether an online dashboard would be set up to track cases. In a faculty forum Thursday, she said, she asked officials to explain their rationale for reopening dorms at full capacity. “The only answer I got was that there are some single rooms,” she said.
“Basically, what they’re relying on to keep us safe is, we all must wear masks and we all must physically distance six feet,” Brenner said, “and that’s about it.” The reopening plans are “just completely illogical,” she said. “I don’t know whether it’s a matter of denial, whether it’s a matter of a financial problem.” (Earlier this month, Randy Ramsey, chair of the system’s Board of Governors, asked chancellors to prepare for “worst-care scenario” budget cuts of up to 50 percent.)
For Brenner, the lawsuit is “attempting to simply keep us from going over a cliff.”
