A member of “The Coalition of Graduate Employees” at Penn State says, forty thousand people coming back to campus is too big of a risk for faculty, as well as for the entire community.
Bailey Campbell and other students with the coalition say they’re afraid of in-person instruction at Penn State this Fall.
“Student will leave campus and they will engage in risky behavior and that’s not any fault of their own, that is a fault of policy,” Bailey Campbell, Member at the Coalition of Graduate Employees, said. “They’re going to come here and they’re going to behave like college students.”
The coalition is holding a “die-in” protest on campus on Monday, demanding three things from the university.
First, they’re asking Penn State to have remote-only instruction in the Fall.
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“For the university to release their emergency plans and what they plan to do in the case of an outbreak on campus,” Maggie Hernandez, Member of the Coalition of Graduate Employees, said.
Lastly, they want assurance from the university that it will protect international students from any national policies that could cause them to be deported if Penn State moves completely online.
Penn State, Spokesman Wyatt DuBois, tells WTAJ,
“Following a three-month comprehensive planning process involving more than 250 faculty, staff and administrators across 16 task groups, Penn State officials have determined the University can meet or exceed the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s guidelines for colleges and universities to return to campus.”
The “die-in” starts at noon on Monday and will last for fourteen minutes, symbolizing the more than 140,00 COVID-19 related deaths in the u.S.
Under Penn State’s plan, Wednesday, half of fall classes will have “in-person components”.
Faculty will give classes remotely, in-person or a hybrid of both.