While addressing the LSU Board of Supervisors Friday morning, Rosemary Peters-Hill, an LSU professor of French since 2007, told the members gathered that she’s worried about her immunocompromised son, Nathaniel, a kindergartener who because of his age isn’t eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I can’t expose him to COVID because he can’t fight it,” the professor said. “For nearly 18 months we’ve lived with this fear that he will get infected and that he will need a ventilator to keep from drowning in his own lungs.”
Peters-Hill said if she goes back into classrooms this fall and teaches in-person, she will “put (Nathaniel) and his brother, my husband, my students and myself at that risk.”
“To teach 20 students, most of whom, statistically (speaking), are not vaccinated and have spent the day with larger groups of mostly unvaccinated fellow students… the risk of exposure increases exponentially,” she said.
Peters-Hill was one of several other LSU faculty members who spoke in front of the LSU Board during a regularly scheduled meeting, urging the Board to give professors the choice to opt into remote teaching if they choose to. But they didn’t get a satisfactory response — or, really, a response at all.
Neither the board nor William Tate — who was attending his first board meeting as LSU president — directly responded to the faculty members’ comments.
Parents send children to us and we owe them to keep them safe. We educate them, but you cannot educate them from the intensive care unit.
– Ravi Rau, LSU physics and astronomy professor
Meredith Feldman, a history professor, pointed out that LSU’s website has a statement that says “LSU continues to follow all CDC and state safety guidance, and will do everything possible to protect the health of our students, faculty and staff.”
“”This, ladies and gentlemen, is a lie,” she said.
LSU’s remote teaching policy, as of Friday, allows faculty teaching classes of 100 or more to opt in to an in-person/virtual hybrid teaching model where 50% of students are in the classroom each day “during peak infection periods.”
According to a letter from Interim Executive Vice President & Provost Matt Lee to the LSU faculty and staff, LSU’s Health and Medical Advisory Committee has determined that “We are currently in a ‘peak infection period.”
When asked whether LSU would consider extending the opt-in option to every faculty member on campus, Ernie Ballard, a spokesperson for LSU, said the university’s current remote teaching policy “are the latest plans for the fall semester at this time.”
Ravi Rau, a physics and astronomy professor at LSU, told the Board “you are supervisors, and to the students, faculty and staff that you supervise — you owe a debt for their safety.”
“Parents send children to us and we owe them to keep them safe,” he said. “We educate them, but you cannot educate them from the intensive care unit, let alone in the ground.”
William Tate, in his first Board of Supervisors meeting as LSU president, said the university will mandate vaccines for all enrolled students once the vaccine gets full FDA approval. The vaccines have now been granted emergency use authorization.
The LSU board has already sent a request to the Louisiana Department of Health asking permission to add the COVID-19 vaccine to their list of required immunizations once final approval is granted. The FDA may grant final approval to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine by early September, according to a New York Times report.
As of Friday, 11,771 of the 34,290 students — or 34 percent — at LSU are vaccinated for COVID-19. About 16,000 of the 39,000 total students, faculty and staff are vaccinated, according to the LSU COVID-19 dashboard.
Bob Mann, a journalism professor and frequent critic of the university on social media, said in a phone call Friday afternoon that he believes the LSU faculty’s comments at the board meeting showed the Board and Tate that “they don’t have the confidence of the faculty — I expect that was made very clear to them.”
Mann said other students he’s spoken to have also said they “don’t believe that the university has their health and well being as a priority.”
As for the LSU community losing confidence in those running the university, Mann said, “Now that may not matter to them because what may be the most important thing to them is getting (seats filled for football games) and making sure that all the checks for the bills clear the bank.”
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'You can't educate from the intensive care unit,' LSU prof tells board - Louisiana Illuminator
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