Re: VPA's decision

I, personally, was happy and relieved to have the VPA confirm that we're going back to in-person teaching.

In Dr. Henry's directive to universities and colleges I was especially struck by the following points:

• With every variant, including the Omicron variant, transmission has been observed to occur in households and unstructured social settings. There is no evidence that moving to online post-secondary instruction will decrease such interactions, noting that students would spend fewer hours in structured settings, which have a lower risk for transmission.

• Since structured educational settings do not amplify transmission, a move to online instruction is not an effective means of reducing COVID-19 among students, faculty, and staff, or in the wider community.

• The previous move to online post-secondary education in 2020 and 2021 was associated with significant negative consequences for post-secondary students, who reported significantly poorer and worsening mental health and greater negative economic impacts than other British Columbians.

• The recommendations of public health and Orders of the Provincial Health Officer are based on careful and ongoing assessment of the factors that increase risk and the interventions that are known to effectively reduce risk.

Nicky Didicher

English

Thanks, Craig, for clarifying the context.

Now, we can see that by channelling our Radical Campus spirit, SFU has created a major opportunity for public health researchers to identify the impacts and outcomes of in person learning versus remote learning during a pandemic surge.

UBC will remain the control case, while SFU faculty and students will become the treatment group in this population level experiment in learning how to live with Covid.

Anthony

On 2022-01-12 12:14 p.m., Craig Scratchley wrote:

I guess this is what James Fleming was referring to:

https://broadcastemail.ubc.ca/2022/01/12/covid-19-update-on-winter-session-term-2/?utm_campaign=&utm_content=1642016386&utm_medium=sprout&utm_source=twitter

Craig

COVID-19 — Update on Winter Session, Term 2 | UBC Broadcast

broadcastemail.ubc.ca

If you are a manager of staff whose work is not computer-based, please print this email and display it in a common work area for them to review. To all our students, faculty and staff, we hope you had a restful holiday and a happy New Year. As we enter 2022, we know the Omicron […]

From: James Fleming <james_fleming@sfu.ca>
Sent: January 12, 2022 12:03:28 PM
To: academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: SFU Faculty Association
Subject: VPA's decision

In light of the recent communiqué from SFUFA--and breaking news from UBC--I just want to say that I for one applaud SFU's decision to return to in-person teaching, as planned, on January 24th. Cheers! JD Fleming, English

-- 
Anthony Perl
Professor and Director of Urban Studies 
Professor of Political Science
Simon Fraser University
#2111 - 515 West Hastings Street
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Tel: 778-782-7887
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e-mail: aperl@sfu.ca

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and Tsawwassen peoples on whose unceded traditional 
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