We’re Heading Back to the Office!?

𝘐𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢?

I've been thinking about work a lot lately. There are several reasons for this. One, there's a lot of people coming and going. I feel good about the people we're getting or who are taking over positions on an interim basis. I generally feel UWT hires folks who care about their work and understand the university's importance to students and to the larger community. Even so, it's hard to have so much transition when the world at-large seems to be changing every hour on the hour.

This brings me to my second concern. COVID cases are climbing again and we seem to be going full speed ahead when it comes to returning to campus. I know university leaders are monitoring the situation and they truly have a thankless task. My concern is probably one of communication. Decisions are being made, conversations are being had that most of us aren’t privy to. I can’t help fill this vacuum with questions. Is there a back-up plan? What happens if the case count becomes untenable and we have to return home or maybe we don’t make it back to campus because the situation escalates quickly?

So many people had to reorganize their lives on the fly when COVID first arrived on our shores. We're being asked to do so again, but many cannot simply undo their plans at the last-minute. There are kids' school schedules or childcare to consider. This latest wave seems to be driven by the unvaccinated. However, there are breakthrough cases, but those appear to be rare. Less than half (yikes) of students have completed their attestation. Among those that have, the vaccination rate is high, which is good. But what about all those students who have submitted or will submit exemptions? We will have no way of knowing if the person we're talking to is vaccinated. The risk can be minimized through masking and distancing but if this is the situation I have to wonder why we're on campus.

Here's where my tangents come together. The Delta variant is very, very contagious. Research seems to suggest that the unvaccinated can help spread Delta even if they're asymptomatic. This risk is still low but there's still a risk. Also, research suggests the vaccines provide protection for six months but we don't know yet if the protections last longer than that? Boosters? When? What if I come in contact with an unvaccinated person and bring it home to my kids who aren't eligible to be vaccinated? Delta is showing to be more of a threat to kids then the other variants, but kids still do better than unvaccinated adults in this regard. What if there's an outbreak of the unvaccinated on campus? I can easily picture a scenario where a public school moves to a hybrid model. A staff or faculty member has a kid in that school. Say a staff member isn't approved to work remotely (also, it's frustrating that this sort of decision is largely made on the unit level because some units are more flexible than others) what happens then? That staff member is going to have to figure out some kind of childcare arrangement.

There are a lot of moving parts at UWT. There are also a lot of moving parts in the world. Put these together and I, we, are living lives of constant flux. Despite this we seem to be operating with the idea that the path ahead is linear when recent history suggests it's a series of never-ending curves. Why? If feels like there are too many unknowns to feel confident about anything. Anyway, that's a lot and I don't know if I got to the heart of my concern. What do you think? How are you feeling?