The following report is from a Belmont University faculty member who has requested anonymity.
Last academic year, Belmont University did as much as possible to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, and it pretty much worked. This year, we have a new president who has thrown out all precautions except one: wearing masks indoors is mandated but rarely enforced, and social distancing is not required. Universities in Nashville are taking remarkably different approaches, similar to what’s happening in K-12 schools and other institutions, primarily in Republican-governed states. Teaching has become a scary proposition — I feel my health and that of my students, colleagues and the greater Nashville community is at risk due to our lack of mitigating efforts.
In fact, as part of our official published COVID protocols, Belmont asks our students to have a plan if they get COVID-19, as the campus is at full capacity this year and there is not a plan for quarantining on campus. The official notice states that students can: 1) stay with friends or family in Nashville, which is a big ask for someone with COVID-19; 2) get a hotel room, which is pricey and could cause further spread among others in the hotel; or 3) get an Airbnb, the only truly safe option for not spreading the disease further in the community, but also pricey. All options were to be considered prior to the start of the semester with students’ parents, and to be paid for on their own dime.
Apparently, some assistance by Student Concerns has been provided, but was not included as an option for help as part of the official verbiage.
Numbers of new cases in Tennessee continue to outpace the rest of the country. Vanderbilt University mandated vaccines and stands at almost 96 percent vaccinated. Between Aug. 29 and Sept. 4, they reported 123 new cases, and 83 between Sept. 5 and 12. Vanderbilt is reporting a 0.89 percent positivity rate for the unvaccinated population and 0.4 percent for the vaccinated, with a campus student population of roughly 13,000 — the lowest percentages since the beginning of the semester. However, Belmont does not require any testing of the unvaccinated except on a volunteer basis and does not mandate the vaccine, standing at shy of 67 percent vaccinated for students and less than 74 percent vaccinated among faculty and staff as of Sept. 12. Our case numbers seem low, but nonetheless have been growing on a curve that indicates consistently more cases each week. Both schools report cases once a week.
Somehow, Belmont reported only 53 new cases (including one faculty member) in the report for the week ending Sept. 12. This number seems unrealistic since they only report cases tested on campus or confirmed by their staff, without required reporting of positive tests by students or faculty, or testing on campus randomly or regularly. In my course with the fewest vaccinated students per the Symptom Tracker, I have an 8 percent confirmed positivity rate since classes began. If that were true for our roughly 8,700 students, then hundreds of students would be infected. By comparison, based on having only an indoor mask mandate like Belmont, both TTU and MTSU report hundreds of cases since the semester began five weeks ago (four weeks ago for Belmont). New data was released Monday indicating that numbers are down at Belmont, with only 30 new cases for the week ending Sept. 19. We cannot know the truth about these figures; as stated in Tuesday’s New York Times article about rapid testing, it is impossible to know without regular rapid testing.
An informal tally including my students and those my colleagues have had in their courses would indicate that the official campus reporting is quite low. Professors are not permitted to ask students their vaccine status, or if they are COVID positive, but we can see their Symptom Tracker to know if they are asymptomatic and/or if they have uploaded their vaccine card.
But upper administration is pushing a message of hope and fun, fully back to in-person events, indoors and outdoors. Mask violations abound, many seem flippant about the risks, and social distancing is absent in classrooms and on the lawn. While masks are required indoors, many events feature food, necessitating the frequent removal of masks. After the recent ribbon-cutting ceremony for the school’s new performing arts center, people mingled indoors unmasked in defiance of Belmont’s mandate, including our new president. If our leadership isn’t going to model the appropriate behavior and abide by the one rule, is it any surprise that mask violations abound, or that students and faculty are getting sick?
I have a doctorate. I have family and friends who are physicians and health care workers who have been on the front lines taking care of COVID patients, and they are exhausted. I believe in science as the only approach in a pandemic. Vanderbilt leads the way for being as safe as possible for in-person learning in our community. Belmont does not, but instead acts as though our campus has a special dispensation from God. We are in the process of building a new medical school, and so we must also lead with science. Belmont is nowhere near following the required CDC guidelines in a high-risk area. The university is holding a campus vaccine drive this week, which is a step in the right direction. But if this clinic is not combined with better messaging about social distancing and correct mask use, numbers will continue to grow on campus.
Faculty members are scared and angry — I'm writing this anonymously because I don't know how senior leadership will react to the criticism. I have written weekly pleas to the head of my department, who has advocated for our faculty, but our upper administration has chosen to ignore us and to follow the path of Tennessee's governor, simply hoping the virus goes away. Tennessee has ranked among the highest in the nation for positivity rates and cases per capita for more than two weeks running. We're scared because Belmont has chosen this time to pack us back into classrooms at full capacity with no mandate to socially distance. We're angry because instead of mandating that students and staff get vaccinated just like they do for MMR, hepatitis B, varicella/chicken pox, tetanus and meningitis (and get TB skin tests), Belmont decided that inoculating against a rabidly contagious virus is a matter of personal choice. I am terrified that our unvaccinated students, faculty and staff will end up sick or much worse.
But mostly, we just don't know where else to turn for help.
