The University of Arizona is hoping to start offering more in-person classes next week. To prepare, a coalition of employees and students is promoting a resource page on how to report non-compliance of COVID-19 guidelines in work, study and residence areas.
The Coalition for Academic Justice at the University of Arizona has heard this information has been hard to find since it's scattered across the university’s website.
“What also has been happening is that there’s something on the UA website and then it disappears. It’s gone. And that has happened from you know the COVID data to the dashboard," said Carol Brochin, an associate professor and coalition official.
The coalition is hoping to make this information more accessible by creating a central location on its website. The webpage also has an online form for individuals who want to share a concern but remain anonymous.
So far, the university has limited in-person classes to only those that it deems essential, such as performing arts classes and those with lab sections. This week, UA announced it plans to allow classes of up to 30 students to meet in person as early as next week. This comes as the university is seeing improvement on its COVID-19 case numbers and positivity rates. Brochin doesn’t think it's a good idea.
“It’s concerning that the university is reporting what is happening on campus as if we exist in a bubble there, and so my biggest concern is about the way in which this impacts the community,” Brochin said.
The school has no recorded instances of transmission in a classroom or lab setting, said University President Robert Robbins in a Monday statement. In addition, he said the ZIP code around the university has a low R-naught number, which indicates the spread of the virus is slowing.
UA issued a statement:
We have been continually improving our COVID-19 dashboard to the point where we have given it a distinct webpage.
We Rate COVID Dashboards, a group formed at Yale Public Health, rated our dashboard a B+ and said it is the third best in the Pac-12.
Our main COVID-19 page provides more resources for reporting issues on our campus and on our surrounding neighborhoods than any other site.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to include a statement from the university.
