Announcements

A comprehensive archive of previous chapter statements.

USC-AAUP stands strongly behind instructors mandating masking in their classrooms to accommodate health needs, September 2023

Sarah Van Orman, USC’s Chief Campus Health Officer, recently wrote the campus community to acknowledge a rise in COVID-19 cases and to encourage members of the campus community to “choose to wear a mask based on your preference and personal risk.”[1]

USC-AAUP reminds the campus community that masking in classrooms is more complex than personal choices made by individuals. (For this reason, university policy requires that people with known COVID-19 exposure wear a high-quality, tight-fitting mask for ten days.[2])

Keeping high-risk students and employees safely integrated into classrooms is both morally right and legally required per the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). The Eighth Circuit issued a ruling that allows schools to require classroom masking in order to protect students with disabilities that make them vulnerable to COVID-19.[3] Federal employment law also holds that a medically vulnerable employee has the right to request that co-workers mask in a workplace setting.[4] Thus, if anyone in a classroom is high-risk, they are entitled to ask for universal high-quality masking (KN95 or higher) as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. USC-AAUP recommends that students notify the Office of Student Accessibility Services and instructors notify the Office of Institutional Accessibility and ADA Compliance in writing of their accommodation requests; but USC-AAUP underscores that instructors can choose to honor these accommodation requests even if made only to the instructor.

USC-AAUP also reminds the campus community that there is no ethical or non-stigmatizing way to identify whether “medically vulnerable” people are in a given classroom (or whether those in a classroom live or are in close contact with medically vulnerable people); and thus USC-AAUP affirms its strong support for instructors to implement mask requirements in their classrooms if they so choose, whether or not they have received formal accommodation requests.

The grounds for this are simple:

-- USC has ended surveillance testing (and shifted from more sensitive and accurate PCR testing to much less accurate rapid antigen testing); COVID-19 levels were sharply higher in Los Angeles County in the past month+ (and higher than at any point since last winter); and we have not even hit the likely “winter surge” months yet [5, 6]

-- The World Health Organization recommends masking in crowded or enclosed spaces, and when infections are increasing in your community; high-quality masks (KN95 or higher) provide protection to both the wearer and those around them [7]

-- Classrooms, unlike some other spaces on our campus and in private life, are not fully elective spaces: enrolled students and instructors cannot opt out if their comfort level with safety precautions is at odds with the status quo

-- Instructors have the responsibility to offer classroom spaces that are accessible and where access is provided equitably

-- Instructors also have the responsibility to ensure that safety protocols are in place in instructional spaces

-- These are matters of academic freedom: freedom to teach in a manner that maximizes freedom to learn is the cornerstone of instructors’ compact with students and the academic community writ large

-- Instructors have the implied and stated right to adopt and modify classroom policies as a matter of course. Thus requiring masking in classrooms during in an ongoing pandemic is a matter of academic freedom that instructors have the freedom to implement, much like policies requiring safety goggles in a bench chemistry class, or any other classroom policy meant to provide fair and equitable access to learning.[8]

USC-AAUP also encourages instructors and students to keep in mind collective and cumulative effects of proliferating COVID-19: even people who were not initially “medically vulnerable” can acquire long-term health burden due to “Long Covid”; multiple COVID-19 infections carry multiplying risks; decisions made on USC’s campus affect our neighbors and campus community members’ family members; and even short-term illness has deleterious effects on goals for collaborative work and individual well-being on our campus.[9]

USC-AAUP stands strongly behind instructors mandating masking in their classrooms to accommodate health needs. Our pedagogy is hollow without commitment to collective safety.

A Call to Action for Pay Equity

The pandemic has revealed, in so many ways, the inequities in "business as usual"--and widened many of them. Over the past year, we have all struggled to adjust to an unprecedented situation, and the well-being of our campus community has been challenged.

We are taking this opportunity to initiate a series of ongoing conversations about equity on our campus, and we invite your participation in those conversations. At public universities, salary information is public. As a private university, we are all in the dark about compensation at individual and collective levels, besides our own, unless a trusted colleague happens to share.

Our campus AAUP chapter, comprised of faculty across schools, ranks, and titles, invites your participation in an anonymous survey about compensation at USC. We hope it will generate insight into pay inequity, compression and inversion, and serve as the basis for future conversations amongst faculty, and between faculty and administration. Sharing salary information is legal, and is common in other industries and workplaces.

*Survey link: https://tinyurl.com/abwhy6ht

We are your colleagues, with gratitude and in solidarity--

USC-AAUP

(*This is a Google survey and you must be signed into a Google account to respond. This is solely to limit "spam" answers. Your account information/identity beyond your survey answers are not stored.)

Our Continuing Campaign

USC Faculty Salary Increase vs Rate of Core Inflation (2017-2021)

917 signatures and counting!!

AAUP of USC’s Open Letter to the Administration
Re: Faculty Salaries and Cost of Living Adjustments

Dear colleagues,

You may have noticed that your paycheck doesn’t stretch quite as far as it used to.  There’s a reason for that — and it’s not you.  Rather, one simple fact: our “merit increases” have not kept up with inflation.

  • Our raise pools for the past two years were 0% and 2%, respectively.

  • The cost of living in Los Angeles — as compiled by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics — rose 1.5% and 6% respectively, for a cumulative total of 7.59%.

In short: in real dollars, you are making 5.56% less than you were two years ago.

Click the button below to read the rest of the letter.

USC-AAUP chapter statement on collective academic freedoms and masking in classroom spaces

As public health officials and institutional leaders debate whether to revive mask mandates in spaces where they have been allowed to expire, USC-AAUP affirms its strong support for instructors to implement mask requirements in their classrooms if they so choose.

The grounds for this are simple:

  • Classrooms, unlike some other spaces on our campus and in private life, are not fully elective spaces: enrolled students and instructors cannot opt out if their comfort level with safety precautions is at odds with the status quo

  • Instructors have the responsibility to offer classroom spaces that are accessible and where access is provided equitably

  • There is no ethical or non-stigmatizing way to identify whether “medically vulnerable” people are in a given classroom (or whether those in a classroom live or are in close contact with medically vulnerable people)

  • Instructors also have the responsibility to ensure that safety protocols are in place in instructional spaces

  • These are matters of academic freedom: freedom to teach in a manner that maximizes freedom to learn is the cornerstone of instructors’ compact with students and the academic community writ large

  • Instructors have the implied and stated right to adopt and modify classroom policies as a matter of course. Thus requiring masking in classrooms during a pandemic, let alone a “tripledemic” is a matter of academic freedom that instructors have the freedom to implement, much like policies requiring safety goggles in a bench chemistry class, or any other classroom policy meant to provide fair and equitable access to learning.

 

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/10/masks-tripledemic-covid-flu-rsv-us

Winter 2022-23 brings what some experts are calling a “tripledemic[1]”—the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic meets the worst flu season in over a decade meets high community levels of RSV.

Recognizing that members of our campus community (including but not limited to some of our students) have elevated risk profiles due to compromised immunity and other health factors, the USC chapter of AAUP calls for classroom masking policies that strongly protect the most vulnerable among us. Collective care dictates that even if masking is not required, per se, it remains the best way to protect both our community members and USC's neighbors in Los Angeles County. When we decide whether to mask in classroom spaces, we should prioritize the needs of students for whom masking would provide continued protection from disease, for themselves, or for family or community members with whom they are in close contact. We affirm our collective obligation to those who need continuing "community support," in the Provost's words, and recommend that masking policies in individual classrooms systematically pledge to uphold student and community safety.

Mindful that our community commitments and obligations extend beyond the classroom, USC-AAUP also affirms in the strongest possible terms its solidarity with university staff, who, like faculty and students, should also have the freedom to prioritize care and vigilance for themselves, their families, and their neighbors. This is in keeping with USC's commitment to a culture of "well-being."

The pandemic has reminded us that we are all interconnected, but it has also reinforced grave inequities. Therefore, it is most ethical and most responsible to ask our campus community to continue to remain accountable to those on and off campus who remain vulnerable, which for the time being means masking if anyone in a mandatory gathering (like a classroom) is uncomfortable with masks being removed. (My mask protects you, not only me: this reality is not reconcilable with individual preference.)

Being a world-class institution in the heart of a global metropolis, USC must prioritize and amplify the need of all human beings for care and safety. We urge members of our campus community to join us in exercising collective care. Anything less would be a failure of our social, intellectual, and ethical mission as one of the world's great centers of learning. We are all members of the Trojan Family.

In solidarity,

USC-AAUP Leadership on behalf of our chapter members

March 6, 2022 — Per the March 4 announcement by the Provost, the campus indoor masking requirement has been removed, yet "According to the County’s guidelines, although masking is no longer required indoors, it remains strongly recommended."

We understand that our academic responsibilities are primarily to meet the educational needs of our students, but we also recognize the necessity of protecting each other. The trust and freedom of collective inquiry that we enjoy in our classrooms is underwritten by a commitment to collective safety. Though local case and death rates have thankfully receded from the most recent surge of the pandemic, it remains essential to exercise collective care.

USC-AAUP Statement on Mask Policies
and Pandemic Collective Care

USC-AAUP Statement on Covid and the 2021/2022 Teaching Plans

USC-AAUP recognizes that the COVID-19 situation continues to develop and change, and that university administrators at USC and elsewhere have faced difficult decisions leading into the semester and may continue to face them when the semester begins. Having said that, we believe that crucial principles are at stake here, and that policy decisions must stem from those principles.

At USC, as a global institution with local, regional, national, and international responsibilities, the COVID-19 pandemic remains a powerful challenge to institutional functioning. Given this challenge, USC-AAUP remains concerned about the health and wellbeing of our students, staff, faculty, and community. Even vaccinated faculty are worried that they may carry infection to unvaccinated young children or frail elders in their homes or neighborhoods. What is more, residents of Greater Los Angeles carry a unique respiratory burden; vulnerability to respiratory disease is, for many, not an abstraction. USC names “well-being” as a campus value, and to be true to this value, USC must align campus policies with the realities of its constituents and surrounding community. 

While the pandemic continues to rage, health and safety must come before all other institutional concerns. Many faculty at USC and other universities are rightly concerned about university requirements that they must hold in-person classes during Fall 2021 term. We understand that our academic responsibilities are primarily to meet the educational needs of our students, but we also recognize the necessity of protecting each other in dangerous times: pedagogy is hollow without commitment to collective safety. Thus, the Executive Committee of the USC chapter of AAUP calls for the University to adopt a blanket policy permitting all faculty (including graduate student instructors and all categories of contingent faculty) to conduct some or all of their classes online, in person, or in a hybrid mode, as needed. Of course, if it becomes necessary for public health reasons to return to the prior academic year’s model of exclusively online teaching, we will endorse such a policy. USC-AAUP also affirms in the strongest possible terms its solidarity with university staff who can best determine whether their work should be conducted online, in person, or in a hybrid mode. 

USC Faculty Letter of Neutrality Regarding Graduate Student Workers

Dear President Folt, Provost Zukoski, and Senior Vice President Washington,

As USC faculty, we have become aware that graduate student workers are seeking to form a union and engage in collective bargaining. This is not without precedent at USC; there are several other unions operating on campus already. We respect the right of graduate student workers to make this decision without any interference from USC administration or supervisors. 

We care about our graduate student workers and our ability to support and mentor them in their development as scholars and researchers. Furthermore, we are proud of the world-renowned teaching and research we do together. We intend to remain neutral and will not attempt to interfere with grad students’ rights to choose freely whether to form a union, and we encourage our colleagues, and administration, to do the same.

See the signed letter here.

USC’s Tax Forms: 990s, 990Ts, and Audits

Feel free to spend time reading through USC’s tax forms from the previous years to get a broad sense of how their finances have been managed. If you find anything you’d like to discuss, reach out to us.