UP TO YOU: Safe return depends on critical thinking, personal responsibility

Students, faculty and staff at UTRGV are returning to campus for the Fall 2021 semester without social distancing guidelines or a mask mandate, but with encouragement of personal responsibility.

“When school starts on Aug. 23, we will no longer be enforcing social distancing or capacity limits,” said Patrick Gonzales, associate vice president for Marketing and Communications at UTRGV. “Based on medical guidance, we ask students that, in order to safely do that, that they continue wearing masks and that they get vaccinated.

“At UTRGV, the current split of course offerings is 60% are going to be traditional face-to-face or hybrid, which is a combination of face-to-face and online,” he said. “The remaining 40% are going to be completely online.”

In an email sent to the UTRGV community Aug. 13, Janna Arney, UTRGV deputy president and interim provost, wrote that the university encourages flexibility in its traditional and hybrid courses for the Fall 2021 semester.

“Like you, we have been anticipating the Fall 2021 Semester for many months,” Arney wrote in the email. “However, the rise of the delta variant statewide and in our region is a reminder that this pandemic is not over. And while the resurgence of COVID-19 seemingly threatens our progress, please know that we continue to monitor the situation daily and that we’ve been preparing for this.”

The email also states that professors may choose to use a mix of online and face-to-face classes if their course is currently listed in the traditional face-to-face modality.

“If you choose to offer your classes in a hybrid modality, you can offer up to 84% of the class meetings online, with the remaining 16% offered in a face-to-face format,” she wrote. “This provides you the flexibility to determine when it will be necessary for students to be on campus based on individual course requirements and needs.”

The university has spent the last eight months preparing for a return to campus by collecting information about the community’s vaccination status through the UTRGV Vaccine Portal, which temporarily included a $100 incentive for those who completed a profile.

“There’s no talks of an incentive right now but we are constantly reminding those people who we haven’t heard from to fill out the portal,” Gonzales said. “I think right now, we are at a point that we’ve probably reached everybody we could with the incentive and so, now, we’re just going to continue reminding people. But we’ll continue to monitor it and if we don’t see the numbers going up, maybe we’ll do another incentive as well.”

He said the portal is only for overall data and not to identify specific faculty, staff or students by vaccination status.

“We are not using this to identify individual employees or students that have been vaccinated and unvaccinated,” Gonzales said. “The governor’s office have made it clear that we cannot use vaccination status as a way to deny or allow people to do things.”

He said faculty and staff are allowed to work on campus regardless of vaccination status. However, in regard to Gov. Greg Abbott’s Executive Order 38, signed July 29, faculty cannot ask students’ vaccination status. It is currently unknown if a student can ask their professor whether they have been vaccinated.

“That question has been asked, a lot,” he said. “Vice versa, can students ask, can faculty ask, and we are looking for more guidance on that from some of our state partners–[University of Texas System], the governor’s office–because we are still unclear with that.”

Asked if students are allowed to change classes if they are uncomfortable around an unvaccinated professor, Gonzales replied that if the class is available, the university will make those types of accommodations.

“We have a whole office that’s dedicated to disabilities and making accommodations for students who are uncomfortable for one reason or another,” he said. “But, here’s another thing that I’d like to share: Despite the vaccination status of a professor, or a student, what we’re letting individuals know who come back to campus is that there are ways that you yourself can protect yourself from exposure by wearing a mask and by getting vaccinated.”

If students, faculty or staff members suspect they have contracted COVID-19 or may have been exposed to the virus, Gonzales said there are specific guidelines each individual must follow, and a plan of action will be decided by the university’s COVID Response Team.

“So, since there are so many scenarios, what we want students and faculty to do if you think you have COVID, if you have symptoms, if you’ve been exposed to someone who is positive, is to fill out the preliminary COVID-19 screening form, which will be sent to our COVID Response Team and they will walk you through your specific scenario,” he said.

Asked what happens if a professor conducting in-person classes tests positive for COVID-19, Gonzales reiterated that a plan of action will be decided by the COVID Response Team based on that professor’s specific situation.

“Just like we’ve had the past year, we will have sanitation stations, we’ll have wipes in all the high-traffic areas in the buildings,” he said. “We have made changes to our HVAC systems, the air-conditioning units where needed, and we’ll just continue to message the importance of wearing a mask, the importance of getting everyone to take part in all the daily screening questions before you even come to campus.” 

Gonzales also said that the university is monitoring COVID cases closely with and gaining medical guidance from local, state, and federal medical officials.

“The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has come out with updated guidance that said even vaccinated people should wear their mask inside a building or indoors and we are strongly encouraging that as well,” he said. “We did a great job doing it last year or in the past year when it was mandated from the state and it helped keep us healthy and it helped mitigate our COVID positives, so let’s do it again.

“Let’s do it again, especially during this time when the delta variant is surging, and cases are going up. We strongly encourage, we can’t require, but we strongly encourage everyone to continue wearing masks. Not only to keep you safe but to keep others around you safe.”

Dr. Michael Dobbs, UT Health RGV chief medical officer, said that although the medical scientific community is not sure whether the delta variant causes more severe disease, they know it’s more contagious and being vaccinated is a “wonderful” defense against COVID-19.

“A very nice thing is that the vaccine protects you from severe disease including with Delta, and so if you get the disease with the delta variant and you’ve been vaccinated, it’s unlikely that you would need hospitalization or die from COVID,”  Dobbs said. “It’s more likely that you would have a minor illness.”

According to the chief medical officer, the virus is not likely to mutate into something so completely foreign that the vaccine will not have an effect on it and, with the substantial advancements in vaccine science over the last couple of years, he believes the medical science community is better prepared to create boosters that can possibly be more specific to COVID-19 variants, such as the delta variant.

Dobbs advises students returning to campus in the fall to get vaccinated.

“I would urge people to take personal responsibility and encourage them to wear a mask in social settings, that includes the classroom, that provides some additional protection,” he said. “Certainly, don’t panic. Use common sense and I think people will do really well with that approach.”

Dobbs also said that, although there are obviously things about the future scientists can only predict, the university always has to prepare if things get worse to rethink strategies.

“We’re always ready to rethink critically,” he said, referring to UTRGV. “Which is what a university does, right? Teach critical thinking.”

Paulina Arteaga, a biomedical sciences major beginning her junior year this fall at UTRGV, said most of her classes are in-person or hybrid and she is excited to return to campus.

“I feel very excited because, in the pandemic, we didn’t really have hands-on experience and, in my career, it’s really important,” Arteaga said. “So, learning from a computer is not really the same as here on campus, so I’m kind of excited to come back.” 

She said she is not as concerned about the vaccination status of her professors as she is about that of her peers.

“You are not as close to the professors as you are to your classmates, so I feel like it’s a bit more comforting to me but, just in case, I would wear my face mask myself,” Arteaga said. “Not because it’s a mandate or anything but just to make me feel safe.”