On Monday, the University Senate voted to reject a resolution which called for the creation of a committee to evaluate various practices and policies for managing COVID-19 in classrooms.
“I believe (the resolution) now represents the best possible compromise for our campus to move forward and find agreement on the concerns that many of us have … about the safety of our classrooms,” said Bruce Rosenstock, LAS professor and faculty senator who sponsored the resolution.
Throughout this semester, University faculty members and graduate employees expressed concern about the University’s handling of COVID-19 as it relates to in-person classes.
One such concern is contact tracing and exposure notification in classrooms, which are handled solely by the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District.
Rosenstock’s resolution calls on the University to form a committee “including relevant stakeholders across campus to review current practices and protocols related to data collection and dissemination with respect to contact tracing in the classroom and related educational contexts”.
The resolution also asked the committee to review guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on “policies and procedures to support expedited determination of risk of exposure and close contacts” for higher education institutions.
This has led some to believe the University should form its own ‘in-house’ contact tracing team as is the case with the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Rosenstock’s resolution noted that UIC’s “indigenous” contact tracing team, organized under its School of Public Health, “performs all contact tracing for students, staff and faculty , with the exception of the UIC hospital system which conducts its own contact tracing.”
The resolution noted that the UIC recommends that its instructors keep records of class seating information to facilitate contact tracing, with reference to a August 27 announcement by UIC Marshal Javier Reyes to UIC instructors.
Additionally, Rosenstock noted that since instructors are not notified when a student in their class tests positive for COVID-19 under current University policies, instructors may be unaware of potential classroom exposure.
“I think it is detrimental to the sense of well-being of our instructors and that of their students to have rumors that a student has tested positive in their class and not be at all aware of possible follow-ups. that there may have been CUPHD,” Rosenstock said during a Senate executive committee meeting last week.
Helga Varden, a professor at LAS and a member of the Senate’s executive committee, believes a split is developing among instructors over “whether or not they feel they have the necessary knowledge” about COVID-19 in their courses.
“I think before the next semester it would be great if we had a committee with a role that would be productive…that could take hold of this possible source of conflict at the moment and resolve it by bringing the voices together and making it felt to professors that they may be involved,” Varden said at the SEC meeting last week. “There are complaints at the moment and there is a bit of a division growing and we would like to get rid of that.”
In response to calls to form its own contact tracing team, the University argued that the CUPHD is legally mandated to lead contact tracing efforts in the Champaign area and that the University does not have the authority to carry out the contact tracing itself.
“We are structured differently and operationally from the UIC when it comes to this issue. We don’t have the authority to do what is recommended,” Chancellor Robert Jones said at the SEC meeting. “It’s clearly in the hands of the CUPHD.”
Jones noted that the composition and mobility of UIC students is different from that of University students.
“These people (at UIC) mostly go back and forth to communities every day. They come to campus, they leave, and for the most part return to their communities,” Jones said.
According to Dr. Awais Vaid, Deputy Administrator and Epidemiologist at CUPHD, the reason UIC is able to legally perform contact tracing is that they have an agreement with local health authorities that allows them to do so.
“The example of UIC doing contact tracing is because they have an agreement with the City of Chicago and the Illinois Department of Public Health to serve as an agent to do contact tracing. “, said Vaid during the Senate meeting. “Contact tracing does not start and end in a classroom.”
Vaid also said that “95% of close contacts are already vaccinated, so they are not considered close contacts.”
“If you are fully vaccinated, you are not considered a close contact – you do not have to self-quarantine. If you were positive in the last 90 days, you do not have to self-isolate or quarantine you and you are not considered a close contact,” Vaid said. “Those are the things that are important.
Rosenstock asserts that this is incorrect, stating that the The CDC’s definition of close contact includes fully vaccinated people and that the CDC recommends vaccinated people “get tested 3-5 days after having close contact with someone who has COVID-19.”
“Every vaccinated student who is a close contact should be tested within 3-5 days of contact,” Rosenstock said in an email. “They don’t get the proper warning.”
Additionally, at last week’s SEC meeting, Rosenstock said that if university records were needed for contact tracing, CUPHD should rely on McKinley Health Center’s infection prevention team in due to FERPA restrictions.
During contact tracing, Vaid said the CUPHD asks students for information about their classes, noting that most students are adults and “have information about their own health, the people they meet and with whom they socialize”.
Vaid said if the CUPHD needed further assistance with contact tracing, he would contact the University and has done so four times in the past.
“Depending on the response we get (from the person who tested positive), additional questions may be asked; further assistance can be requested through McKinley,” Vaid said during the Senate meeting. “But if we don’t feel the need to include McKinley, we won’t include them.”
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