now—after i have done nothing other than report on what i saw in a tarrant county courtroom—i have become the target of harassment. tarrant county commissioner manny ramirez and tarrant county judge tim o'hare have publicly called for me to be fired from my job.
“Until now, the police agencies involved in the operation have released few records detailing what happened that day, but have claimed that officers shot Paez Terán in self-defense.”
This is backlash against those of us speaking up against F2F fall and cover for universities to force us onto campus. You know, in addition to be grossly cruel and racist.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that many of us teach sensitive material while contingent faculty (no protections), setting aside the enormous violation of student privacy, if we are going to record every class... why not just offer them online?
fun fact: west paces ferry (a very very wealthy enclave west of buckhead) has their own water system so they never have to deal with what the rest of the city deals with
BREAKING: Most of Atlanta has no access to water right now. The mayor + city council are sending over $110Mil to build Cop City and the areas surrounding it cannot even pour themselves a glass of water in the middle of a Georgia summer. This is the epitome of a police state.
this from
@DocDre
, shared by a friend, laid me out. it is not only completely accurate about gt, it also describes the rooms full of business students i teach since leaving gt
I'm in possession of a powerpoint that was given to chairs yesterday. Let's break it down. The second bullet point is already a huge red flag: all classrooms will now be equipped with cameras and microphones to record us teaching. Faculty had no say in this. It's cop shit.
RIGHT NOW: On a tour of the public safety training center site. We’ll have a breakdown of the site on
@ATLNewsFirst
at 6pm, but I’ll post some notes as we go…
The final bullet points of that previous slide even acknowledge the potential risk of coming back to campus: Tech knows that we might have to go back online at any moment. Their solution is to make us all complete unpaid training and "be ready." The labor outlay is huge.
The hybrid models listed above assume that all students enrolled will be able to make it to campus and into the classroom. It completely ignores disabled and high-risk students who cannot safely be in the classroom. What are we supposed to do for them?
We know–years and years of online teaching work and analysis has shown–that the labor outlay for online teaching is front-loaded and takes a huge amount of time. Tech is setting us up to fail, and completely disregarding our time.
Suddenly we are back to "over 65 or high-risk." Absolutely no mention of caretakers and family members of high-risk people. No mention of the fact that COVID can kill anyone, no matter their risk status. (And a nice typo towards the bottom there.)
tenure-track professor is forced to resign after becoming target of gamergate-style harassment campaign, to which his university caved. this should horrify all of us working in higher ed
If they truly cared about "maximizing student learning" they would address the things I've mentioned in this thread. Face-to-face DOES NOT equal better teaching. And it cannot during a pandemic that is killing people all around.
apologies for the friday night news drop, but now that it's officially official i can tell you, the internet, that i just accepted a full-time job as teaching faculty at tcu!
doot doot im moving to texas :)
They prefer "residential spread" for things like small discussion classes. I simply do not see how a small discussion class can function when everyone is sitting 6 feet away from each other, struggling to be heard.
Tech has given us five possibilities for how we'll teach in the fall. The semester begins 7 weeks from now, and none of us know what "mode" we will be assigned. Even those of us who thought we knew are being told that it could change last minute.
How can they guarantee that we'll secure a remote accommodation? By demanding that we provide proof of our conditions. Again, massive data collection on faculty health and well-being, violation of our privacy, potential to be weaponized against us (especially the contingent).
good morning! yesterday, while i was watching the state try (and ultimately fail) to convict an antifascist of a crime outside a drag show in 2023, kelly neidert and carlos turcios launched a targeted harassment campaign against me. this is interesting given what i saw in court
Remote teaching is listed last, because we are now told that a very small number of circumstances will qualify for accommodation. These slides explain. First, massive data collection on faculty and their health (spreadsheets). That's troubling.
"Mode assignments" won't be finalized until mid-July (they think), giving us 4 weeks to prepare syllabi that will look wildly different based on what we are assigned. For those who do get to teach remote, 4 weeks is not enough time to prepare materials.
My focus in this thread was faculty perspective, but I am also outraged that students are expected to be on the hook for thousands of dollars in housing fees without knowing how their classes will be delivered.
Addendum 3: I have also not touched on staff perspective here.
@GeorgiaTech
has already had a staff member die from COVID. They should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.
CALL TO ACTION: I have created a small document detailing the current situation and what you can do to help. You can find it here. Your international students need you NOW!
So, let's see who will be considered for remote teaching accommodation. Keep in mind that, as of YESTERDAY, we thought that any request for accommodation would be approved by our bosses, no matter the condition. Like I said, many of us already had approved accommodations.
So that's all the info we have right now from
@GeorgiaTech
, and in fact, I have more info than most because I acquired this powerpoint. And to conclude, I will leave this story, about how many colleges with students on campus have COVID outbreaks:
Finally, the powerpoint says that denied requests can be appealed. But there is no information on how to file an appeal, what the decision process will look like, nor how long it will take. Again, we will have FOUR WEEKS to do this before the semester begins.
So, if we are denied, we will have to design a course for a particular mode and appeal and hope the appeal is successful and also design the course we could teach in our desired mode and wait around for we don't know how long until we are told which we get to do.
addendum: i apologize for the slide images in this thread being inaccessible for screen readers. i'm happy to email the powerpoint to anyone who can't read the images i included here.
i am researching syllabi in critical race & ethnic studies for a project and it amazes me how instructors will say "we are going to unpack systems of domination and learn how to move towards social justice" and then be like "no laptops allowed in class. no late work accepted" :(
Good morning!! I am about to go to Georgia Tech to get my first dose of the vaccine! Will livetweet the experience in case any GT ppl are interested to know how it goes
"Digital platforms... are useless for socializing, and they are not helpful in creating loyalty and culture."
i'm actually not sure where to begin here. i just know that 1) this is the most boomer thing i've ever read; 2) "creating loyalty" is a fucking horrifying phrase
i get this feeling, but i want to offer some hope: forests are really good at recovering from disruption! weelaunee had already recovered from being a prison farm until the mid-90s 👇🏼
@RiviereTosh
@nonmodernist
I want to cry. Even if the plan doesn’t move forward (and I hope it won’t), the area has been destroyed. It would take decades for it to ever recover
addendum 2: I learned from this petition that
@GeorgiaTech
is not letting students cancel housing contracts based on course delivery modes, which again, we don’t know yet anyway
Mayor
@AndreForAtlanta
announced the creation of a new task force that will seek more community input and expert recommendations on plans for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center and the South River Forest. Learn more:
Weeks ago
@davidwaltbanks
& I got a tour of where
@defendATLforest
is occupying parts of land near the Atlanta Prison Farm ruins, trying to stop development of the Public Safety Training Center, or what some call "Cop City." Here's my report at
@guardian
:
most upvoted question in chat: "Cases are higher in Georgia now than they were in March when we went fully online. Please explain the rationale for this different course of action for the fall."
AHEM… it took ages to sort out the final title, but now i can announce that my first book—BEFORE FANFICTION: RECOVERING THE LITERARY HISTORY OF AMERICAN MEDIA FANDOM—will be published in fall 2023 🥳
the shooter and the cops could 100% believe that these murders weren't "motivated by race" and yet they would STILL be racist murders because of white supremacy, history of u.s. imperialism & anti-asian policies, AND ongoing complex relationship btwn asian women & sex work
tired: using “fanfiction” as a derogatory descriptor
wired: acknowledging the revolutionary, utopian, queer politics of fanfiction as a literary genre pioneered by women & gender non-conforming ppl attempting to write themselves from the margins to the center of our cultures