… Cody Mullins Luedtke took courageous step
Sometimes, people must make decisions that they believe are morally and ethically correct — but ones that damage them in some respects.
That is the case with Cody Mullins Luedtke, who was a lab instructor at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
This choice hurt her financially — and perhaps professionally — but it made a great deal for her self-respect.
The decision
I know where Georgia State University is because I am now tutoring a student from that school. Here is what happened at that state school,
Cody Mullins Luedtke couldn’t help but think about the chain reaction.
The laboratory coordinator at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College was slated to teach a botany and an introductory-biology lab course, both in person, this fall. As the semester neared, worry set in, quickly. The more-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus was ravaging the state, crowding hospitals with new patients. Georgia’s vaccination rate lagged behind the national average. Gov. Brian P. Kemp is against Covid-19-related mandates and has banned state entities, including colleges, from requiring proof of vaccination.
And instructors, Luedtke learned, would not be able to require masks in the classroom. The University System of Georgia, which oversees 26 public colleges, including Georgia State University, which encompasses the two-year Perimeter College, has “encouraged” everyone to wear face coverings inside campus facilities but stopped short of a mandate. Following the system policy, instructors at Perimeter are allowed to ask students to wear masks, so long as “you respect their decision and impose no consequences for not doing so.”
All considered, Luedtke thought it was likely that there’d be transmission of the virus in her classrooms.
Emma Pettit, “She Wouldn’t Teach Without Being Able to Require Masks. So She
Was Fired,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 25, 2021
Doing the right thing
Those who casually rant and rave against masks and vaccinations — and then who ten die because of their refusal — must have an interesting conversation as they try to convince God that they belong in heaven.
Good luck with that.
However, those who think about the people with whom they work and who may contract the coronavirus are doing the right thing. God will likely have no problem admitting them to his kingdom,
So, when this instructor made that decision, she was thinking of those who could be vulnerable to the disease,
[Luedtke] thought about her students, many of whom, she said, belong to minority groups — groups that are more likely than white people to be hospitalized and die from Covid-19. Some of her students live with their families. She imagined her students getting sick, or taking the potentially deadly virus home to their loved ones. She imagined the unknown spread.
She decided she couldn’t bear that. She informed the college that, without the ability to require masks, she would not teach in person. Days later, she was fired.
Like Luedtke, others who are teaching in the classroom in Georgia are facing similar moral choices. Two University of North Georgia lecturers have resigned over concerns about in-person teaching, The Times of Gainesville reported. As Covid-19 cases climb, faculty members have implored the university system to require masks, but it hasn’t budged, said Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at North Georgia and president of the Georgia Conference of the American Association of University Professors.
Boedy said he’s heard from faculty parents and professors who have immunocompromised spouses, or relatives with cancer, all of whom don’t want to bring the virus home to their families. They feel they’re faced with a difficult choice of what to prioritize: employment or safety.
Emma Pettit, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 25, 2021
Hard decision: “She began to weep”
When people take courageous decisions, they are often hurt in many ways. Luedtke certain has been,
For Luedtke, the decision was not an easy one. Last year, when she taught on campus, masks were required, and there were fewer students in classrooms. Though she was “very uncomfortable the whole time,” she said, the mandate made the environment feel safe enough to get through it.
But this time around, classes are full. Masks are only recommended. Just 41.9 percent of Georgia residents between ages 20 and 24 have received at least one dose of the vaccine. On August 16, a week before the first day of the semester, Luedtke sat in her office to prepare. Instead, she began to weep. “I knew I couldn’t do it,” she said. She sent a letter via email to department leaders, saying that she could not “be complicit in the USG’s reckless policy decisions” and that she respectfully refused to teach “in a classroom in which I cannot create a safe environment for my students.”
Luedtke went back and forth over email with her interim chair and a human-resources officer. She was first given the option to resign, which she declined to do. She was still able to perform her duties, she wrote. She could complete her lab-coordination tasks without accommodation, and was willing to teach online or in person if masks could be required.
But Luedtke was required to teach in the assigned mode — in person. Courses “must be held as identified on the schedule,” university Covid-19 guidance for faculty says. She was terminated, effective August 21. She was fired “for refusal to work,” said Andrea Anne Jones, a university spokesperson, in an email.
Emma Pettit, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 25, 2021
I “could not live with myself”
Quite simply, as much as it hurts, especially financially, she is at peace with her decision,
“I’m vaccinated. I think I will probably survive Covid if I get it. And I was prepared to wear a mask,” she said. “But it’s really for my students that I’m concerned, especially the unvaccinated ones.”
Ultimately, if she hadn’t made that choice, “I just personally, morally, could not live with myself.”
Emma Pettit, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 25, 2021
Give kudos to her for making such a decision.
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