WEST LAFAYETTE – More than half of Purdue faculty, staff and graduate students reported they felt unsafe returning to campus with university plans to reopen in August for the fall 2020 semester during a coronavirus pandemic, based on a survey of more than 7,000 people released Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s definitely not a tiny minority,” Deb Nichols, chair of the faculty-led University Senate, said. “It’s the opposite.”
The survey, completed by 7,234 on campus by June 5, was done while a team of administrators, researchers and staff were putting the final touches on the university blueprint to return, dubbed the Protect Purdue Plan, which was released in full Friday.
But the survey questions went to faculty and staff after the broad strokes of Purdue’s reopening strategy – reconfigured dorm rooms, a new academic calendar meant to keep students from coming and going, grab-and-go approaches to campus dining halls, Plexiglas shields and mandatory masks to protect faculty in classrooms, among dozens of other safeguards – already had been approved by Purdue trustees.
And in space for open-ended comments on the survey, faculty and staff laid out questions primarily with details of the plan – including about how testing would be done; what sort of risks faculty and staff would have to take to resume with more than 40,000 students; the commitment among those students and others on campus to adhere to the Protect Purdue Pledge, a health protection honor code of sorts that President Mitch Daniels called a vital component; and other jitters about the return to campus for the first time since March.
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