JESSICA MEDITZ
Editor in Chief
Despite not getting the week-long spring break that many desired, students are pleased with Fredonia’s decision to implement two mental health days for the most part.
“Honestly very surprised this actually happened,” one student wrote on The Leader’s Instagram post announcing the administration’s decision.
But faculty perspectives cannot be overlooked when it comes to this, as they are feeling just as burned out as students.
Faculty members brought this concern to the administration’s attention before the Spring Semester even started, according to Dr. Jeanette McVicker, professor of the English department.
“We all [Fredonia faculty] understood why spring break was canceled. We wanted to have that conversation and to build in logical breaks,” she said.
The administration, however, did not.
In fact, one professor of the communication department suggested that Fredonia consider university-wide mental health days throughout the semester. This request was denied.
The administration told her that if students needed breaks, she should work it into her class schedule — which is ultimately what many professors did.
McVicker followed suit, and actually referred to them as “mental health days” on her original drafts of her class schedules.
“Then, the provost [Kevin Kearns] said, ‘No, you can’t have mental health days.’ So I put them off as calling them mental health days and said ‘workshop day’ or ‘reading day,’” she said.
McVicker gives credit to students for using their voices by way of a petition, because the way this decision was made was “poor,” according to her.
The March 31 email from Kearns to the faculty regarding the mental health days was the first they’d heard about it since their initial discussions.
“It wasn’t at all consulted with faculty as far as I know, not even the senate executive committee… I think the process by which all of this happened could have been avoided.”
Other faculty members feel unheard, underappreciated and even demoralized, like Liz Lee, a professor of photography in the visual arts and new media department.
On an email group list called ProfTalk, Lee shared her thoughts with the entire campus faculty and staff: “Being told what to do and how to do it, how to teach… and now to change my schedule with no discussion, no consideration of what I do and how I deliver it… every day I wake up and wonder, ‘What’s next?’”
“If I did that to a student, a grade appeal would be imminent. The lack of consideration is, as I said, demoralizing,” she said.
“Where is the grade appeal on the administration?”
Lee believes that canceling classes “does nothing” for her students’ mental health.
She recently met with some of her advisees who asked her how this will set them back and how they’d be able to cram more work in when they can’t handle one more thing.
No other faculty members publicly responded to Lee’s comment, but a few privately messaged her and thanked her for expressing their “shared rage,” she said.
Although the pandemic has made everyone question and change the way they go about handling things, all signs point to the fact that Fredonia’s cabinet could have and should have handled this situation differently.