It’s not just about science. Cal Poly has a moral duty to do the right thing during pandemic
I’ll leave it to health experts to break down the scientific shortcomings of the Cal Poly plan to reopen and invite students back to San Luis Obispo this fall. I want to focus on Cal Poly’s moral failure in choosing to bring students back to SLO. I emphasize that I am not blaming students for this predicament. The primary responsibility lies squarely with Cal Poly administration.
Science is morally neutral. Let me explain. If you want to do good, you can use science to accomplish this. Take, for example, the invention of the polio vaccine, which saved lives and reduced suffering. Science can also be used for evil or destruction, where we invent such devices as atomic weapons that could literally destroy all life on the planet. The point is that it’s moral values in combination with science that will lead us to humane solutions to complex problems. Saying “the science is sound” is incomplete. It’s moral values that guide how scientific evidence is used.
Let’s consider the entire education system from kindergarten to college. The youngest in our education system are the students who need in-person instruction the most. Consider for a moment the difference between a first-year college student and a student just starting kindergarten. It is absolutely obvious that the college student is more equipped to handle independent, virtual learning during a global pandemic and humanitarian crisis.
Our society has, in effect, an “in-person budget,” which means we can only have a limited amount of person-to-person contact across all sectors of society in order to control the pandemic. In this context, bringing college students back to SLO will make it harder for local K-12 school districts to reopen.
As the authors of the recent Tribune Viewpoint, “Cal Poly’s reopening is grounded in science,” state, they expect outbreaks, but they do not address the real-world outcomes.
One outcome of outbreaks is that young children will not be able to go to school any time soon. Consequently, we are in effect spending our “in-person budget” on the wrong end of the education spectrum. We are literally taking education away from elementary school children so we can fill our dorms and run a few dozen labs.
Cal Poly has some of the best and brightest students in the country. Our students are highly creative and capable of learning in a variety of formats, including virtually. I have seen this myself with my own students, and they inspire me each and every day. I know they can do virtual learning and will adapt and overcome, no matter what challenges are placed in front of them.
It pains me to see our administrators show such little faith in our students’ abilities to step up, meet this moment, and do the right thing. They are not weak and frail, unwilling to listen to sound advice. They are strong and smart. They can rise to any challenge we ask of them, if we communicate to them with clarity and honesty.
It pains me further to see such lack of regard for our community, for frontline workers and for the thousands of children in SLO County who will not be able to return to school should we see more outbreaks. It horrifies me to think of the implicit lessons we are teaching our college-age students, to disregard morality, to downplay risk and think only of ourselves without consideration for others.
A key driver of this conundrum is money. Colleges across the country have been put in a tough spot, where economic interests are directly at odds with public health. The perverse economic incentive to open dorms and bring students back is essentially trading health and lives for money. An obvious solution to this would have been to bail out colleges and universities to protect all of us. This might save money in the long run, with fewer people in hospitals and out of work.
Since the bailout did not happen, we are left with individual institutions fending for themselves. I fully understand that this leaves us with a set of bad choices. But among these choices is a range from bad to horrible. Bad economics or horrible effects on the health and lives of the community. This is where moral values come in and where science and data can no longer illuminate the path forward.
This pandemic is one of the greatest challenges we have seen in 100 years. Remember, Cal Poly students are the same age as members of the Greatest Generation who fought and in some cases died for us on World War II battlefields. The members of the Greatest Generation didn’t want to be on the battlefield. That generation would easily have preferred life to be normal, but that was not what history offered them.
Today, we must likewise meet this moment with moral clarity and purpose, and do what is right not just for Cal Poly but also for the entire community. It is not too late. Students can still go home before there is an outbreak, and we can still refocus our priorities on the youngest and neediest in our community. The opportunity to take the moral high road is still possible, and I urge President Armstrong and his cabinet to do the right thing.
Stan Yoshinobu is a professor of mathematics, specializing in inquiry-based learning and professional development in higher education and mathematics education. Originally from Los Angeles, Stan Yoshinobu earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA, and lives in San Luis Obispo with his wife and two children, where they enjoy hiking, music, photography and rooting for the LA Dodgers.