September 21, 2020

The Washtenaw County Health Department’s Health for All Steering Committee is a group of sixteen people convened by the Health Department to collect information about health inequities and to help address structural harms in our community. We are a representative group from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We are People of Color and White Allies. We represent the LGBTQIA community, disabled community members, the homeless, the food insecure, and people managing mental illness. We are low-income citizens, formerly incarcerated citizens, immigrants who are denied language access, and refugees. In our group we have those who care for and treat those struggling with substance use, and we have community members recovering from substance use. We represent those whom healthcare systems and other institutions routinely ignore and mistreat.  We are here in support and defense of those communities, as we come from these very communities.

In short, we represent the communities most likely to be devastated by the University of Michigan’s decision to reopen campus. As a representative body for Washtenaw County’s most marginalized members, we strongly condemn the decision to reopen campus, and UM’s complete failure to listen to community voices and concerns around the reopening. 

The committee has been closely following the reopening process, and we have been shocked by the coercive and threatening way in which groups that have been advocating on the larger community’s behalf have been dealt with by UM. 

SOLIDARITY WITH GEO, RESIDENCE HALL STAFF, & DINING HALL WORKERS.

We are grateful for the leadership of GEO and the residence (ResStaff) and MDining staff in bringing forward concerns we share. That UM would take aggressive legal action against student workers standing up for groups like us, instead of applauding their courage and engaging in good faith with them, is deeply disturbing to us. We unequivocally support the demands of  GEO and ResStaff as they have been advocating for greater safety and equity for our entire community, in this pandemic. We felt seen by them at a time when we felt ignored and devalued by UM’s administration, and we stand in solidarity with them and urge UM to meet their unmet demands. We condemn UM’s threats to the employment of ResStaff and MDining workers who are directly risking their health and jobs to ensure that our communities are safe. Since GEO was coerced into accepting an offer because of the looming threat of union-busting, a court injunction and possible arrests, many of their important demands around COVID-19 safety and policing remain unmet, but their demands have widespread support across UM and the broader community. 

RACISM AS A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS. 

President Schlissel expressed a desire to hear from the larger community on these issues. 

As BIPOC and community members with mixed status families who are disproportionately targeted, surveilled and harmed by policing, CBP and ICE, we affirm the need to reallocate resources from armed police, towards health equity, social determinants of health (SDOH) and community-based justice initiatives. Your armed response to our very presence on your campus makes us feel profoundly unsafe, and DPSS is often called to respond to remove Black family members who are in grief or distress at the UM hospital. This is not our idea of a “culture of care.” We need alternative forms of de-escalation and support. As UM’s own public health experts remind us, implicit bias training and oversight bodies do nothing to solve the issues endemic to policing. Divesting from policing and investing in SDOH is the evidence-based public health approach that would help keep us safe. 

We believe:

  1. UM’s decision to reopen, particularly congregate housing, against the advice of the UM COVID-19 Ethics and Privacy Committee, and public health experts, is irresponsible and dangerous to the community at large in the face of inadequate testing and tracing capacity. 
  2. UM has failed to demonstrate that they are able to provide the testing capacity and management protocol required to keep students safe, and have failed to communicate any plans to the community in a transparent way. 
  3. The UM administration has shown a blatant disregard for the health, safety, and welfare of their students, staff, and workers.
  4. Given COVID-19’s disproportionate severity and death rate among African Americans and the Latinx community, the decision to reopen campus is incompatible with UM’s professed commitment to inclusion and equity, and actively harms those it claims to care about.
  5. It is unacceptable to blame adolescents for COVID-19 spread, when the conditions for community spread have been created by the administration’s decisions. 
  6. The decision to reopen shows a lack of concern for marginalized members of our community who are most likely to be impacted and least likely to benefit from the university’s reopening. 
  7. UM’s decision to open demonstrates a lack of consideration for our health care workers who are stretched beyond capacity and poised for a terrible flu season.
  8. The use of liability waivers to shield the university from the death and/or permanent disability of its students and workers is unethical.
  9. The decision to reopen will continue to exacerbate pre-COVID health disparities. 

To avoid a deepening of inequities, we call on UM to act now to:

  • Ensure sufficient, transparent, robust plans for testing and contact tracing, including information about thresholds that would trigger actions like a shutdown.
  • Reallocate funds from policing to actually addressing community needs.
  • Ensure that community groups like ours are consulted and involved in decisions that have grave implications for us, and that community concerns are addressed transparently and quickly.

We look to the recent decision to have all 50,000 students at MSU quarantine after 324 students tested positive for COVID-19. We urge UM administration to heed this for the dire warning that it is. Thanks to a strong response from the executive branch and tremendous personal sacrifice of the citizens of the State of Michigan, especially those of us in the southeast, we were able to slow the spread. We must hold on to these gains as we enter flu season. 

Sincerely,

Washtenaw County Health For All Steering Committee