(A copy of the letter appears here in the description)

An open letter from faculty to the Cal Poly and SLO community:
Winter break is always a time for reflection on our past year and planning for the future. This year our planning for the Winter 2021 quarter must be guided by a sober and realistic assessment of the pandemic conditions we face. Nationally and statewide, cases have increased to record levels, with over 200,000 new infections per day in early December. Multiple regions across California have seen exponential increases in hospitalizations and ICU capacity at crisis levels. Here in San Luis Obispo county, Covid-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are all rising sharply.

In light of these conditions, the CSU Chancellor’s office has urged all campuses to delay face-to-face instruction until late January or later. Yet just last week, in contrast to CSU guidance, Cal Poly administrators affirmed that we will resume in-person instruction beginning January 4. Campus move-in times will be staggered throughout the first week of January, but no further efforts will be made to de-densify dormitories or to encourage students who can to remain at home with their families.

Cal Poly’s refusal to comply with CSU and accepted public health recommendations is nothing new. Last summer, despite CSU-wide directives, Cal Poly petitioned to populate its dorms and offer in-person classes at levels far greater than other CSU campuses. The university ignored widespread public health recommendations and proposed limiting testing to just symptomatic students. Only in response to significant public pressure—and direct intervention from the county—did the university grudgingly change course. But even then, Cal Poly failed to meet nearly every testing benchmark it set, including its promise to provide 10,000 exit tests for students before Thanksgiving break. The university offered no coherent program or incentive for off-campus students to get tested regularly.

The results are extremely disturbing. By the end of fall term, hundreds of students had been infected. The outbreak was the second worst in the entire state. Roughly 5% of all students living in Cal Poly dorms contracted Covid-19. At various points in November, a quarter of all students living in the dorms were either in isolation or some form of quarantine. Campus housing ran out of isolation beds and isolated students in a local hotel, risking exposure to hotel employees and community members. County data shows skyrocketing numbers of infections among college-age individuals, including Cal Poly students living on and off campus.

These are dangerous and disruptive conditions for community health and student success.

Cal Poly has promised more frequent testing in the winter quarter, but their current surveillance testing proposal still lags behind best practices, which call for continuous testing of all students every 1-3 days, for the entire duration of the term. Cal Poly has promised to conduct twice-a-week testing only for the first two weeks of the quarter. Given Cal Poly’s repeated failure to meet testing benchmarks this past fall, we are concerned they will fail to meet even these weak goals.
 
Our sister campus, Cal Poly Pomona, embraces the learn by doing motto just as we do. Cal Poly Pomona offers the same kinds of academic programs in agriculture, engineering, architecture, and science, yet Cal Poly Pomona offered only 2.6% of fall classes with in-person contact. Unlike Cal Poly SLO, which housed over 4000 students on campus this past fall, Cal Poly Pomona housed only 500 students in dorms. Notably, fewer than 100 students, faculty, and staff at Pomona have tested positive for Covid-19.
 
We urge our our administrators to heed the call by the CSU Chancellor and Chancellor-select and take the following actions:
- Delay face-to-face instruction and move toward a fully virtual Winter Quarter.  Most Cal State Universities have already made this same commitment to protecting campus health, including our sister school, Cal Poly Pomona.  - Cal Poly should delay face-to-face instruction until the end of January or later to get through the holiday surge. Because the quarter system is so short, the less disruptive action would be to commit to a fully virtual Winter Quarter.
- Further de-densify the dorms. Encourage students to complete virtual courses from their homes if they can do so safely. Cal Poly administrators have argued that students are safer when they are living under university supervision, but the outbreak in the dorms this past fall throws doubt on that assertion. Now is the time to minimize congregate living in the county.
- Guarantee at least twice weekly student testing prior to having students back on campus. Students need to be tested 2-3x a week consistently, starting in the first week and continuing through the entire duration of the quarter. Frequent testing can swiftly detect outbreaks and enable the contact tracing and quick isolation necessary to limit further spread.

With a surge in cases driven by the holidays, hospital beds and ICUs filling across the state and country, and effective vaccines on the horizon, the only ethical choice is to delay in-person instruction, drastically reduce the number of students in congregate housing, and dramatically expand testing and contact tracing. Hopefully, the general population will receive the vaccine(s) by late spring, and may reach levels of community protection by summer.  

We all look forward to when we can be back together. As a public institution of higher education, Cal Poly has a moral duty to help our community make it through this crisis. Thus far, Cal Poly has not taken this obligation seriously. Let’s do better in 2021.

Signed,