This fall, give students grace during election mayhemNo matter what happens, it's going to be difficult. Make sure your syllabus gives everybody the space and support they need.
While other countries prepare for elections on the scale of weeks, unfortunately for us in the United States¹, elections and the assorted politicking are a perennial affair. You might have heard that our presidential election is scheduled for Tuesday, November 5th. I know we’ve got plenty of time before the Fall semester begins. I’m just writing this to give you lots of advance notice that you can assemble your course syllabi to provide grace and support for students for the immediate aftermath of the election. What can you do? For the day of the election, you might want to makes sure that there are asynchronous, hybrid, or remote possibilities for students. While most of us have the option of turning in our vote well in advance of the day itself, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of our students will not be registered in advance for vote-by-mail, so they might need to do it that day, and perhaps they’ll need to wait in line. Please don’t be that person who pulls a student out of a line at the polls because they don’t want to miss attendance points for your class. Part of the coordinated voter suppression effort in our country includes the reduction in the number and access to polling places, especially in urban areas and near college campuses, so you might anticipate that voting for students might be more difficult than it has been historically. For the rest of the week after the election, none of us knows what will happen. But we know this: it will be difficult. This is because one side has committed to stealing the election if they do not legitimately win, and this will involve long-planned efforts to delegitimize legitimacy the electoral process. We might see massive civil disturbances. I think it’s important that however you cook your syllabus, that you leave space for people to emotionally process whatever is going on in that time, and/or be civically engaged to protect our democracy. College campuses might even be the targets of renewed violence. I wouldn’t be shocked if this is going to be an absolute mess through the rest of the semester. At the very least, please don’t schedule an exam or a major assignment to be due that week. You want to make sure that there is flexibility for students — and for you! — to get through what may well be a difficult time. I think this is so important after having taught through our election eight years ago. If I hadn’t taken the election into account, I would have had class in-person on Wednesday, the day after the election. At the beginning of the semester, I could see the ugliness on the horizon and I exchanged the regular in-person session for an asynchronous activity, and wasn’t expecting any students to be on campus that day for my course. (Yes, this was before the pandemic really brought the introduction of asynchronous elements into standard in-person courses. I guess I was ahead of my time?) And let me tell you, thank goodness I had that level of prescience, because our campus population was in a generalized state of shock, mourning, and fear. With a population on campus that’s about 60% Latin, with wide variety of immigrants from all backgrounds and identities, and also some undocumented folks in the mix, people were justifiably scared. I was not equipped to be teaching that day, and a huge fraction of colleagues ended up cancelling classes. This time is all the more terrifying² than it was, as this fascist movement has gained strength over the past decade. No matter what happens after the election, are your students going to be able to dedicate enough of themselves to their courses in the immediate aftermath? Please make sure your policies and practices aren’t inadvertently harming the students who are going to be most marginalized by what we will be going through. And do please let your students know with your words and actions that you prioritize their safety and well-being.
1 I realize that this little corner of the internet that I occupy tends to be US-centric, because that’s where I work and live. So to readers in other countries, thanks for putting up with this. 2 because the authoritarian movement backing the anti-democratic effort has been laying the groundwork to rapidly implement many of the horrors they wished to unleash last time, but lacked the political competency or capacity to do so. This time it’s different, because they’re planning to use the military in to force mass deportations of immigrants and usher in a wave of paramilitary violence by the same reactionary groups who seized our Capitol building in the last election in a failed coup attempt. You’re currently a free subscriber to Science For Everyone. Thanks for your support! If you wish to support this work more, then you could pay for a subscription.
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Monday, 1 July 2024
This fall, give students grace during election mayhem
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