From the York Open Letter Organizing Committee:
Dear colleagues:
Thanks to all of your efforts, our ‘Open Letter to York University President Rhonda Lenton‘ now has 425 signatures and counting! Since the letter was launched last week, it has been officially endorsed by the membership of the York University Faculty Association (YUFA) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3903 as the official position of both unions. To this end, YUFA and CUPE 3903 recently put out a joint press release affirming their support of the open letter.
To date the university has not responded to our demands. As a result, we’re looking to strategize around our next steps to ensure the administration allows those who want to teach remotely to do so, while simultaneously ensuring maximum safety for those who must be on campus. In addition to the YUFA and CUPE 3903 endorsements, the Department of Social Science at York University voted yesterday to take all their classes online/remote. This is a bold and principled move in the context of the unfolding fourth wave of this pandemic, offering us all a model to take to our own departments (the sample text of SOSC’s resolution is included below).
In order to advance our campaign, the rank-and-file organizers of the Open Letter would like to invite you to an organizing meeting to discuss our next steps. The meeting will take place over Zoom at 8pm on Tuesday, September 14th and can be accessed via the following link: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/6344362859. We also encourage people to continue using their social media accounts (especially Twitter) and the hashtags #UnsafeAtYork and #covidoncampus to send daily messages to @yorkuniversity expressing your point of view on these issues and urging the University to implement the demands expressed in the open letter.
Looking forward to building a strong campaign with all of you moving forward!