January GMM, Petitioning the Chancellor, and COVID Safety Plans
Table of Contents:
Announcements:
Events:
ANNOUNCEMENTS
GEO Delivers Safety Petition to Chancellor
COVID-19 cases on UIUC’s campus are higher than they have ever been. Today GEO delivered a petition to Provost Cangellaris and Chancellor Jones demanding better protections for safe learning, teaching, and working conditions for all! The demands are simple:
Provide a notification system for any in-class or workplace exposures; this notification system should not be based on self-reporting or app proximity notifications, but based on the class schedule and/or assigned workplaces of those who test positive.
Require all on-campus community members (students, faculty, and staff) to test twice per week, regardless of vaccination status, to prevent exposures in classrooms and work spaces. Additionally, create an adequate system to consistently check people’s building status before they enter learning and working spaces.
Provide all on-campus students and workers with 16 medical-grade N95 or KN95 masks as recommended by the university so that people can rotate them.
Worker choice so that workers may choose whether they are safest working in-person, in a hybrid format, or online.
We expect a public response to this petition by no later than Friday, January 28, 2022. We also requested an open, public town hall with you and all interested members of the campus community to discuss COVID-19 safety no later than Friday, February 4, 2022.
Read the petition text here: https://tinyurl.com/UIUCSafetyPetText
Petition form to sign and add your name: https://tinyurl.com/UIUCSafetyPetition
GEO COVID-19 Safety Lesson Plan: Slides, Zoom Backgrounds & Graphics
COVID-19 cases on UIUC’s campus are higher than they have ever been. As of 1/23/22, the positivity rate on campus was 3.95%, with a 3.44% 7-day positivity rate. In the month of January so far (1/2/22-1/23/22), there have already been 3,621 positive cases on campus. In comparison, there were 1,883 positive cases for the entire semester of Fall 2021, 1,660 in Spring 2021, and 4,382 in Fall 2020. In Champaign County, the 7-day positivity rate is 12.5%.
The high rates of COVID-19 continue to put our campus and community at serious risk of debilitating illness, long COVID, and death, disproportionately impacting our disabled, immunocompromised, and older community members. Yet we are expected to work and learn with no exposure notifications, no widespread required testing, rare building access checks, and only 1 medical-grade mask per community member. Our working conditions are students’ learning conditions: if TAs and our students get sick, students’ quality of education will suffer.
We need your help to demand safer working and learning conditions from UIUC.
Use/adapt COVID-19 Lesson Plan slides (developed by GEO TAs) to talk to your students about COVID-19 policy in the classroom and their needs and concerns.
Use our COVID-19 safety Zoom backgrounds (designed by GEO members) in meetings, classes, and other online events
Share GEO’s petition (tinyurl.com/UIUCSafetyPetition) and graphics on social media with #ILLatIllinois #WeKeepUsSafe #OurLearningOurLaborOurChoice
All of these materials can be found at https://bit.ly/GEOCOVIDRESOURCES
Spring 2022 HEERF III COVID-19 Emergency Grants (Open 1/18-1/31)
Graduate students are able to apply for emergency financial aid grants of up to $1,000 as part of UIUC’s Higher Education Emergency Relief allocation. These grants can be used to cover costs related to tuition, food, housing, health care, child care, or other expenses since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information and to apply visit https://grad.illinois.edu/covid-19/emergency-grants.
EVENTS
January GMM: Wednesday, January 26 at 12:00 PM and 6:00 PM (VIRTUAL ONLY)
GEO will be having our first General Membership Meeting (GMM) of the Spring semester on Wednesday, January 26th, 12:00 to 1:00 pm and 6:00 to 7:00 pm Central Time via Google Meets. Please note that we are not hosting an in-person meeting to protect member safety. Register to attend and you will receive the meeting link shortly before the meeting: https://tinyurl.com/Jan2022GMM
The tentative agenda includes electing the bargaining team, contract bargaining, and this semester’s COVID-19 plan. The same topics will be discussed at both meetings.
Bargaining Team election details:
Voting will open at 12:00 PM on January 26
Voting will close at 7:00 PM, at the end of the GMM.
There is not maximum number of Bargaining Team members
Each candidate is running individually, meaning that they are not competing against one another.
Candidates will be elected if the number of votes in favor outweigh the number of votes against.
The voting link will only be available at the GMM.
A dark purple and pink poster. Next to the black GEO logo, the text reads, “VIRTUAL GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING, JANUARY 26TH, 2022”. Beneath the heading, white text in a black box reads: “AFTERNOON SESSION 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, EVENING SESSION 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm”. White, bullet-pointed text on the purple background reads “Vote to elect our Bargaining Team members”, “Learn the results of the Bargaining Research Team’s most recent survey”, “Discuss contract bargaining priorities”, “Strategize around most recent covid numbers and on campus safety procedures”. The pink box below includes black text reading “REGISTRATION REQUIRED, OPEN TO ALL MEMBERS”, followed by a QR code and the white text, “scan the QR code OR go to tinyurl.com/Jan2022GMM”. At the bottom of the poster in purple is the text, “PLEASE EMAIL US IF YOU NEED ANY ACCOMMODATIONS!” against a pink background with the GEO’s contact information listed. Email icon followed by “geo@uigeo.org”, web icon followed by “uiucgeo.org”, Facebook icon followed by “facebook.com/uigeo”, and twitter icon and instagram icon followed by “@geo_uiuc”.
In Solidarity,
Graduate Employees’ Organization
809 S. 5th St., Geneva Room
Champaign, IL 61820
Email: geo@uigeo.org