PSC members protested in front of Medgar Evers College on Tuesday, August 31 to call out the college administration for failing to follow its COVID-19 reopening plan and to demand stronger health and safety protocols.
Watch video of the demonstration on Facebook Live.
With the Delta variant spreading in New York City, Medgar Evers College has yet to address urgent concerns the union raised after walkthroughs of classrooms and workspaces and has yet to schedule a final walkthrough. Dr. Patricia Ramsey, the new president of Medgar Evers College, has failed to meet with PSC leaders on the campus about the concerns, and the College has given the union only partial information about ventilation in buildings where staff work and some classes meet. The PSC is demanding spot checks to confirm that the Bedford Building, the Carroll Street Building and the Student Services Building at Medgar Evers have the recommended levels of airflow.
Crown Heights West/Prospect Lefferts Gardens, the community surrounding the college, has experienced a high rate of COVID-19 transmission in the last seven days, according to NYC data. Since the start of the pandemic, 1 out of 10 people in Medgar Evers’s zip code (11225) has been diagnosed with the virus and 1 out of every 245 residents has died of COVID-19.
It has become overwhelmingly clear that guidelines the college put forth in its reopening plan have been inconsistently employed, and, in some cases, entirely ignored. Medgar Evers has fallen short on its commitments to implement safety recommendations essential for in-person work.
