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UNC-Chapel Hill provost defends withholding county health department pandemic recommendations I The Progressive Pulse time during these extraordinary circumstances. Given all that, several faculty members seemed incredulous that the administration did not consider the memo an official position of the health department or something that warranted sharing with the wider community. Administrators thought of the memo as a more of an informal summation of ongoing conversations, Blouin said. He didnOt see it as a public document or bsomething that needed to be shared,O he said, and didnOt believe the health department did either. Sources inside the health department told Policy Watch last week that the memo was the result of the departmentOs suggestions not making any impact on the schoolbs decision making. When the memo itself did not change the schoolOs plan, the department ultimately sent the memo to local elected officials, who made it public. Eric Muller, a law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and member of the Faculty Executive Committee, asked why the administration had come to the conclusion that those recommendations did not warrant immediate action whether or not it was made public. Blouin said they believed they were already addressing the health department concerns bin spirit.b That answer did not satisfy many faculty members. Rather than going online for the fall semester N or at least the first five weeks N the campus began classes Monday, with a mixture of online and in-person instruction. Instead of restricting housing to those without other available housing, the university pushed forward with a plan to have full capacity dorms. The density in the residence halls is down to 61 percent overall, Blouin said, Monday N but that is not the result of university restrictions but concerned students and their families getting out of their housing contracts. bWe thought it would be better if students made the determinations more on their own rather than being directed in one way or another,b Blouin said last week. The university extended the period in which students could withdraw from contracts, but did not encourage them to do so. The schoolOs Carolina Away online program has http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2020/08/11/unc-chapel-hill-provost-defends-withholding-county-health-department-pandemic-recommendations/[8/17/20,3:00:47 PM]