We write to urge you to resume weekly COVID testing of in-person research staff and make testing voluntary for all graduate student workers who are not taking classes or working for the University in person. Both in-person staff and all graduate students taking classes or working for the University in person should continue to be tested weekly.

We are aware that the University has instituted this testing requirement to monitor the spread of COVID-19 and its variants on Grounds and to assist with contact tracing. However, this requirement overlooks the fact that many graduate students do not otherwise travel to, or spend time at, the university or around undergraduate students. This situation presents three key issues:

1. It prioritizes remote graduate student workers over in-person staff. During this current outbreak, staff working in laboratories have had their weekly testing paused. In an announcement made by Vice President for Research Dr. Ramasubramanian on February 18, 2021, the University cited the need to direct saliva testing capacity elsewhere as the reason for this decision. Yet there is clearly more need to test in-person staff than graduate students working from home. Making testing voluntary for remote graduate students would allow UVA to make testing more available to in-person workers.
   

2. It assumes graduate students are extensions of undergraduates rather than workers who perform similar duties as faculty. Like faculty, many graduate student workers are teaching, researching, taking coursework, and advising remotely. And like faculty, most graduate student workers do not live, study, or socialize among or alongside undergraduates. Faculty and administrators, however, even those conducting in-person work, are not subject to the same testing mandates as graduate students.
   

3. It requires graduate student workers who rely on public transportation to put themselves and others at risk while contributing to denser, unsafe ridership on already overcrowded CAT buses.
   

Our concerns have only intensified now that the number of cases at UVA has increased to the extent that administrators have needed to institute additional restrictions on in-person and non-essential activities and movements throughout Grounds as of February 16, 2021.

We ask, therefore, that graduate student workers who are not taking classes in person, teaching in person, or doing lab work be excused from mandatory testing requirements and instead be categorized under “Voluntary Testing.”

Sincerely,

United Campus Workers of Virginia