Florida university leaders powerless in efforts to impose mask mandates to protect their campuses

Friday, public school districts throughout Florida won a crucial victory in court against Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban against mask mandates as his executive order barring them was thrown out Friday by a Tallahassee judge who ruled that the governor overreached his authority, misinterpreted state law and ignored scientific evidence.
 
DeSantis through executive order and law, would block any public school or college from requiring students or employees to wear masks or to be vaccinated. To that end, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran threatened to withhold funding from the school system in an amount commensurate with the offending board members’ monthly salaries.
 
As some public-school officials see it, they’re engaged in the kind of “good trouble” that the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a civil-rights activist, said that people of conviction ought to get into now and then.
 
As a practical matter, school superintendents have more protection from state officials than Florida’s public-university presidents do. Unlike school superintendents that are employees of the public-school system, university presidents are state employees and answer to university Board of Trustees, whose members are nearly all appointed by the governor or the State University System’s Board of Governors. The system board, to which university presidents are accountable, is composed almost entirely of gubernatorial appointees.  
 
Simply put, university president can’t oppose the state; they are the state.
 
DeSantis, and his administration, have prohibited universities from moving courses online, that aren’t typically online classes, at any point during this semester regardless of COVID rates.  For example, on a Friday afternoon this month, vice president for student life at UF sent out a campus-wide email saying that some courses could be moved online for the first three weeks of the term to allow students more time to get vaccinated.  Hours later, UF president Kent Fuchs walked back the email.

In a statement to UF student newspaper, The Alligator Fuchs wrote, “In efforts to manage the pandemic’s effects on university life, there have been discussions about moving some courses online for the first three weeks of the semester.  The decision was made today that UF will not pursue that option, nor will any other university in the State University System.”

Fuchs, later told faculty members at a recent virtual town hall that he is powerless to mandate masks on the campus where he is president.

“I literally don’t have that power,” Fuchs said.

FAMU President Larry Robinson, went about as far as he could, earlier this month when he sent the campus community a two page letter informing them that he expects them to wear masks and get vaccinated.

“Our expectation for the fall semester is for all of our students, faculty, and staff to get vaccinated to not only protect yourselves and the people you love, but others as well, including this University. There is no reason for that not to happen,” Robinson said during a speech to faculty and staff at the annual Faculty Preplanning Conference. 
 
A deeper examination of Florida's political landscape and reality on the ground though, paints a more complicated picture. As the governor, lawmakers, and politically appointed board members tighten their grips on public universities, presidents are coming to terms with what they perceive to be their diminished authority — even when the stakes could be life or death.