I thought this thread was for anyone willing to share information. I’m very interested in hearing about Covid protocols at other colleges whether public or private; it’s fascinating from a sociological perspective.
Penn mandated the vaccine for all students and faculty and there is a vaccine clinic on campus for those folks who still need a jab. All students had to participate in gateway testing and will undergo mandatory bi-monthly testing. Students who miss a week of testing will be issued a “red” noncompliance pass and access to campus buildings will be restricted. They also reinstated the indoor mask mandate for students and faculty.
A much LOWER percentage of drug deaths caused a “wholesale restructuring” of society (from the war on drugs, Iran/Contra, drug education throughout school grades, incarcerations of predominant segments of the population, trillions in societal cost)! Dito with HIV, which turned around some aspects of “society” (e.g., how we carefree we “date”, how we assess suitable partners, what we consider “protection”,…) by 180 degrees.
The key difference is, this time around the real potential of serious illness or death is not essentially limited to the one effected individual resulting from their own actions, but there is instant real risk to their entire social circle - and also to uncounted “innocent bystanders”.
So if ever “restructuring” was called for (vs. past occasions where it already happened), it certainly is THIS round.
Yes, this thread should be for all colleges. I suppose if someone wanted a thread just for an elite subset they could start that.
UMD didn’t require arrival testing. They are requiring vaccines for all students and staff. They are only requiring testing, biweekly, for those that obtained exemptions to the vaccine.
Thanks for clarifying.
When I read your assertion that about 12 (“dozen or so”) universities nationwide have regular tests of all students (regardless of vaccination), I just wanted to find out if indeed there had been some updated stats released, now that students and staff have vaccine access so that it can be mandated.
(You may very well be right, I just have a different buckets for “Covid Facts” vs. “Covid Anecdotes” to guide my personal decisions - but I understand if others don’t make that distinction.)
The thread subject is already for all colleges:
“Colleges in the 2021-2022 Academic Year & Coronavirus” !?
Are you saying, you object to the fact that people report about whatever colleges they happen to have a connection to - regardless if private or public?
You prefer everyone to post a comment on some arbitrary public university that they do NOT have a connection to?
My student goes to Hope College, a small private LAC in southwestern MI that is one of the CTCL’s. It has a high acceptance rate and does NOT have a big endowment, so definitely not one of the elite LAC’s. For 2020/2021, Hope had a pretty successful year with everyone on campus and the dorms at full capacity. They did a combination of pre-arrival testing, surveillance testing, wastewater testing, mandatory masking, social distancing, and classes that were a mixture of in person, hybrid, or online. They made it through the year while keeping their case counts pretty consistently below the county average.
The protocol is different this year and it remains to be seen how well this will work. The big difference is that they are being more generous in allowing vaccine exemptions than other schools, because they will allow exemptions for “personal” reasons in addition to medical and religious. And they haven’t been as transparent as I would like about what percent are unvaccinated. Vaccinated students did not have to do any gateway testing. Unvaccinated (or decline to state) had to do gateway testing and have to do periodic surveillance testing. Wastewater testing will continue. Masks are mandatory for now. I think all the classes are back to fully in person. Today is the first day of class so I’m waiting for feedback on whether they are socially distanced in the classrooms like last year.
Maybe simply because there are objectively less questions by students on how to “make the cut”, and/or by parents about financial concerns, and whether it’s worth stretching one’s budget.
Not to speak of less worries/logistical problems with a in-state or commuter school vs. having your student thousands of miles away.
@DigitalDad I was referring to this post above. I have posted regarding.my child’s college’s policies. I think the thread should be about all colleges.
It is for all colleges and universities. As others have pointed out, the vast majority of posts on this site are for “elite” private colleges, plus UCLA, Berkeley, UMich, UT-Austin, and the like. But nobody is limiting the posts to those.
Re societal refusal to do anything about major causes of death and morbidity
: Yeah. That’s why some years ago, looking at the crazy upswing in gun violence (we had our own disgruntled-employee moment a few years ago, dude right off campus making very particular threats that he was in fact equipped to carry out, nobody stopping him from strolling in and doing it, nobody telling students or parents or anyone else on campus), addiction, etc., and how we clearly weren’t going to do anything about these things, and realized that it’s kind of a lousy neighborhood, America. One that most of us can’t leave for a better one. So, you know, you gotta watch yourself, do what you can.
About vax rates of the future – I think flu vax uptake is around 40%? I wouldn’t expect covid vax uptake to be higher than that on a routine basis. It’s like those drug ads that say “talk to your doctor,” when, come on, most people don’t have a doctor, they just take whoever’s there if they can’t avoid going in.
I bought D enough Binax cards for semiweekly testing (negative so far). Cost: around $400, which effectively increased her semester COA by a few percent. If state universities required this, my guess is that the families would be blowing a gasket at the extra expense. Every time we raise the price -at all- more people fall off the truck, and there’d be a lot of angry emails and tweets about how we’ve got money for this, but not more money for scholarships.
Those cards will be handy at Christmastime, too – she plans to stay in the dorm a few days after most people have left (you can get weekly winter housing inexpensively) – and quarantine/test there before coming home.
So the purpose of a thread’s “Subject” is to define/signal to the community what thread is about: Colleges - without any qualifier.
Rather than decrying posts that are consistent with the thread’s subject, you could start a thread that is specific (and tagged to) to your individual college, only to Public Universities, or whatever your specific subset of interest might be.
i find all the discussions interesting. It’s helped me gain insight to my D who is starting grad school in providence very soon without ever having seen the school or been to the east coast.
But we are certainly not in the elite crowd here in the midwest. we know kids at Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, UNL, UNO, SDSU, USD, KSU, Mizzou, UMKC, OKlahoma State, TCU, bama, arizona, ASU, FSU and a bunch of other smaller unknown schools in the midwest. The CV rules are quite different than east/west coasts.
I do think that the elite schools viewpoints are the majority here on CC, but in real life, they are the minority of college students. But - still interesting and helpful to see the view points.
neighbor’s kid is at a midwest small state school - like most of the schools we know, no vax requirements; no testing, and this one surpried me - no masks. And, at this point, no problems. I’m sure time will tell; we are the last to catch on to al trends around here. but its certainly calm.
Amherst College has acquired KN95s for all their students. They have gotten rid of the double-masking requirement for classes, and are now simply requiring KN95s for classes ONLY (any other type of mask will do for other indoors situations).
Boston College started classes on Monday. Everyone was tested upon arrival. According to the school newspaper 99.2% of the community is vaccinated, 46 people (32 undergrads) tested positive (.29%).
It’s her 2nd year of online college!