Hahaha! I also thought this thread is closed as most of the recent convo was from 17 days ago.
Itâs wonderful to hear about all of the socialization occurring at different campuses! Life at Penn is slowly returning. Parties and on-campus activities are happening, but there is still an mask mandate despite the 99% campus vaccination rate. The freshman plague is peaking so D is happy to wear a mask right now. Iâm envious of the fun in-person family weekends; ours is completely virtual. Weâre traveling to Philly anyway for a DIY Family Weekend of apple picking and a Broadway show.
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On campus parties with masks?
Presumably, but I doubt anyone inside these parties is enforcing the mandate.
Vaxxed D21 is having an absolute blast at large Texas public. She has been hitting the huge frat parties most weekends. Campus is 100% open, with no social distancing, no testing( university cant afford to test) , no mask or vaccine mandates. Delta tore through the campus, as evidenced by parent fb page, very little testing (no incentive to test) the flurry has since died down. the university was never going to pull the plug to an online semester. That canât afford to. 3 of 4 of D professors do NOT wear mask in class. Only one has asked the kids to wear mask. EDIT she is in honors that are capped at 25 for 3 of 4 classes and her 4th is capped at 45. edit I do know a few large 300-400 classes went online (professors choice). About 3-5% are masked on campus.
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Thatâs not really a âclassâ â itâs a lecture. At that point, it mostly doesnât matter if youâre sitting in the â2nd mezzanineâ, or if youâre watching that lecture from the comfort of your dorm.
While nowhere near that large, my daughter had to attend a few (in person) lecture classes and (depending on professor/lecture style) pretty much used that time to catch up with other work rather than watching/listening to someone whoâs just reading the content of slides off the screens for 45 minutes. She could read/comprehend the content of the posted lecture notes/hand-outs in a fraction of that time in a quite hour.
Indoor or outdoor?
both, is what D said
Interesting that Colgate has clamped down on parties so much as they donât do much monitoring or testing for Covid - right?
Amherst has finally opened the dining hall to 100% which is great news! Family weekend is scaled back to one day with all events taking place outdoors. Visitors must show proof of vaccination but are not allowed inside any campus building
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I can report that the social scene at UChicago is back to normal; S reports that there are no parties whatsoever. Strong mask discipline, though.
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Williams has identical plans for family weekend â now family day, everything outdoors. We are allowed inside the libraries and museum as long as weâre vaccinated. AFAIK theyâve been at 100% capacity for indoor dining all year. (The last positive student test was 12 days ago, and there have only been around 12 positives all semester.)
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My sonâs only a couple hours away from Colgate at University of Rochester. Itâs a bit bigger - but only has 6,000 undergrads. Social scene is hopping and itâs a pretty self contained campus and the kids arenât going into Rochester. One of the reasons we liked the school was a friendâs daughter was there last year and thought the university really did a good job of finding ways to keep the kids social even during the worst of NYâs mandated covid restrictions. Our daughterâs experience with Duke last year was pretty rough during the spring and we did not want a repeat of that - incidentally Duke is definitely back to normal on the social front and even when they had a definite spike of cases after move in - kept classes in person, so sheâs been pretty happy that she went back. She definitely was considering gapping if was going to be like the Spring.
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hahaâŠI remember my first ride on a No. 6 bus uptown, and there were these kids sitting across from me, a boy and a girl, weirding me out: the palest, unhappiest-looking college students Iâd ever seen in my life. Pin-neat, the boy, anyway. Sitting in an awkward companionable silence. I wasnât aware of the rep at the time.
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So what do the Covid rules look like at Rochester? Do they wear masks inside all university buildings including the gym? Iâd really like Colgate to drop the mandate in the gym.
Also, what is the social scene exactly? Are parties on campus allowed or is the campus such that most parties are usually off campus? I think that makes a difference. Itâs Colgateâs on campus party scene thatâs been a little less than, although they did allow two frat parties last weekend so maybe that will change.
Meanwhile, at Bowdoin, they are loosening restrictions. Masks in class but not in the student union or in the library if youâre not actually speaking to a librarian. No masks at the gym. You do have to wear one if youâre watching an indoor sporting even but the athletes donât wear them for practice or games. They are stopping twice-weekly PCR testing and moving to pool testing after Thanksgiving. Sponsored parties (like sophomore house parties with alcohol) are back on as well.
speaking of rochester schools RIT recently has had an outbreak. 50 cases in the last 2 weeks. I know of one freshman dorm floor. They only test symtomatic and those exempted. i have a feeling that they will be returning to weekly overall testing. I am surprised other schools are not seeing the same, as vaccine efficiency wanes and this age group has not necessarily gotten boosters.
If schools arenât doing regular testing of vaccinated students/faculty/staff, they wonât necessarily know if they have an outbreak. Regular testing of the entire community is expensive, and certainly one reason why some schools arenât doing it. Of course, there are some schools passing those testing costs onto the students.
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Pitt just mandated vaccination for all students, faculty, and staff effective December 6. Iâm not sure how they picked this date. There is one anti vax parent in my Facebook group going ballistic about how she already paid for this semester and now they are forcing her son to get vaccinated.
Prior to the announcement, all unvaccinated had to get tested weekly to get access to university buildings. Vaccination rates were very high (~95% iirc). I do wonder what caused this decision now.
that has to do with the Biden deadline if any university is doing contracted work with the government.
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While colleges often try to avoid being the enforcement agents for drinking age laws, how does a college get away with sponsoring an event with alcohol for sophomores (as opposed to seniors)?
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But most students are not employees, though some may be work study, etc.