The grab-n-go thing doesn’t really make sense when they’re just taking the food to their dorms where there is no mask requirement. On-campus kids are still free to eat out in the community in most places, where there are no grab-n-go rules. I assume dining hall staff will continue to wear their masks (and at vax-mandated colleges, will be vaccinated), so how much safer is it for them - either way, they are wearing masks, handing food to students who are masked (and vaxed). Then, inevitably, the staff are going out into the community anyway - it’s not like they’re sequestered in the dining hall.
Also, how do all of these measures help when there is little to no oversight for off-campus kids? At many large colleges, thousands of kids live off campus and operate like mostly normal people, and then come on campus for classes & activities. Why are the on-campus kids being subjected to all of this CYA, but not off-campus kids?
No, their lives won’t be ruined by grab-n-go, but it has been 2 years of disappointments - of promises made and broken - of repeated asks to be unselfish, with no end in sight - of not being able to eat in the dining hall but seeing crowded sports games on TV. That weighs on a person’s mental health, and that has been ignored again and again since this whole thing started. The depression and suicide numbers aren’t big enough for the media to promote and for mostly anyone to care. This is slowly eating away at our kids’ generation and there will be “long-Covid” affects on mental health if we don’t get off this hamster wheel.
If the current skyrocketing levels (over half of million cases a day and going up rapidly) of Covid transmission across the country is any indication, almost all colleges will face an unprecedented onslaught of new cases when students return. What are they supposed to do? Ignore it?
For being off topic (as is the post I quoted). Many posts were flagged overnight. Some were egregious violations of ToS; others simply had nothing to do with college.
So let’s keep the conversation in relation to colleges and save the rest for more appropriate threads
Pitt announced yesterday that classes will start as scheduled on Jan 10 but will be virtual for two weeks. Kids living in dorms need to test before and after arrival. It’s not completely clear (very badly worded) but I believe there are no testing requirements for those living off campus. Everyone is supposed to shelter in place for two weeks. Son has told me that no one is going to follow that. They didn’t the other times the school tried that and now that everyone is vaccinated they all think it is stupid (he actually used some much stronger language). He says people are busy planning parties for next week.
All of these measures are a complete exercise in futility and will do nothing. Please note how college students live and interact and compare it to the recent omicron infection below. This is directly related to how college students live (doors open in their hallways, passing in hallways, shared bathrooms, etc) and how “grab and go” and other “measures” are not helpful for omicron.
“Closed-circuit camera footage, genetic testing and careful contact tracing show that the only conceivable way the virus could have passed from one room to another was in air that leaked out when both doors were briefly opened”
Re: Vanderbilt. Are all athletic events including practice also cancelled or virtual during the restriction period announced? For example, there would be no women’s basketball games or practice indoors during the “quiet period”, since these are social activities that would be clearly indoors.
Prospective college students should carefully consider these announcements, as it is always possible future variants will arise. Some college students have had an almost normal 2 years; others have had a miserable time. Choose carefully as those acceptances start to arrive.
So true. I agree seniors (and their families, even college students able to transfer) should carefully consider what type of response and experience they want in college.
It’s the selective enforcement that ultimately undermines the entire process. The student who has to grab-n-go back to the dorm for his/her virtual zoom calculus class can later head over to the basketball coliseum, enter with a mask as per campus requirements, and then remove it to “eat & drink” for the game - oops - the mask never ends up getting put back on (the Covid-proof eating & drinking loophole). After the game, they can head over to a friend’s off campus apartment, where masks are never worn, and then to a local pizza place where the eating & drinking loophole is in effect, and then back to the dorm. Grab-n-go seems pointless given the “day in the life” scenarios of most college students. Not to mention (again) that vaccines are readily available and have proven to keep people out of the hospitals.
Picking and choosing these random little ways to attempt to control a variant of a virus that has already proven to circumvent most preventative measures, while allowing other potential methods of enforcement on a larger scale to slide, is like trying to shoot very small fish in a very large barrel.
I would expect massive numbers of students to take gap years at the Ivies if they resume zoom classes. Few students are willing to return to that if they have already experienced it.