Most people don’t get it!
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Remote learning this semester/quarter, unlike a year ago, is likely to be very short. Some colleges are resuming in-person instructions as soon as this week. However, I don’t see an alternative to grab-and-go meals for the time being. Staffing shortage is going to last for a while longer. Since buffet-style self-service isn’t likely to return soon, prepackaged meals are the only option if we don’t want students to wait in a long line to be served (or even longer for a made-to-order entree). Whether the colleges are going to allow students to eat together later in the semester/quarter is likely to be highly college-dependent (on local/campus case numbers, living arrangements, viable outdoor spaces, etc.)
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An added benefit for families seeking no-restrictions universities is that they are far less selective than the ones taking some modest steps to mitigate spread in their surrounding communities and to handle staffing complications.
Win-win.
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Amherst College still is doing indoor dining, as is Stanford.
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So the students on campus for Jan classes can eat indoors? Yea! I think same at Bowdoin right now for the athletes. Guessing that might change for a bit when the rest of the students arrive in a couple of weeks. We don’t have an update from Bowdoin on what campus will be like. Just know rapids and PCR upon arrival and another PCR a few days later. Rapid tests required on the day before arrival with a photo and your ID in the picture.
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Purdue is also still allowing indoor dining but there is an option for grab and go if students are more comfortable.
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That seems like really reasonable compromise.
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Mtmind, you and I don’t always agree, but this post of yours is spot on. Reading this thread has been quite eye-opening. How often do parents get to dictate to colleges what they must do? How many spurn older and more experienced professors, staff, and more to tell them to find other employment if they fear for their lives or well-being during a crisis, fully expecting that’s what colleges should do as if replacing them were that easy.
Colleges make their policies and are doing their best in a pandemic that is ever changing and new to all of us. If a parent/student doesn’t like it, they should be the ones taking time off to wait it out or going elsewhere - the Covid fit.
No single or group of parents should be able to dictate to a college what they must do.
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Interesting… I assume Amherst has fewer students doing its J-Term this year? Stanford is even more interesting if it allows students to congregate in dining halls but not in classrooms.
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Oh, I very much agree! Which is why I, like faculty and instructors all over the country, implored our admins to use summer ‘20 well by letting us figure out collectively how to prepare for an occasion just like the one we’re living through. How to move smoothly from in-person to online and back, how to develop more engaging teaching modalities than “talk in box at names”, have classes prepared and choreographed (there’s a lot less lecturing happening than when you were in school, that’s gone out), ensure that we were all moving together instead of piecemeal, ensure that students understood what the expectations were and that faculty understood what the means and workload were supposed to be, so that things were not only coordinated but took into account students’ technological limitations.
And they said no, because at the time they were more afraid of parents and students than they were of the consequences of trying to stuff adult staff and faculty into dangerous positions. Now they are not. Now they understand that the adults will walk and leave them with universities to run, nobody there to teach the class and staff the office, and no applicants lined up at the gate like there’ve always been. But we still are not prepared.
Once upon a time there were profs with tweed jackets and sheaves of yellowed lecture notes, and they taught the same class year after year. It was a long time ago. Students, parents, pedagogues insisted on something better and, often, flashier than that. So profs are expected to revise, revise, revise. There are teams, there are collabs, there are flipped clsses, there are all kinds of interesting things. Which is great, and much energy and innovation comes from it, until you have to repeat Day 5, and Day 5, Spring '22 no longer has much to do with Day 4 and Day 6, Spring '21.
I also agree that it’s not the end of the world if a week’s missed, but I ain’t saying nothing about the mind-losing that went on here when weeks were missed.
You might also keep in mind that “mild” can still mean “quite ill for a long time.” That double-vaxxed 29-year-old friend of mine is still bad sick, and the chemo-having triple-vaxxed acquaintance is still in the ICU.
Here is Bowdoins spring term protocol. They will require testing twice weekly. The January schedule is posted here. They are switching to pool testing…with followup with everyone in that pool if there is a positive.
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I know, but that has not been updated since omicron so I think it might change.
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Stanford’s indoor dining is restricted:
With careful guidance from EH&S, we are currently allowing indoor seating at 25% capacity. Outdoor seating is also available and students are encouraged to take their meal to-go. Log in | Stanford R&DE
I will roll the tape back to summer 2020 where the complete shutdown of campus for many colleges for the entire fall 2020/spring 2021 was “temporary until we can all get vaccinated”.
Saying all other colleges are sticking their head in the sand if they don’t implement any unreasonable and ineffective restrictions this semester is disingenuous.
There are plenty of very selective colleges and universities that have taken a nuanced and reasonable road to covid. And my point is that location matters - students need to understand if the colleges they are considering have had a very low risk tolerance for covid- implementing full shut downs on campus and now adding new (in effective, in my opinion) restrictions in a post vaccine/boosted world, will probably continue to be risk intolerant in the future. Iof those colleges are completely secluded, options of “escape” are limited. The “everything on campus” in the middle of nowhere college is problematic for Covid restrictions.
Covid is here forever (in some form or another) and it’s only a matter of time when every single one of us will test positive.
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In RI and AZ they can be mildly symptomatic.
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Although not the the case at Stanford (they are limiting basketball game attendance to families only), there are schools who have switched to 100% remote classes and grab and go dining yet basketball attendance (as one example) is normal.
Duke is among the schools who went to remote classes and grab and go food until at least Jan 18. Here’s a glimpse of the capacity basketball crowd at Duke last night. https://twitter.com/TS_Sportsbook/status/1480013554417864704
Not to pick on Duke…there are other schools with similar unreasonable/unfair/illogical approaches.
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NU is the same - the started the term remote, lots of the arts events cancelled, but sports are going on with spectators. I don’t like the inconsistencies. Not only does it weaken the impact of the restrictions, it makes the schools seem hypocritical. We do have a mask and vaccine mandate here but still, if it’s safe to attend an 8000 person basketball game, it should be safe to go to class.
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Students will be eating and drinking together whether the colleges let them or not - in dorms, at parties, out. I’m sure colleges with close by restaurants will continue to be full just like our local restaurants (and I live in the most liberal area of the country) have not had one aota of lost business with omicron.
The vast majority of college students have moved on after their three shots and most of them having gotten covid already. They are not paying attention to any of these ineffective restrictions. It’s a joke.
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Definitely a bad look on Dukes part.
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I couldn’t agree more. Just the fact that students can play basketball and squash and hockey and/or there can be any spectators, even if limited to families only…means it’s safe to be in class.
I truly don’t understand why students and parents at these schools aren’t pushing back hard. Maybe they are and we just haven’t heard about it.
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