A 74 year old is far more likely to get seriously ill or die from Covid than an 18 year old though so no the reverse isn’t equivalent.
One might reasonably inquire why a 74 year old chose to teach this semester. His employment was voluntary. He chose to teach. No one forced him to do so. At his age, there were wiser choices than blaming his students.
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Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
and
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
The better strategy for problem posts is to flag for our review instead of taking the bait and sending the discussion into a death spiral. Sometimes the best response Ask s no response.
In light of recent problem posts which I deleted, I have put the thread on slow mode until morning. My hope is this will prompt the more exuberant users to be strategic in postings.
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Harvard has announced big changes for the spring semester. It will be interesting to see if others follow suit.
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The NYT has an update on Harvard’s plan as well as goings-on at Rice, Cornell, and WV.
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I would love to see D20s Boston-area school follow suit, but it doesn’t seem likely.
D20 returned to school yesterday. School accepted rapid at home test results at check-in. She was then PCR tested before she could be admitted to her residence hall. Should have results today and once she does, assuming it is negative, she will be free to access academic buildings. Online classes start tomorrow and the plan is to resume in-person next Monday. D said she knows many students who are currently isolating at home with Covid. Her school will allow them to return to classes, but not the dorms, after 5 days. Except for attending classes, Must continue to isolate (at home or in the isolation dorm) for days 6-10.
This video was taken out of context and in a follow up interview, the prof said that specific line, about grades being “pre-determined” was in jest. This is my son’s college and his class was full the day after this video was emailed to students. He is a very popular professor.
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Rice sent out an update today. Classes started online last week but they say they will be in person starting next week. Students still are not supposed to eat inside for the next week or 2. Masks inside but no gathering size restrictions (there were last week). Message ended with “We expect to return to a more normal semester over the next couple of weeks as the current coronavirus wave recedes.”
Students have been trickling back to campus over a 2 week period. A large number came prior to online courses starting and some others came this last weekend. A final large group should arrive next weekend. So far their 7 day positivity rate is about 4.65%. It’s actually lowered since the undergrads have arrived. They had their most positives the day before the undergrads started arriving. The staff and grad students were having the most positives but those groups are improving. It seems to be burning it way through. It’s been interesting to watch the numbers. I assume we’ll see another spike early next week when the last group of students arrive.
His comments were hilarious. Students being vectors of disease, LOL, grades randomly determined - characters like this are often the most popular profs.
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I’m in now way defending this particular professor’s statements, but one might reasonably inquire why a 74 year old professor would be forced to choose between his health and his livelihood.
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Great news - moving in the right direction. I hope Tufts follows - we are testing every other day now - which is a bit much!
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We have different senses of humor.
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Colleges use normal working ages in determining safety conditions. There is likely no workplace that is completely safe for those aged 95, but hopefully few of those extremes are employed there. A central complaint regarding many colleges is their failure to tailor their fear response to the actual demographics of their specific campus.
Some professors have decided to move and teach remotely because “they can”. I guess for certain subjects the schools dont have replacements. A professor emailed students that they decided to live in CA so therefore class is remote. (school on east coast). I guess Covid opened up the gates for overall increase in remote learning. I feel bad for the students that dont do well with zoom.
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Predestined. I thought it was hilarious, Calvinist grading. It makes as much sense as any other grading scheme we’ve got: if we gave students the actual grades they earned, I don’t know how many universities would still be open. I used to be all huffy about grade inflation until we got to the point where we’d made it impossible for a large chunk of students to go to college at all without it because we’d tied fin aid so hard to ridiculous GPAs. And at that point I was all, fine, kid, you need a what now for your scholarship, here you go. I’ve been to college three times and I’ve got no school debt, who the hell am I to stand in your way.
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Those aged 95? We just skipped ahead 21 years. There are plenty of professors teaching in their 70s, and many of them are tremendous assets. Or we could make it 35 with a medical condition and the point remains the same.