I haven’t seen any school say whether students can have guests in their rooms. Definitely something to keep an eye out for.
Agree that it sounds awful. Haverford has mentioned in meetings that dining will likely be boxed meals to go and my daughter said it’ll be so depressing to eat all her meals alone in her room. I told her that life would feel substantially more normal at home than at school in the fall- she’s still working on aligning herself to that.
Imagine the posts we will get on this forum about homesickness and loneliness from freshman this coming fall! We always get them but I’m afraid these will be at a whole new level, if eating alone/spaced out and possibly living In a hotel becomes a common freshman experience.
It is to my D21’s personal benefit (for admissions 21) if few new graduates take gap years this coming year, but I can certainly understand wanting to take one (even if it means there is little to do) if this is the new normal.
Yep, that’s what they’ll all want to do but don’t you think that defeats the purpose of making the social distancing rules to start with? If a group are going to sit in a small room together and eat it seems like they should just be allowed to eat at a table together. I suspect schools will discourage they eating in rooms other than their own.
It will be hardest on the freshman who don’t know a lot of other students.
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Wow. I just can’t imagine if kids aren’t allowed to have friends in their dorm room. How would anyone even stop that? I haven’t seen any school give out such specific guidelines. I thought I saw somewhere that some schools weren’t planning on having kids wear masks in dorms. Colleges want to talk about how to keep kids mentally healthy and bringing them back to school would help…but not really if they literally can’t see anyone unless they are outside or in a physically distanced classroom. This gives us a lot to think about and I’m making a list of questions to be answered if Bowdoin decides to go back. We all need to know what the kids are getting into. Yes, they might change as the fall goes on but the rules could get either more or less intense depending on how it goes.
@PrdMomto1 well, it helps a little to go eat with friends in a room? At least it’s not 200 kids eating in one cafeteria? But, I will say, the rooms will be disgusting if kids eat meals in them.
When D21 and I visited Bowdoin in Feb, S19 took us to all of his different study spots (none in the library) and there were so many places to sit at tables and study in almost every building. Sometimes, classrooms were open. Most buildings had open spaces on multiple floors with tables where kids could sit and work. I could see kids heading to those spaces too. But what a pain when it’s bad weather.
There’s going to be a lot to consider. I wonder how many kids will try it for fall and then just decide to stay home for spring and take class remotely.
Probably the safer (in terms of avoiding virus transmission) way to eat with others is to find a place outside to eat together (not too closely spaced, and with no one directly downwind of someone else).
Eating together in one person’s dorm room is probably the most risky (in terms of virus transmission) venue to eat meals.
@ucbalumnus Yet, many restaurants will likely allow inside seating up to 50% capacity in the next phase. Illinois looking to enter that phase on June 26th now. So I don’t know if to-go meals is the best way for schools to go. They then can’t control where kids go to eat (which obviously requires masks off). Maybe they should focus on seating kids in the cafeterias with some new rules.
so, when schools say meals are to-go, students might want to reach out now and find out - go where exactly?
Imagine the garbage and food waste spread into the dorms. Yuck. I dislike it when my kids take a plate to their rooms because they are bad at cleaning up afterwards. My S is headed to Tulane, where they said they will have the dining hall in action, with a line rather than a buffet style. So it might take a while to eat. I don’t think they have ironed out all the details but they did mention an Open Table type thing (sounds tough for freshmen trying to meet new people). they are building an additional structure for dining to make it roomier for spacing out diners. they also said they will expand food trucks on campus. they have warm weather but they do get heavy rain, so can’t always sit on the grass or whatever.
In other words, because higher risk situations are available, colleges need to follow them?
Now, I can see if a college’s dining hall had large windows or patio doors on both/all sides that were opened during meal times, or a large outdoor seating area, it would be a lower risk situation than most restaurants. But not all college dining halls are like that.
Perhaps college dining halls and other restaurants can install fume hoods over all of the tables to blow exhaled air from those at the table outside. Note that barbeque-at-your-table restaurants already have them: http://koreanbbqgrills.com/ .
I’m glad my son and his friends opted for the off campus apartment that opened up last week. We managed to get the move in date adjusted earlier so no worries about when the semester starts. Now they also don’t need to worry about strange dining hall arrangements/rules or dorm rooms being randomly reassigned. At first we weren’t sure we wanted him off campus as a sophomore but now I feel relieved that he’s got his place to live with his friends no matter what the school might do.
Now I just need to hope they don’t make him redo class registration. He got lucky with his registration the first time, managing to get into every class he wanted at reasonable times.
@ucbalumnus yeah who knows. Of course the tricky thing is this (and colleges all admit it) - they can make detailed plans now and get ready for them. Those are the plans we will all initially see and maybe have to make decisions on. Then, things are going to change and they’ll have to be nimble and students will have to be nimble too. It’s going to be a crazy ride. We can’t just look at the initial plan and think it will be like that. Plans in August might not even look like the July plans!
Most people don’t eat at restaurants at every meal (even without Covid-19) and anyone living in a house or apartment has the option to eat or not eat in a restaurant, whereas many colleges students don’t have the option to cook/eat independently.
So even with restaurants legally open, I would think the risk is fairly small if eating out only occasionally, compared to eating almost every meal in a cafeteria (except in a completely closed campus, quarantined from the outside world, which of course, Is impossible).
Harvard is looking to make cuts
If other schools will see revenue shortfalls similar to Harvard they will need to seriously deplete their endowments.
Having lived in VA previously, I have heard already of VT families who were not happy with the news. I also heard VT is also not offering food plans to the off campus students either. That is difficult.
D is at Duke. She was on board with the many changes anticipated for the semester but there has got to be an easier way than a housing re-do and class -redo for every student, both coming after it’s too late to withdrawal…
Again, I think it will depend on the campus and the cafeteria. We will see so many different variations on this. Some cafeterias we’ve seen like Kenyon’s have super tall ceilings and there are doors along each outside wall so they could all be opened. I have read that higher ceilings help. That caf might even have big fans. I can’t remember. Anyway, my point is that each school will do it’s own thing.
I know Amherst talked about tents. I could totally see some campuses with more space setting up big tents outside to serve as overflow for the cafeteria.
A friend of mine shared the latest Harvard town hall with me. Here is it. Around the 16:30 mark, the speaker is really making it sound like class will only be remote and my friend really thinks there’s a possibility that Harvard will not have kids on campus at all. That will be a big shortfall with no room and board.
I belong to a FB group for Parents/Supporters of students of D20’s school. Today someone posted a question asking why the students will be required to wear masks all school year. The discussion got extremely heated, with the comments ranging from “wear a mask to be considerate” all the way to “You just go be the sheep they want to you to be wear a mask like the good citizens you are.” An admin finally had to close the commenting, reminding them that the school is adapting continuously to the changing situation and following local, state, and federal guidelines, and reminding posters that kindness is strongly encouraged.
Are there many schools out there that are not, at this time, requiring or recommending masks for students? Of course directives change all the time, but as of right now, how many schools have not yet issued a statement about masks if they plan to offer anything on campus? I’m truly curious now.
@ucbalumnus, I read some study where the risk of transmission in airplanes was thought to be significantly decreased when the air circulation was configured a certain way so, maybe the vents/fans could be effective. It did depend on the direction to which the air was forced. Wish I had that link…