I expect some mental health professionals might feel differently.
Complete agreement that nothing is exactly the same as anything else.
@beebee3 Grinnell’s plan sounds insane to me; how can they invite only some students back when they are all paying the same tuition and remote learning (no matter how much you try to improve it) is much less conducive to learning than face-to-face learning? They better allow anyone who wishes to take a semester/year off. That could very well lead to a lawsuit.
I know RPI also intends on doing that, and MIT is thinking about it, and yes, I think they are crazy to do that too. Stanford’s plan is different, because everybody gets an equal amount of time on-campus under their plan.
Grinnell’s plan does seem over the top. S19 did two overnights there so we know the campus well. It is very remote. And I don’t think Iowa has a lot of cases. I don’t know why they are opting for these plans that seem so much more restrictive than other plans out there.
Unless there is rapid testing of every student every day (to find presymptomatically contagious students before they spread the virus), that may not be enough, if students behave the way that people here say that they will behave.
@ucbalumnus again, are faculty being tested every day? Are they allowed to go home and hug their spouses and kids who will have also been out in the world each day? It’s a double standard to say students cannot have close relationships but facility and staff can
I think its very remoteness is why Grinnell’s plan is written as is. They don’t have the infrastructure to deal with an enormous outbreak.
Reading the plan, it was one of the first that I thought actually was put into place to address a massive health pandemic. As far as I was concerned, it impressed the heck out of me.
@homerdog Since you’ve been there, do they have much housing near-campus? If not, there could not be a way for them to expand off-campus and give as many students as possible a single, like some other colleges (such as Duke) are doing.
I’m actually not a huge fan of Facetime or Skype or any of those other apps. What ever happened to just sitting in a quiet room and concentrating on someone’s voice; what they’re saying, as opposed to what they (or whatever is in back of them) looks like? This may be a generational thing. In fact, I’m convinced of it.
Yes. My kids haven’t seen their friends in person since the SAH orders were implemented.
The rules for students are not different than those for everyone else. The rules aren’t maintain social distancing unless you are under the age of xxx. If everyone else is expected to adhere to social distancing, why wouldn’t students be?
I have only heard this theory in regard to the elderly or those in group homes. We can’t isolate them from society because they need hands-on care, and their caregivers live out in the world. However, even in this case, with adequate PPE and separate Covid wings, transmission has been stopped in nursing homes in our area. Even ICU doctors in NYC were able to avoid getting the virus despite performing intubations inches from the patients faces while they gag, cough and aerosolize it.
There will be nowhere near that kind of contact between students and professors. Plus, why would levels of the virus be higher in kids who have close contact with a small group of friends, than they would be in professors who go home to their kids who have been to school, and their spouse who works in an office.
Maybe the rules will be relaxed once we know more about transmission. Maybe kids could form small “families” who are allowed in each other’s rooms.
No one…not CDC, or NIAID, or WHO, or Dr. Fauci, is recommending colleges do testing every day of every student. There are established models that calculate how many people a college will have to be testing in X timeframe to be comfortable they are catching any cases.
I feel like you are trying to stoke fear in people.
A lot of things aren’t the same as there were when people signed the housing contracts last year. The schools can’t make it like it was and still try to insure the safety of students. If you have a child who has special needs or is medically compromised, you’d want all the social distancing the dorms can provide.
There isn’t a way to make everyone happy.
@circuitrider I’m not talking about Facetime or Skype either. I’m talking about regular, long phone calls.
I think many kids use their phones for actual conversations, not just to check in. I know both of mine do - frequently. Phone calls serve as a great tool to connect folks when in person contact is not possible, however they are not the same thing as face to face interaction.
And, you said they were good but not the same. Totally agree.
Many colleges seem to be calculating capacities of each dorm room and classroom based on a radius of 6-feet or more for each student.
Will professors, administrators and staff be required to sign a contract saying they will not allow another person into their bedroom? Will there be restrictions on how many people can be in their kitchen or living room and who those people can be? Will they forgo all indoor gatherings with anyone except one roommate (who is not their romantic partner) for three months?
From what the housing department at my D’s school has written, the rules are definitely different for students unless they can live off campus.
Schools have to be very, very cautious in the beginning, but hopefully if things progress on a campus without infections, then they can perhaps relax the standards. If they are able to test all students once they arrive and there are no positives, which could be possible at a small school, then it would seem there could be some relaxing of rules down the line. And if that school is in a town with relatively few cases, than that makes the case even more.
I don’t believe college’s will completely close again this year, but I do believe that when the community transmission rate falls below 1 there will be an easing of restriction an when the community transmission rate rises above 1 there will be more restrictions.
Parents and students need to know how that will work. It might even motivate students to adhere to the rules in order to have the rules removed as the transmission rate falls.