@ChemAM, Life is full of choices. Students who are at schools that don’t allow any of the options I suggested can accept the rules or not. If they aren’t willing/able to take the risk of trying to transfer then their choices are to follow the rules or accept whatever the consequences their college decides are appropriate.
@TS0104 for my D, she would go back to school in a single room and live “alone”. This past fall she slept over friends rooms, they slept over her room, they went into the city overnight, I don’t think she ate a single meal alone, there were parties (those are also her job, but that’s a whole other issue), there were her sports (club). Next semester looks drastically different imo. At home she has her sister (aka her best friend- they’re only 1.5 years apart), she has me and her dad, and she has much more space than a dorm room to wander in her personal space. I have encouraged her to read the full fall guidelines very critically when they come out before deciding whether or not to take a leave. She wants to go back because they’re saying classes will be in-person, but with changes that haven’t been announced yet. I just want her to fully consider everything once it’s on the table. I do think college could be a good bit lonelier than before and even more than home, depending on the rules. I have absolutely no doubt that she’ll follow the rules if she goes, that’s not my issue at all.
Yes, they have had extensive community involvement through working groups, charrettes and surveys - from departmental faculty and staff to incoming freshmen, and everyone in between.
Option 1 and option 3 are the two they are still considering, but their heads of houses almost unanimously (17 out of 18) recommended forgoing option 1 for a number of reasons, not the least of which is their belief it is not reasonable to expect full
compliance with physical distancing rules on the part of students.
While no option is perfect, as a parent of an incoming freshman, I actually like option 3 the best. It provides a combination of peace of mind of keeping our student at home during the fall with the possibility of him having a spring semester on campus if things remain manageable.
Internal feedback also hints at a possibility of reduced tuition for online semesters. We’ll see how things actually shake out. Should not be long now.
Overall, I am impressed with the measured, sober, and deliberate approach MIT has taken in their internal discussions and planning.
@gab1919 there was a lot of discussion about that many pages back. There are a couple of reasons why not that many people are keeping it on the table as an option.
- Some schools won’t allow it.
- Others will allow it, but then say they can’t guarantee what year your student would be able to come back because they don’t want too many kids on campus at the same time (so if half of sophomores and half of juniors took a year off and tried to all come back the following academic year, that would be way too many kids on campus at the same time with new freshmen coming in too). Not knowing when you’d be allowed to resume your studies is a pretty big deterrent.
- None of us know if the following year will be any better. You might need to take 2 or 3 gap years before a more normal in-campus experience can be had.
- If a lot of students take a gap year, then there will be a bigger lumping of students upon graduating, which impacts competitiveness for jobs and grad school.
- If a student takes a gap year, life might end up getting in the way and the student ends up either never graduating, or graduating many years later.
- Some people felt like there won’t be many other things for the kids to do during a gap year, but many people disagreed with this.
- Taking a year off can set your student back academically, depending on how much of their studies they forget over the year or how much difficulty they end up having falling back into a student routine
- staying home with parents while friends are all back in school can be depressing/ socially isolating.
Kids here have chosen their bubble of friends. S19 started a month ago with just two friends and has slowly increased how many people he sees sans masks. This is a thing, you know, to choose a bubble. So he now hangs out with a bunch of friends. They do not wear masks. They don’t get too close to each other. Don’t touch as far as I know but do not stay six feet apart. Illinois is doing well and our zip code even better. 98 percent of our cases were in a nursing home. The zip code had five new cases last week and just one this week. Not one student in our town has been diagnosed with Covid. They’ve all been out socializing without masks for a while now. They wear masks when mandated by Illinois and they all wore them when we had 300 people at a protest in our little town. But masks are off when kids are with their agreed-upon bubble of friends.
When he goes to school, if he has to be masked pretty much all of the time and live alone in a room where he cannot have visitors, and where he cannot go to other dorms if his friends are in them, that’s a really big change and I’m not convinced it’s needed. Testing will be happening a lot. I assume kids will be really good about wearing masks in class and in the cafeteria when not eating and I’m all college buildings. Kids need a place they can be with their friends and not with masks and six feet apart. Those off campus get to do that. Faculty get to do that. So those who are paying the college to live in their dorms have the least to say about that? How can a college tell those kids they can have no visitors when they know kids off campus will not wear masks inside their houses and they’ll be around other kids who are their roommates. That’s a double standard.
I think we have a lot of parents here from hot spots who cannot imagine that some kids are seeing friends without masks. But, even though Illinois had its fair share of cases, our zip code did not.
Things are certainly different in other parts of the country, but there has not been any deaths in my rural county and the numbers in more densely populated areas of my state are trending down. My kids have been socializing with their friends for weeks now.
If MIT decides to go with Option 3 (where only seniors would be allowed on-campus the whole year and everybody else would get a semester on-campus), they better be allowing all their non-seniors to take a gap semester/year or prepare for a lawsuit. In addition to the issue of charging the same tuition for an objectively worse learning experience, schools like MIT also largely market themselves off of the experience, and one could legally compare taking away this experience and putting it online (without the option of taking time off) while charging the same tuition for a different product that the customers are already locked into to fraud. While, for the spring, I thought the lawsuits were ridiculous because it was ultimately short-sighted to sue one’s own school for a decision largely made in a panic due to a pandemic, my parents (including one who is a lawyer) and I agreed that there was definitely a legal argument to be made that could conflate charging the same tuition for an online learning experience as fraud. I would say if they do the same thing for fall semester though, especially if they don’t let students take time off and/or let some students return but not others, than a lawsuit should definitely be on the table.
It’s not a double standard for a landlord, which is what the college basically is, to have a set of rules for their renters that they aren’t able to impose on properties owned by other people. The authority of college administrators doesn’t extend to private homes.
As I wrote, based on what I heard and read of their deliberations, it looks like the tuition may be reduced for online semesters.
They also promised flexibility with gap year requests, but minimizing their number is understandably one of their many priorities.
They will be announcing their decision in the next 2-3 weeks.
@TS0104 As I’m sure you know the whole country is not shut down anymore. My D stayed in her college town this spring when things closed down. Her county is now green and restrictions are being lifted. Last night she called home from a bar, because bars were open and she was so excited. She said capacity was restricted and bartenders were wearing masks but she was there with her friends out drinking. So the whole world isn’t still seeing friends only online and outside.
I expect everyone who can will opt for off campus housing at MIT, leaving just the freshmen in the dorms. So much for that residential college community feeling.
@austinmshauri but I bet landlords for off campus apartments are not telling kids they cannot have visitors. Just like the faculty and staff, students off campus can make their own decisions about that. Students on campus will be more restricted. What is the point? If off campus kids and faculty come to campus after having been near their “bubble”, they will bring the virus to campus. So why have the students in the dorms have different rules. It will not matter if the risk is already there with off campus students and faculty leaving campus, doing their thing, and then coming to campus. I really just don’t get it.
You say students can decide not to come back. Well, the off campus kids don’t have to make that decision. They can come back, socialize, go to class with masks. Why would it just be the kid in the dorms who have to face that choice?
If an off-campus fraternity has men living in the house and they don’t wear masks in the house and they all little by little get sick, they inevitably would have been on campus during the time it takes for the first few of them to be positive. Why the different rules for the kids in the dorms? I really am just curious why anyone thinks that makes sense.
Schools are going to set the rules for their buildings, whether classrooms or dorms or the medical facilities. Some employers ARE asking their employees to maintain social distancing when they aren’t ‘at the office.’ The nurse from Wisconsin was reprimanded for going drinking at a bar. Some are requiring employees who travel to take another 2 weeks of vacation (or unpaid leave) to quarantine.
@homerdog, your kids may pick 10 friends who you are SURE are not leaving the zip code, but what about their siblings, their neighbors, their parents? You can only control your own contacts, but every contact you have has had dozens of other contacts. If every kid in the dorm only has 10 contacts, you have to assume that your 10 contacts also have 10 contacts (and some may have 50).
I’ve been careful since the beginning of March, even before it was mandated. I wear my mask, I wash my hands, I haven’t seen any of my friends, my hair is long and gray. My kids? Not at all. They just aren’t concerned. If their friends are social distancing, that’s fine and they just don’t visit them.
So if schools open and they don’t set rules, are they going to get someone living in the dorm like me who has been social distancing or like my kids who haven’t been? How would another student know if one of the 10 in their bubble was like my kids who live in low risk areas but practiced no distancing?
I agree on all parts. My son will work remotely this fall in almost any circumstance. And btw our family has certainly followed the “rules” regardless of teenagehood.
My child will be at MIT next year as well, Vulcan, and their impression was that most staff (excluding heads of house & upper admin) were advocating for option 1. The kids (Undergrad Association) were advocating for option 1 if it can be implemented safely. Grad students were advocating for undergrads to be 100% off campus (lol). Of course, I imagine Heads of House & upper administration carry the most weight in this decision.
Employers have business telling people how to live their lives. They tell them what work to do, and shouldn’t be able to dictate aspects of your life outside work as long as it doesn’t interfere with said work.
And yes, I have held a paid position (job).
Looks like we will have varying practices regarding masks at colleges this fall, from the Chronicle, today:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Some-States-This-Fall/248983
@twoinanddone well, the part you’re missing is the testing. Kids will likely be tested when they get to campus. That’s a baseline. I don’t know how it will work after that, if they’ll just make them gets tests if they have a temp or other symptoms or randomly test kids. Once someone gets sick then I imagine they’ll have to fess up and say who they’ve been near, without a mask, for more than 15 minutes over the last few days. Those kids will then be contacted. I’m not sure I see how this gets out of hand at a small school if kids are tested at the beginning and continue being tested with the option to quarantine them.
I understand that S19 having ten friends now means he’s also “friends” with their families and with everyone those families come in contact with. On a campus like some LACs with almost all kids living on campus, they are one big bubble. The wild card would be if a student went into town without a mask or traveled somewhere else. I think some of these schools are going to ask kids not to do that, to try to stay on or very near campus. Faculty will go home but I honestly don’t have an issue with their “freedom” because, when they are on campus, they have masks on and are likely social distancing from students.
I think schools will need to walk the line between being careful and being realistic. Do they honestly think that kids who are dating are going to stay six feet away with masks? Do they think study groups of bigger than three kids can pull that off? And, as has been mentioned already, if states allow 50 percent capacity in places like restaurants that means “bubble friends” are sitting at the same table and eating without masks. They are six feet away from people not in their bubble. These state wide rules don’t have one person sitting per table. And, if those people are allowed to sit together at a table, they can also sit in someone’s dorm room. It is exactly the same thing. Even better because they are in a different room from other students, not just at a table six feet away.
@curiousme2 This doesn’t surprise me at all, considering how vocal Amherst professors have been about wanting students to return in fall, but it is interesting that some on this thread are arguing for some students to be kept at home for the “safety” of professors when at some colleges, the majority of professors want the students to return.
While faculty may not be up close and personal with students with the possible exception of office hours and research labs, the staff members who clean the bathrooms will have more personal contact.