The students will have some exposure to the virus. I think we all have to come to terms with that as parents. Once we accept that as mostly likely, in fact our decisions become less complicated. One way or another.
The key is to how to protect professors, staff, dining hall teams and others in that community so they want to continue to offer their services on campus.
The experience of the hair stylists who exposed 142 clients while carrying the virus may be helpful. They used masks, distancing and cleaning under the health guidelines. Every single client was tracked and tested multiple times. Zero virus transfer. Lucky perhaps. I don’t think so. Socially distance staff from students. Students when possible. Masks on campus outside of dorm rooms and in common areas.
It’s realistically a matter of whether you can convince staff with options - economically or job offers elsewhere- to want to work on campus under these conditions.
Penn State going back to in person classes August 24 until Nov 20th. Classes larger than 250 students will be online.
Mask wearing required.
School says it will have contact tracing and “robust” testing .
I’m wondering where you are getting the latter information. At my school, it is entirely untrue that all people are given the chance to come back. We are expected to unless we can prove a specific reason. It is not up to us (or maybe you mean I could just quit? Perhaps you’d like to hire me for something. I do need to continue to eat.)
@alh wow. If you posted that earlier, I missed it.
That party was last spring at the frat house. Not sure if anyone got sick. It’s just sad that, since months have passed since then, the frat boys have not been convinced that they need to reign it in and wear masks. Any chance that the university’s big push for masks will convince the students? That program hasn’t started yet. It will be interesting, I guess, to see how larger campuses police parties or even smaller gatherings. As for the maintenance worker whose colleagues didn’t have masks on, they are employees of the university and wouldn’t they have to sign something that says they will wear masks or risk being fired?
Smaller schools are just going to have an easier time of it when it comes to enforcing rules. A 2000 student, all-residential campus is way easier to control than UNC with 30,000 students.
@ChemAM what I meant was that universities must not think they will have such large outbreaks or they would not invite kids back to campus. I just don’t think they are going to risk having thousands of kids and employees sick. If there was enough proof that would happen, we would all be online this fall.
Just to clarify…I assume you are a prof? Are you being offered the opportunity to teach remotely, or is that what you mean you would need a specific reason for?
Are your courses going to be live streamed or taped, so students who also can’t be in person (sick, international at home, immunecomprised, etc.) would be able to take that course?
And not to cast aspersions at any worker facing these issues. My wife had to make a health decision to not to return to work last week.
The…however. Can the media please stop with this articles like it’s a new phenomenon in the world - that is, for millions outside of academia, white collar or service industries.
Coal miners, navy seals, crab fisherman, rescue personnel, emt, doctors in remote regions, iron workers, even the window washers on every building in big cities in the country.
We talk about taking samples from the sewer systems of a colleges to see how we are doing with the virus - very little about the people collecting such samples or working to keep those systems going every day.
Health concerns and the need to make a living for survival have been choices for the working class since we left our caves.
@AlwaysMoving my point exactly. In the US, and in your case CO, our protocol includes masks AND six feet of distance. That’s way different than wear masks and go about your business and not worry about distancing like they are doing in Taiwan schools.
Students walking around in hallways or even outside on some campuses during a passing period will be closer than six feet apart. Students are not going to physically distance from each other as they walk to class but they will have masks on. Maybe inside, in a classroom, schools still keep the kids a little farther apart if there are 50 kids in a big room but is it necessary to keep ten kids far apart in a smaller classroom? Remember, someone with the virus just regular breathing with a mask on isn’t going to throw virus three feet and infect someone else who also has a mask on. Maybe if someone who is unknowingly infected goes out with a mask on and coughs really hard, they might infect someone within three feet who does not have a mask on.
My point is that schools are writing up their plans that include masks and six feet distance. Taiwanese schools aren’t doing that. Masks are the key to their plan, not the distancing. That could be a big difference for us. Kids could (within the rules) sit a table together to study or have a club meeting. Friends could watch a football game on television in a common room piled on couches if they kept masks on. Etc.
@MBNC1755 , interesting, but nothing that we don’t know about young people. I really think the larger the school the harder it will be to get compliance.
But the young people I know (ages 15-27) have really been doing a great job of following the guidelines here in PA. Again, maybe because it is a hot spot.
But schools are going to, for the most part, open. I just hope they all give both teachers and students the opportunity to learn/teach remotely .
As far as students go- no not every school is offering remote services, some expect students to be in the dorms (if opened) or they will lose their scholarships.
Yes that is a choice to attend but considering at this date (too late to select another school- already turned down other similar scholarships to commit to current school) the financial repercussions are such that some students and families are taking a risk they would much rather they didn’t have to. Choice? Yes but not an easy one for families struggling with the cost of higher education.
What school is doing that? How can immune-compromised or international students be in person?
I encourage you to contact the other schools that offered scholarships and see if attending at that price is still an option (if seriously considering changing schools). Also, there are still 700+ schools on the NACAC list of colleges with openings, most still offering FA. https://www.nacacnet.org/news–publications/Research/CollegeOpenings/
Many students could have the opportunity to still make a change for the fall, which I know is less than ideal though.
@MBNC1755 I get it. My kid has a scholarship and without it we could not afford his tuition.
If schools are opening in the fall, I think it is reprehensible not to provide a choice for online learning and teaching. It’s the right thing to do.
If having their house mother resign over personal health concerns didn’t convince those fraternity members to backtrack and promise to agree to follow university guidelines…
No … I don’t think the university’s big push for masks will convince them.
Haven’t you posted you don’t think masks will be worn in fraternity houses?
All this op ed says is that teenagers take risks and are not good decision makers. That’s not anything that anyone is debating. Colleges are ramping up efforts to convince students that it’s up to them if campus stays open. They can hope that peer pressure works and kids wear the masks. If they have the resources, they can really police the situation and hand out some punishments. They can hire people to stand at the entrances of buildings to make sure kids have masks on like the grocery stores around here do. It’s not going to be perfect but the colleges will hopefully do everything they can to convince kids it’s in their best interests to comply. Maybe they will only catch the biggest offenders who have the largest parties but that will set a tone.
I did read Purdue’s plan. They say that they are going to work with the town of Lafayette in hopes that the town will also comply with Purdue’s masking and social distancing rules and admit that Purdue’s rules will likely be more strict. They are reaching out to landlords with the same message.
Well because you quoted me, and also tagged me, I will respond.
CDC has given colleges guidelines for reopening, under different covid-19 conditions.
CDC has not yet released testing guidelines for colleges, but my understanding is that CDC will imminently release testing guidelines for colleges once someone in the campus community has tested positive.
Per the CDC conference call for colleges in late May (posted on the website) it does not seem they intend on issuing a rec to test all students upon arrival on campus.
There are already CDC guidelines and recommendations for colleges including contact tracing, quarantining/isolating, cloth face masks, and cleaning and disinfecting of campus.
I understand that some people might not care that colleges are following CDC guidelines in their re-opening plans, but some people do care. Further, if a given college doesn’t follow the guidelines, how can they expect faculty, staff, and students to folllow the guidelines?
All students will be given an opportunity to take their classes remotely. At the same time, the expectation is most to all instructors of 100 and 200 classes will be f2f. Little more information is available at this time.
@alh yes. I did say I thought fraternities would not mandate masks in their houses but I didn’t know that they had house moms. When I was in college, frat were such dumps. The members were responsible for cleaning them themselves and divided up those duties. Of course, I think it’s awful that these young men did not respond to the pleas of their house mom.
Other kids living in houses off campus likely clean their own spaces and make their own food. Not sure what would be expected of them in their houses.
It has nothing to do with the “death rate”. The more students there are on campus, the more inertia there will be against closing again. Admiinistrators will have no choice but to keep everyone on campus - even in quarantine - until they re no longer shedding virus. A hundred very expensive residential colleges nursing infectious kids until Thanksgiving. That’s the new reality.
And to other comments, yes, sadly, some professions are inherently dangerous, and we should always work to provide and develop more and more safe practices in our society for those. And protections for those who feel they must do these jobs (though some, like coal mining, will definitely be phased out in the coming years).
I am more than willing to pay higher taxes to put in more protections, and pay those we can’t safely do their jobs.
I understand jobs being dangerous: as I said upthread, my H’s health was permanently endangered from his days in medicine, because of acquiring a raging case of tuberculosis which left large holes in his lungs.
Meanwhile, for those of us who CAN safely and responsibly perform a job remotely, it’s not a matter of danger being a part of the job, but a part of the optics. If everyone from Cal State to Harvard think it can be done, why assume it can’t?
But to my point that brought me back to this thread–do not assume professors and staff at colleges can “choose” to work remotely. By and large, that is NOT true in rank and file colleges.