I agree.
Also the “plan” is vague and allows the parents and students to assume the the best scenario. If BC was saying the same things as Harvard and MIT their enrollment would plummet and there would be a financial crisis. By August 1st students will be locked in for a year of tuition and at least a semester of R&B.
If you’d like a parent chaperone (fluent in French and skiing for 40+ years), I’m happy to volunteer!
So, the NU student athletes have returned to campus near my home. There is a noticeable uptick in population in and around campus. That said, I have yet to see large groups congregating. It’s mostly small groups sitting outside or walking together. We are seeing lots of students training on their own on the lakeshore. Not sure what’s going on behind closed doors but I haven’t seen anything alarming.
My impression is that the students are very happy to be back and are rule following. I would hope the same would be true at most schools that open campus. Time will tell.
I do think the diversity in plans shows that some colleges are much more committed to graduate rather than undergraduate education.
PhD student behavior is also much more likely to be able to maintain social distancing than undergraduate behavior.
Perhaps. But doctoral students are more likely to live with a spouse/partner, more likely to be out in the community shopping for food and other things, and more likely to commute to campus on public transportation, all of which raise the COVID risk. Professors likely value the research assistance graduate students provide enough to permit them to return. Sadly the same isn’t true for undergrads.
By the way, partying does not end when one turns 22. Plenty of grad students go to bars and clubs too. Easier as they are actually of age to do so.
@austinmshauri Yes. His view includes a lot of “ifs”. Bowdoin is small. Only a handful of kids live off campus. They’ve said they will test everyone upon arrival and it’s quite possible they will find kids with the virus and then they will be quarantined. We’ve also heard that they will be asked not to go “too far” but no details on that. It’s a small campus near a quiet downtown area of Bruswick. I’m sure the students will have to go to town for groceries, haircuts, etc. It’s one block from campus. They might be asked to not go to Portland or Boston but very few kids do that anyway.
We’ve also been given the impression that testing will be going on in some organized manner. They’ve told us, that without it, they will not invite kids back to campus. So, in S19’s brain, there are enough rapid sort of tests to test all kids regularly and that’s why he doesn’t see a break out. At some point, if the kids are masked up and distanced from faculty and staff, there just won’t be a place for the virus to spread to the kids and, if it does, it should be caught quickly.
The thing we have not talked about very much and I think, with Wesleyan’s specifics, we need to really think about is quarantine. Our kids need to completely understand that they could be in a room for 14 days. That’s a big deal. See, here, we know no one with the virus. Except for the seven weeks we were all staying away from other people, our daily life isn’t too much different especially now. Kids are out with friends. Masks on if they go to a store but that doesn’t happen very often. It’s going to be quite a shocker if someone like S19 who has had this virus not touch anyone he knows, test positive and have to be in a room for 14 days. I definitely want to have him tested right before we get on that plane and then hope he can make it the few days it would be before he would be tested again. I also want to get him an antibody test here. Hopefully, they will be better by August.
@roycroftmom I will say it does seem that the LACs in general, which have little if any graduate students, have coronavirus plans that treat undergraduate students really well compared to plans at universities with a large number of graduate students. It feels like in the next year, undergrads at LACs will have a much better experience than those at research universities. I am glad I am attending an LAC right now.
Wesleyan has said that testing capacity in CT is so low they are not sure they can test everyone with symptoms. It seems very unlikely that Bowdoin will have enough testing capacity to regularly test all students.
Penn State says it is going to do robust testing - I seriously have my doubts considering there are 46000 students on campus.
Unfortunately, since we have no national leadership on this, every state is on its own. Here in Illinois, we can get a test with no wait and no doc order. I’ll have to check Maine’s situation. I’ve been keeping an eye on it but haven’t checked lately.
I’m starting to think “robust testing” is taking their temperature twice a day.
Maybe we should wait to debate testing until we actually see a real plan from a school.
I think a lot of what we are seeing/will see relates to the size of the school and location of the community. I can see Bates having some ECs and Columbia/Barnard few or none.
Why is the quarantined person more restricted than the one in isolation? Who is going to police this? Or is this quarantine/isolation only going to be able to be enforced for students living on campus?
Speaking of the extra cost for testing, who is going to be bearing the financial burden of all these requirements for the isolated and quarantined students? Will there be a covid-19 surcharge that all students will be expected to pay? And what about the students who need to quarantine repeated times – will their parents be complaining that it’s not fair that they are only receiving online instruction and be demanding tuition reductions?
What I have read is that the state of CT has an oversupply of tests and are ‘begging’ people to get tested. Perhaps that comment from Wesleyan is a few weeks old?
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/CT-reaches-highest-number-of-coronavirus-tests-in-15338251.php
The 13,985 tests comes at a time when the state has been trying to increase the number of people tested ahead of the launch of Phase 2 of the reopening on Wednesday. The average number of daily tests reported in June, including Saturday, has been 6,919 — a rate of about 48,000 per week.
Lamont said last month he would like to see Connecticut test as many as 100,000 people per week by Phase 2.
[Phase 2 starts tomorrow]
We should probably keep personal political views on the federal response out of this discussion.
University of Maryland has released some details of their plan.
https://president.umd.edu/communications/statements/fall-2020-update
Because 6 feet of physical distancing limits the number of students that can be accommodated in a classroom, it is likely that most courses with 50 or more students will be at least partially online, while low-enrollment classes such as graduate and upper-division seminars will be good candidates for in-person instruction.
Maine looking pretty good with testing capacity. Moving on to focus on contact tracing.
From the story:
"The expanded testing, the result of a continued partnership between the state and Westbrook-based veterinary medicine manufacturer Idexx Laboratories, puts Maine in an good position in regard to testing capacity, said the report’s co-author, Divya Siddarth of Microsoft Research.
“Congratulations to Maine, as there aren’t that many states that are hitting our recommendations at this point,” Siddarth said in an interview. “With low prevalence of the disease and these testing capacities, I’d say ‘great job.’”
Like Tsai, she said the state now needed to focus on maximizing the performance of its contact tracing system, whereby investigators try to rapidly determine who a newly confirmed COVID-19 patient was infected by and who they may have infected in the interim, so that they can also be tested."
I don’t think any of the Maine colleges have disclosed their exact testing policy yet but it’s seems there are tests.
Is the testing more for your peace of mind?
If the school feels he has been potentially exposed to a known positive case, they will want him to either isolate or quarantine regardless of previous tests. The antibody tests are far from perfect and are giving false positives for antibodies. I doubt a school will relax their policies because a student produces a positive antibody test unless they can also prove with documentation that they previously tested positive for covid and were under a doctor’s care. (Even then perhaps not since there aren’t many studies on how long immunity lasts.)
All students should be prepared to have to quarantine if requested for 14 days (if not longer as symptoms like fever with covid can drag on).
This is what Wesleyan said in yesterday’s update: