I think a small (but important) difference for my dancer is that dance is her major- it IS school for her. She would still happily sit out for a week or so if required. My other D is a dancer for fun, she’d skip it. She’s a gymnast- she hadn’t been in a gym since February and contented herself with home workouts. She went back yesterday for a 5 person, socially distanced practice and happily wore a mask the whole time. She is planning to order a roll beam for school in the fall to use in the quad- she’s thinking she won’t be allowed to leave campus to train. Her crew team has also been discussing how to train within any school rules and guidelines, if at all, She’s rolling with it when it comes to sports.
Another update on MIZZOU
Planning for in-person this August. Students wear masks indoors & professors wear face shields.
Back-up plan for hybrid/on-line.
@“Cardinal Fang” no I don’t think so but what I meant is that none of them seems to know anyone who has it now. I’m guessing they all know someone who had it at some point although s19 does not. My larger point is that they are all living fairly regular lives right now.
@Rivet2000 campus life doesn’t exist so much for S19 without running. It’s a three season sport. The other main part is hanging with friends at the cafeteria and in their rooms. If all of that is gone, then that’s not campus life. He might get in-person class and that would be a big plus and worth going back for alone but campus “life” is not just class.
No. You have made it clear you don’t believe universities can safely reopen and should stay closed, and you are using the closure of two extremely wealthy universities while disregarding the opening of many other wealthy universities to support your point-of-view (equivalent to a scientist omitting data points to make a graph better fit a best-fit line) while also using it to degrade people who do not have the same opinion at you. I will repeat, the elitism of the two MIT alumni here is really over the top.
@circuitrider yes. No one’s business though.
That doesn’t mean he couldn’t hang out with his track friends and have a social life (albeit one with restrictions). I mean I get it sucks to lose a season of sports, but is it really worse than staying at home?
nm
Yes, I think there’ll be some resentment. Keep in mind that fall athletes usually return in the summer (at many but not all schools) so the differences might not be as apparent. And in some cases there might be very little substantive difference.
At the same time, if the schools are determined to run athletic programs this fall, they do need to create sport specific protocols that might differ from protocols for non athletes.
An option might to be reset expectations for “campus life” for fall 2020. Staying at home might be the best options for some/many.
Some Fall athletes are back on campus at Northwestern. The community newsletter said:
EVANSTON, Ill. – Northwestern Athletics staff and student-athletes have commenced a phased return to Evanston, with the first voluntary workouts for a limited number of teams currently scheduled to begin on Monday, June 22.
This early step is in line with Northwestern University’s overall policy for a phased return to campus that seeks to mitigate the risks of spread of COVID-19 as staff, faculty and certain students start returning in selected areas and repopulating the campus by steps.
Sports medicine and athletic training staff, and student-athletes with post-surgical and post-injury rehabilitation needs, were the first to return to campus during the opening week of June. Additional pods of Wildcats will arrive on campus during the week of June 15.
All members of the Northwestern community have been required to complete an online training module on core COVID-19 responsibilities and other essential precautionary practices before return. All student-athletes will have a full physical upon arrival in Evanston, including COVID-19 testing, and continuing health assessments will be executed daily throughout the summer.
All student-athletes will be screened before entering facilities with a wellness check and temperature scan with a no-touch thermometer. In the clinic and all workout settings, both social distancing personal protective equipment guidelines will be rigidly enforced.
Facility access is and will continue to be managed through one entrance, while exiting visitors depart using a defined path clearly marked by new directional signage. All security will be managed through Wildcard scans, as biometric access readers have been disabled. All locker rooms and lounges are closed, and meals will be available via individual grab-and-go packages in Nona Jo’s Dining Center.
Northwestern football and men’s and women’s basketball are presently slated to begin limited voluntary workouts on campus beginning Monday, June 22.
I’m not sure why you answered that ridiculous question. What was the point of that question @circuitrider ?
I do not believe I said anything of the sort. Can you jog my memory with a message number?
Again, have I said anything belittling employees or students of any school?
All I said is that there is a correlation between the speed and certainly of reopening announcements and the school’s finances and reputation. It does not imply causation, but, to borrow a line from Randall Munroe, “it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’”
https://xkcd.com/552 (read the mousover)
Even the richest and most coveted schools are looking at potential flood of deferrals and severe financial consequences. For most schools, there is simply no choice.
And, no, I am not an MIT alum 
The more likely correlation and perhaps causation is a university’s commitment to undergraduate education. Frankly, both Harvard and MIT are more committed to graduate education, which is fine. Some schools should be. But schools whose reason for existence is undergrad education will try very hard to fulfill that as well as possible, which is in person.
The majority of students at my son’s college are from the tri-state area so what Homerdog’s son’s experience is certainly quite different than that of my son’s classmates.
We live in MD and until recently when things started opening up again, the kids here were most certainly not behaving the way kids apparently are in Homerdog’s world where hardly anyone has COVID. Teens here, even children, wear masks when necessary.
We know a couple of college kids who have/had COVID, kids who were not staying away from friends or practicing social distancing.
I posted many pages ago about one of them, my good friend’s son, who just graduated from Univ of S. Carolina. He and his roommate had COVID. According to my friend, her son told her approximately 70 other students/recent grads who were still living in off-campus housing had COVID. A large group of them had spent Memorial Day weekend at the beach together before getting sick.
I agree with you. Most colleges cannot afford to NOT open, because of the effects on this year’s numbers and especially next year’s where they would have to cut back new students to fit the ones that gapped this year. Also, they will lose many students who’s parents don’t want to pay for online learning and will look for another option. An example of this is right here on this thread - a college definitively said they would be online and a parent is looking for other colleges to have as a different option instead.
I think its more palatable to MIT students because of the tech/nerd factor and of course the brand name degree that is ‘worth it’ even for online learning. The bottom line is: world famous, highly sought after institutions can do whatever they want and not lose a single ‘customer’. There are a handful of these in the US - literally. Everyone else has to worry about money.
I believe I read that even Harvard laid off and furloughed staff this year - so there is some money consideration at some level, but not to the extent of others who rely on tuition for their bills.
@ChemAM raises an interesting point, @TheVulcan. One possibility you left out was that HYPMS know what they are doing, i.e., are in possession of some superior knowledge not available to the rest of us. But, apparently that isn’t your position. I think I would respect that more, if it were. On the contrary, your position is that despite not knowing any more than the rest of us, but with fewer options than many of their peers, somehow that proves HYPMS have a marketing advantage over the others that have figured out ways to meet the same exact challenges.
To paraphrase your original namesake, “That is illogical.”
How is that illogical? Do you think MIT/Harvard/Yale/Stanford/Princeton will lose a single solitary student if they go 100% online and say no gap years allowed? I don’t think so. They can command the ‘price’ they want - just like other brand name products can. People will pay that ‘price’ (I don’t mean money here).
@“Cardinal Fang” You are right, kids from the Northeast/MetroNY are mask wearing and distancing more than other parts of the country. For those kids, the restrictions of going back to campus, while onerous and not ideal will not be as much of a shock as kids from other areas.
And regarding athletes who get so much ire on these boards… how about the chorus? No there’s a situation where spread is more likely to happen.
Let’s be clear about the 10-14 days “isolation”. What is being proposed by UC Berkeley, a college with 40,000 students and 6,500 students living on campus and located in a fairly large metropolitan area may not be appropriate or necessary for a very small, liberal arts college like Bowdoin with a total student enrollment of 2,000 and located in a rural town of 20k with very few serious cases of CV-19.
These colleges will have two very different CV-19 procedures and protocols specific to their own college environment.
I assume that @ChemAM meant to conflate me with @TheVulcan wrt MIT.
@circuitrider I am the one who thinks that MIT knows more about what to do and has scientists in high enough places to get that done.
I didn’t hear that Harvard had gone completely online for the whole year for all students, though someone claimed that?
@roycroftmom I disagree that MIT doesn’t value undergraduates. That is not consistent with any of my experiences there as an undergrad, grad, spouse, or parent (of grad and entering undergrad). Can you give an example of how you think MIT should do more for its undergraduates? (Irrespective of the pandemic.)
I have high opinions of any number of colleges and universities. Why is alumni joy somehow elitist if it’s about HYPSM?