My son’s school arranges hotel rooms as dorm rooms mainly for sophomore with a school staff(s) in. I don’t get a feel that those rooms to be cleaned by hotel staffs like normal hotel services. If hotel-dorm students are tested “positive”, those students will move to an isolation building / area in campuses. I don’t think that his school isn’t putting local hotel industry in danger.
This seems to be to common refrain for those who want their kids to go back to school. For a more nuanced consideration there is an article in the Washington Post today about what coroners are finding with regards to autopsies on patients that have died due to Covid. The virus can attack a variety of different organs in the body, but with relation to those with mild cases you might want to consider the following
So it seems that there could potentially be lasting impacts on even those who have a supposed “mild case”. I really want DS20 to be able to go back to school in the fall, but that article is really scary.
Every college plan that I have seen has included some level of education as to public health issues involved with Covid. For professors, staff and students. Same with going back to office/work plans (just reviewed the final one for me last night). All covering things that could be taught by mom and dad or a PCP.
All of this is new. For everyone. Reinforcement and reminders are critical. Not to mention there is conflicting info out there. Someone may have learned something which either has been superseded with better understanding as we learn more about the virus and its spread or may have been incorrect all along. Maybe college kids should be sent home weekly for education sessions with mom/dad or PCP. If any students don’t have either, too bad for them I suppose (college isn’t for everyone after all I guess).
If I found that there were people working on campus where my son or daughter attends, I would look at transferring.
Seems to me you are over-complicating pool testing in an effort to make it better (by specifically electing samples to be pooled based on some risk profiles) and in the process making it less workable. As I understand the benefits of pool testing are you only have to run test once for a batch of multiple tests (saving time and testing supplies). For your approach, rather than just taking the next 10 samples I have, combining them and running one test, I have to find the right pool of samples (from any number of samples waiting to be tested) and combine them to run the one test. Its possible it may be faster to just run 10 tests. You also would be running the same pools each time. The normal pool testing would be random which I would expect to produce better results in terms of extrapolating to broader campus population.
I read about increases in dementia symptoms in the NYT a couple of days ago also. Patients ranged in age from as young as 30. The stories that were rather disconcerting.
@TheGreyKing After reviewing the catalog with my first year, we found that most of the classes she was interested in were only offered online including all of the English department’s classes and most (if not all) History and American Studies classes (at least at the intro level). So far Williams has done very little first-year specific outreach, which has been disappointing. I asked about a town hall just for first year and transfer families, but was told none is planned. It would be helpful to have a better sense of how orientation and socialization will be handled for new students. As of now, my D will probably take a gap year.
I wonder how many of the college students have already been exposed.D17’s school had 600 studying abroad last fall, who returned to campus in 2020. Another 300 went abroad for the month of January and returned for spring semester. Surely someone carried the virus back to campus then.
Am sad that students “will be asked to stay through Thanksgiving break” at D’s school. We have remained positive about everything (no prom, graduation, etc.) and are excited about the fall even though it is going to look different, but Thanksgiving is the one and only time of year that our extended family gets together so that feels like a significant loss. Sorry and thanks for reading: I’m just venting and needed to get that out somewhere.
So sorry, AlwaysLearn. That’s tough, especially for a freshman.
I worry about incoming freshmen. A lot of them get homesick and parent’s weekend is an important date for them to look forward to. Now they have to go all the way up to Thanksgiving break, or longer if there is no break. And under circumstances that could be very isolating.
[quote=“AlwaysLearn, post:9489, topic:2088334”]
Am sad that students “will be asked to stay through Thanksgiving break” at D’s school. We have remained positive about everything (no prom, graduation, etc.) and are excited about the fall even though it is going to look different, but Thanksgiving is the one and only time of year that our extended family gets together so that feels like a significant loss. Sorry and thanks for reading: I’m just venting and needed to get that out somewhere. /quote Initially I was feeling sad about Thanksgiving, too, as my son wants to request to stay on campus until finals are concluded. But, I doubt my extended family will even want to celebrate Thanksgiving with us this year. We are only seeing our parents if the weather is nice and we can be in their backyards sitting 10 feet apart. We have not gone into our parents’ homes since March and they have not visited us at all.
So my point is, maybe your Thanksgiving won’t be the same this year, either, even if your daughter is home.
In reading all these complex and convoluted arrangements for the return of students to campus in the fall I am beginning to believe that Canadian universities were right to announce in April that the fall would be remote. So far only UBC and UToronto will atempt to bring students back with a hybrid approach.
My kids will both be at Big State U’s in cold climates this fall. S18 in an off campus apartment (he is actually there now due to an internship) and D20 will be in a dorm with all the new rules and restrictions. Part of me is happy but I would be lying if I didn’t wish the school hadn’t just decided they couldn’t do it safely. She would of course be disappointed, but it would have taken all the guessing out of it. She is still going to be able to practice with her team in some capacity, but nothing will be normal.
Re hotels, I also was thinking that if these are isolation rooms, just don’t clean them until 3 days after the kids leave. No way would they get daily housekeeping and really would they need any housekeeping? They don’t even have this in the dorm! There would probably be a doable way to do linen and towel exchange.
Isolation alone in a hotel (or at a dorm) sounds miserable of course and I think we are all having trouble imagining it! But I think the cleaning problem is easily solved, just don’t have anyone enter to clean it until well after science has told us that the virus would not be active on surfaces or in the air.
My D’s school had parents weekend in the spring, and yes, that was a LONG stretch freshman year from move in till Thanksgiving. The longest we went without seeing her for the whole school year, actually. But it was doable. This year will likely be extra challenging though…much less to distract and stay busy with, unfortunately. My heart goes out to all incoming freshmen!!!
Wow - this is SOOOO HELPFUL!
I believe McGill is allowing students to move into on campus housing.
This is probably why students have been asked to stay. The alternative is to send them home before Thanksgiving and let them finish the semester there, but there were so many students who struggled when they went home in the spring (for many different reasons) that it’s probably better to have them all finish before they go home. Is any college letting students leave for a few days at Thanksgiving then come back? It seems like they’d have to do a 14 day quarantine all over again.
They won’t behave like hotels. They are hotel rooms that are being used as dorms. There won’t be any cleaning - unless the student does it -until they ‘check out’. Agree, they would probably wait the 3 days. When colleges have used hotels in the past, it has worked the same way… no hotel services… just a room with a private bath.
At the moment the plans are varied. Some of the smaller east coast schools like Acadia, Mt St. Allison, and St. FX have said that school will be returning in the fall either in person or with a mix of f2f and online but with residences open. Some of the small Ontario schools have said the same. Last I heard Western said about 25-30% of their courses would be offered f2f and that residence will be open as they will be de-densifying residences (singles only) and contracting for additional spaces off campus. (Whether or not that actually happens is a different story). Waterloo, McGill, McMaster, U of A, and Queen’s will be predominantly online. McGill, U of A, and Waterloo say residences will be open, Queen’s will be offering some residence, but McMaster has said that residence will only be available for the select few students required to be on campus (e.g. nursing students) or for extraordinary circumstances (most likely international students). Really at this point it’s still all over the place.
The stress and anxiety everyone seems to be feeling may in fact have much more devastating impact on your health than Covid 19. Also high blood pressure and stress eating won’t be great either from a comorbidity standpoint either.
Please walk and meditate if you can or do a jig saw puzzle. Scratch that idea. That can be stressful too. Lol.
Seriously. The thing our loved ones and students need most is calm and collected behavior. It will be ok and nothing we do will change how things will turn out.
The only thing one can do is manage expectations and try not to share the stress with others.
We can do 100 percent remote and lock everyone up at home. At some point we have to come out of the cave to love and live. Perhaps there will be a vaccine. But perhaps not. You should do what you think is best and move on.
It’s my belief that if I remain glued to every twist of this road and I might miss a turn and go off a cliff. At minimum, I will certainly miss all of the beautiful scenery along the way.
“This too shall pass” is not a time tested cliche because we are in uncharted waters.
I’m praying for everyone. To find peace more than to find all the answers.