In this particular case, as is easy to see, it was in direct response to the “Is it about the money?” question regarding our preference for online learning for this fall.
That said, with plans finally announced I can bow out and move on.
People lived in Rhode Island for millennia before there was air conditioning.
People who live in warm climates get used to it.
Dartmouth students normally typically take at least one summer quarter out of their 12 quarters over 4 academic years. Presumably, they do internships or whatever in their fall / winter / spring quarter(s) that they have off instead of always doing such things in the summer.
So taking a summer in school, with a different term off school, is not by itself an issue other than that it is traditional for the summer term to be off school.
This math isn’t working for me either. Reading between the lines, does MIT expect or even encourage first years to defer, and Soph/Juniors to take a leave of absence (thereby self selectively de-densifying campus for spring)?
Otherwise, I find it disingenuous for MIT to state they plan to bring 3 class years back to campus in the spring, even considering New Vassar should be complete.
Online campus preview was not a smashing success in my household. My child does not organically make friends online with people they do not know in person. So while the Vulcan & Fretful may be happy with their first year student starting with distant learning, they do not represent MIT first year families as a whole.
Many of the MIT kids are searching for apartments to rent in Cambridge.
https://www.gssiweb.org/sports-science-exchange/article/sse-145-football-player-body-composition-importance-of-monitoring-for-performance-and-health indicates that, in American football, offensive line players have been getting bigger over the years (249.6 pounds in 1972 to 310.6 pounds in 2013) and fatter (15.5% body fat to 28.8% body fat). With a bit of calculation, it looks like they got larger by about 10 pounds of non-fat (presumably muscle/bone) and by about 50 pounds of fat.
Note that 25% body fat is the upper end of “acceptable” for men, according to https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/body-fat-measurement#2 . Defensive line players appear to be slightly smaller and less fat (293.0 pounds and 25.2% body fat). Other American football player positions are smaller and leaner.
It appears that the person in the news article is both taller and heavier than the average line player, and is probably at a body fat percentage a bit over the usual “acceptable” range, but much lower than that of a typical non-athlete of the same height and weight.
Both MIT and Harvard have taken the most conservative approaches among the options they considered. It’s interesting that Harvard decided to let first-year students to come to live on campus while MIT lets the seniors to return. I actually think the MIT approach makes more sense. Freshmen on campus won’t get to know each other under the living arrangements and the rules on social interactions. Freshman classes are also better suited for online delivery. Upperclassmen, especially the seniors, could take better advantage of more in-person classes and researches.
@ucbalumnus, I take your point that Carson Flake, the Provo football player who is in the ICU with covid, is not in as bad a shape as someone his height and weight who didn’t work out would be. Still, the kid is 17 years old and carrying around over 100 pounds of fat on his frame. That is not a healthy thing.
Looks like I voiced by opinion loud enough ?. Can’t believe it was actually a thing…
Poor decisions seldom withstand the light of day.
So!! ?. It’s fun to read and all I know is that if my kids school goes all online I will never here the end of it from @homerdog ?.
Plus I swear, the next time I have a chance to go to Maine I am stopping by this wonderful mysterious place called Bowdoin… Lol ?.
People live a lot of places. That doesn’t make every place comfortable or desirable.
Living someplace for a few months in the summer does not guarantee one will “get used to it.” It’s not the same as someone who may have grown up there.
I lived in Providence for several years, including summers. I never got used to the hot, humid, sticky weather.
@profsd is always very funny and on point. Your post is 100 percent accurate. It’s also the same lens applied to pretty much every thread.
I bet you are an excellent professor with high marks on rate my professor. lol.
Cornell. Certainly no slouch in the serious sci me and math category came out with a good plan.
Do I dare say, sober and well thought out.
I’m not sure you got this right.
The default should be attempting to achieve the college experience the way the colleges were set-up for in the fall of 2019 and then trying to balance that ideal with the necessary safety precautions to make the campus safe for educational commerce.
This is the experience that the students wanted when working on all of these applications in the fall last year. It’s not about wanting something different (your example, introverts prefer online instruction at their parents house). If that’s how they want to get a college degree then they shouldn’t have applied to an OOS residential college experience in the first place. Right? I’m on a parents Class of 2024 FB page with a 1,000+ other family members and not a single person on there has said “My dear child much prefers online instruction to in-person classes”. Instead, many are talking about deferrals and gap years until the college gets back to relative “normalcy”.
And yes, I think some colleges passed on the opportunity to be educational leaders in how they are addressing college life this coming academic year. A perfect example is the CSUs in CA. In early May they waved the white flag and said all online classes, citing the cost of CV-19 testing: $25 million a month according to them. But we later discovered that you don’t have to test nearly as many people (i.e. pool testing) but it was too late, they made their rash decision and now the CSU students have to “suffer” with online instruction, something they did not sign-up for when accepting to attend their college.
So at the end of the day, yes, some colleges will have done a better job of handling the college experience in 2020/2021 than others. Some will be too liberal (everyone back on campus, in-person classes for all, no masks needed) and some will be overly restrictive (all online classes and few students living on campus, with limited access to anything). There will be winners and losers from this decision that might just have lasting effects on these colleges.
It will be fascinating to give out college scorecards a year from now to see who fared the best and who didn’t.
At least this is how I see the world…
Agree. I live in Arizona. It’s 111 right now. Forecast is 114 on Sunday. You don’t get used to this, it just grinds you down a little bit each year.
Have to agree that @TheVulcan and @homerdog made useful foils for each other: One basically said from the very beginning that no matter what decision their HYPSM university arrived at , it would be okay with them (and, it turned out to be true); while the other made it obvious that nothing their SLAC decided to do would be right for their child. It was a very instructive conversation between the two of them.
I agree, it will be interesting to watch (and to participate in as applicable). But there is no one-size-fits-all answer to a problem as diverse as the diversity of schools themselves. The virus is going to factor into the outcomes along with the decision making. Small schools in minimally affected, isolated areas may succeed because of their great decisions or fail by shear bad luck. Schools in urban areas may fail in spite of their best efforts. How will that come into the scoring?
Agreed… but Brown is an expensive Ivy league university, they can head down to Home Depot and buy some $200 window ACs to install in the older dorms that have no AC. My D is attending a much lower ranked college in hot and streamy Boston and every dorm has an AC. Brown can step it up - it’s ridiculous not to have AC and there is no excuse.
Yes, that is why I said this might not be an issue for many, but could be for some. If I had a choice of two out of the three sessions that Brown is offering, I would pick fall and spring. Obviously, they are not giving any students that choice. It will be interesting to see which professors are lined up to teach the summer semester.
It’s funny for some there is no acceptable way forward and for others, they can make anything work.
We live in an area that was hit very hard. All types of people got it, people who worked in healthcare and people who went out once to get gas. This disease is tricky, I don’t think we really know much about it. That’s what makes it so unpredictable.
I don’t think college “plans” can control which school will have large outbreaks and which ones will skate through. Masks aren’t going to stop a virus in a dorm even if they test. Kids touch things (like doorknobs) and go to the same CVS and Smoothie place so a superspreader event will happen at many schools. It’s going to be a tough year for many.