Purdue cancelled all in person Greek events, including rush.
@momofsenior1 Purdue means business! Our midwestern publics can do without rush and Greek parties for a semester but those southern schools love their Greek life! Cancelling events seems like the only reasonable choice. Schools cannot say the students can have parties but they can only be a certain size of socially distant. That’s just too hard. No parties period is a clearer direction.
@austinmshauri - Those are good questions and I hope to get more answers soon. It sounds like the professors have been doing a lot to provide good quality online instruction, but it still would be challenging for students in certain majors or if the majority of classes were online. Students at Vassar typically take 4 classes per semester. My D said one of her professors told her they would have a few in person meetings at the start of the semester (for a 20 person class) and then the students would be divided into groups of 7 to rotate coming in for discussions while the other groups did some online work.
I really feel for the performing arts majors as well as many other students who really need in person instruction. Even for kids like my daughter, who is not a drama major but does some performing and was set to direct a show in the spring, their involvement in campus productions was cut short last year and will likely not be available this year. It will be such a disappointing end to their college experience, but hopefully they will gain something valuable by going through this together.
Ugh. I’m sorry, but that “improved” method sounds horrid, and would be a nonstarter for my dc. (So are large traditional lecture hall classes, which is why they both chose small schools.) S’s classes are capped at 24 and all are meeting in person this fall. D does not know yet which are in person, but all her classes are also small, though not capped necessarily. There’s a good chance most of hers will be in person as well.
We live in a one high school town, and the administration is struggling to come up with a workable plan in the Fall for our school. I can not imagine what a university president or a board of regents for a large university system must be going through trying to manage classes, dorms, dining halls, athletics, campus activities, etc.
Closing the houses is a good idea, but the parties will shift elsewhere. They will be smaller, but parties will still take place. I only know the northern schools my children attended so this may not apply elsewhere, but some Greek members live in off-campus annexes and the parties will move there. (By annex I mean a typical college town rental house with ten friends living together.) Athletic teams tend to live in these large houses also, and now many will not have a season.
Totally get it. But I would think that kids wouldn’t feel the “need” to rush in the fall and make things worse per se. Don’t know, just makes sense to me as an attempt. Not hard finding parties on campuses.
I don’t disagree. Definitely a good idea to cancel rush everywhere.
I don’t know how much housing the Greek houses represent as a % of total housing on campus, and ownership of the physical houses varies across schools, so I don’t know if colleges can just close the fraternities down?
Preview of college trajectories in the fall?
At CU Boulder, for example, there are 10 sorority houses just off campus. The houses have 70-100 students living in them, so ~800 students. Sorority houses do not host parties in them. The houses are not owned by the universities but they are student groups (recognized).
There are more fraternity houses (15-20) but most have many fewer men living in them. Most are not recognized as student groups so the university has no control over them at all.
If CU closed the houses (they can’t), you’d have 2000 students without anywhere to live or eat.
At a school like Alabama, you’d have 4000 students without anywhere to live and more without anywhere to eat.
Well, we all know there will be some virus on campuses. But which campuses will be able to test enough to catch the virus before it spreads like wildfire? The systems in place are going to be put to the test. Find those students with the virus, isolate them, figure out who they have been near, get them quarantined and tested.
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I don’t know how much housing the Greek houses represent as a % of total housing on campus, and ownership of the physical houses varies across schools, so I don’t know if colleges can just close the fraternities down?
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Upperclass housing is crazy difficult at Berkeley in a good year…30,000 undergrads, and only First years live on campus normally. The kids I know at UC Berkeley start looking for next year’s housing as soon as they arrive and the ones that go Greek are highly motivated by getting Greek housing. Not sure how many of the 20% of the student body that is in Greek life at UCB live in Greek housing but I know my daughter’s friends are scrambling to find alternative housing for Fall (they were told their sorority houses there could not accommodate everyone who was supposed to be living in their houses this Fall). Since UCB has already announced that classes will be primarily online, the kids are looking further and further away from campus, as an alternative to living at home.
In light of the PPE and test capacity shortages we are seeing in the current hot spots, does anyone think that colleges will either be unable to obtain the needed supplies or encounter lab delays that allow cases to spread throughout campus while awaiting results?
I recognize that schools with nearby med schools will be in a better position than others, and again it will come back to deep pockets. Am also wondering if someone (who?) will decide that the return of students to college campuses is not the most efficient use of a scarce resource?
This may have been discussed here already.
I’m afraid you don’t totally get it. Kids definitely still feel the ‘need’ to rush, and if anything, have been having more summer rush activities in advance of restrictions in the fall. And yes, have been passing Covid around like White Claws. I think the lack of publicity until now just speaks to the inadequacies in tracing (and reluctance to publicize.)
On a positive note, the Greek communities at some schools could be the first groups to test herd immunity for us.
We have one really big testing center and the tests are free (no antibody testing, just active virus). A week or so ago they were going to limit testing to send tests to Texas and other hot spots, but that idea was scrapped and the testing stayed open. They weren’t busy at all.
Yesterday, thousands showed up and now they have to limit the daily testing and recommend an appointment. Why? I think people are getting ready for vacations and want the results so they don’t have to quarantine when they arrive in NY or CT or ME.
I don’t think that’s a good use of resources.
Why? Any process that catches the virus before spread (like to travel) is a good process. Testing is key to squashing this virus.
I would like a crystal ball prediction of college football please! My DD’19 is all set, we know she’ll live in her off-campus apartment and do whatever her school does. But her BF’20 is a D3 recruit who says if there’s no football, he’ll go to cc this year. I think it’s a great idea to pay cc tuition for his freshman year vs. private when there’s a good possibility either will end up online. I vaguely give my support for the cc plan without telling him what to do 
I tell myself not to stress, it’s not my kid, but seeing how I am currently housing and feeding him, I’m feeling a bit invested :lol:
What’s wrong with some colleges giving it their best shot in the fall, especially if they are in an area with less CV-19 spread and the means to create a decent “bubble”? If it doesn’t work, then they can always shutdown the campus and go strictly go online.
The “reality” is that CV-19 might just be with us for a long time and colleges will have to come up with a balance between public safety and allowing our education to move forward. If colleges have a well thought out plan and want to try to execute it, then I give them a l lot of credit for trying. They might actually succeed.
btw - The Duke’s FB parent’s page did a poll yesterday on how many families are expecting their freshman student to enroll in the fall, and 97% said they are going to campus, less than 3% will take a gap year. This shows me that there is a huge demand by families to try to make this work.
Re: Greek system, some colleges have “rush” in the second semester. For D20’s college it doesn’t start until January. We will know a lot by then…
Also, their greek housing is on campus, in dedicated areas in the dorms so it will be very hard for fraternities to host raging parties without quickly being shutdown by the administrators and they could lose their housing and organizational privileges. I want to repeat, this will not be “business as usual” on these college campuses this coming academic year. Everyone will have to adjust their expectations and will be taking personal responsibility like never seen before for undergrads.
I can confirm that it is easier to find the virus than it is to find White Claw…