I believe there will be a lot of disasters, but I think some colleges will pull through unscathed.
I’m really not trying to be argumentative, but this is a pandemic, and the colleges don’t exist in a vacuum. There will be ripple effects that spread widely, I believe, even if just a few small missteps are made.
I guess it is all relative. Will it be disastrous compared to the K12 schools? Or compared to the kids left home alone when parents go back to work? Or how about the families getting evicted or whose benefits run out and have no money and no insurance? On balance, I don’t think the virus among mostly healthy college students, even if widespread, is high on my list of next month’s disasters.
The thing is, kids will be moving anyway even when school is virtual. There’s even a thread in this forum about where is the best place to live for a virtual semester – kids are renting a place in Dana Point. Lots of students are finding fun places to live away from home with their friends if they can’t be at school.
Also, many of the large state schools where a large number of students live off campus have acknowledged that the kids are coming anyway – apartments are rented and landlords aren’t releasing them from leases. Many of these leases were locked in to back in October and November. So, they are at least going to give it a go by making the off-campus kids sign off on amended university codes of conduct that address the current situation. Will they be successful? No one knows.
I wonder if the colleges testing plans have taken into account that when the regular flu season hits in fall/winter that there will be many people with symptoms indistinguishable from Covid and there will be a surge in testing demand? That’s not including an actual second Covid wave during that time too.
I agree (I shudder to think about the people who are likely to lose their homes, and/or are going to have trouble feeding themselves and their families). My point is that it’s all interrelated, at least as I see it. I just believe that the movement involved in getting students back to campus is going to increase the rate of infection everywhere. One careless, asymptomatic student goes to the local 7-11 for a late-night snack with a mask draped around his or her neck. A clerk there afraid (rightfully so, considering what has happened to some who ask people to wear their masks) to say anything about it, who goes home to his or her family after the shift. Who becomes infected, gets ill, and can no longer work to try to prevent the possible loss of his or her home. Or doesn’t get ill, and spreads it to others, some of whom get very sick or die. Or a couple who live in two different off-campus “pods,” who are nevertheless determined to hook up one way or another. I mean, stuff happens, and colleges (despite their reputations) are not bubbles.
Believe me, saying this stuff doesn’t make me happy. It was my son’s dream to go to Berklee for years. He has two or three semesters left, and needs and wants the intensive in-person musical training he signed up for.
I just believe that the priority right now should be to stop Covid in its tracks for EVERYONE, so that we can all move on and our kids can live the lives they’ve been dreaming about.
Xavier of Ohio starts movie 8/12 and classes start 8/17 similar setup to UGA as of today, tomorrow who knows.
Extension is remote in 2020-2021 due to COVID.
This is the wrong comparator. If a college is trying to decide whether to re-open in person, the right question to ask is not, “Will this be as bad as a million people being evicted from their homes?” but “Will this be worse than not re-opening?”
Well apparently now testing is a political issue like masks, with people refusing to allow their children to be tested for COVID (or themselves, presumably). I’m sure this is all going to end well.
SERIOUSLY?!! I (virtually) throw my hands up in the air in surrender.
Georgia Tech freshman start moving-in 8/8. Classes start 8/17. I think we’ll know by Labor Day how well or poorly the back-to-campus plan is going.
I have my “go bag” ready to go get my son if necessary.
@raincat, you are right that the custom of wearing masks has helped a lot in Japan. But there is also a culture of eating and drinking outside the home, and that is really hurting the country now. The cases are rising rapidly again, right now mostly younger people, but this is the month for visiting one’s hometown and relatives, so it is not clear whether the country is out of the woods. Without testing, which is still very limited in Japan, it is impossible to know who has the virus and may be contagious. The schools are off for the summer right now, but will likely go back face to face in the fall. The colleges may remain remote or hybrid, it’s really not clear. Meanwhile, I am about to put S19 on a plane back to his school in the US - very nerve-wracking, particularly as Japan is barring most non-citizens, including long-term residents, from returning to the country once they leave. This means I could not go even if he becomes ill, and H is in a high-risk category. I guess we all just have to do the best we can in difficult circumstances.
I’m glad to now have the idea of the “drive separate and follow kid home” plan. I’m one who would NOT immediately bring my student home, and we are all healthy, no contact with elderly (our parents are gone), no underlying conditions. It’s a 7.5 drive and as long as I felt that my son was OK at school (which does have quarantine housing lined up, but he will be in a single with his own bath so would quarantine in his room), I would not go. If he took a turn for the worse, I would go down and get a hotel just to be on hand/make phone calls/do check ins/food; but the school already has plans for food and check ins. If he then became REALLY sick I would take him to a hospital there. I just don’t think that likely infecting myself, and putting the rest of my household at risk, by being in the car for that amount of time would help anyone if my son was sick.
My D is in an off campus apartment a country away and all of her roommates have worked out a quarantine plan; who moves into what bathroom etc (they all have their own room); so for her our plan is be the same…she would stay there, quarantining at school and using school health care services and I would fly out and stay nearby to assist with health care if things got bad and I felt that help was needed.
My son’s school (Elon) recommends that students bring a pre packed quarantine kit: Students and families are encouraged to bring their own pre-packed Quarantine Supply Kit that includes:
Cleaning supplies (ex. antibacterial spray or wipes, window cleaner)
At least 5 washable face coverings (required on campus)
Hand soap/sanitizer
Facial tissues
Non-perishable foods for your room
Bottled water
First-aid kit
Trash bags
Toilet paper/paper towels
Thermometer
Personal hygiene products
Utensils
Medical information (i.e. insurance information)
@Leigh22 At Amherst, you couldn’t pick up your kid if they got the virus. Parents aren’t allowed on-campus and kids with the virus aren’t allowed outside of quarantine rooms except to use the bathroom. Just curious, if this was the policy for the college your kid was at, how would you handle it?
@RosePetal35
How would they keep parents off the campus? Not to mention I’m fairly certain you couldn’t detain a student legally, against their will.
@msdynamite85 That is one of the two reasons Amherst cited for starting the semester early and ending classes the week before Thanksgiving. The other being that it wasn’t worth it to send go through the trouble of sending all kids home and bringing all kids back for a week and a half of classes plus a week of finals.
Most professionals think there won’t be a “second wave”. For a second wave to occur, the first one has to have a flattened curve; we will just have one continuous, monstrous wave until we get a vaccine. Also, the guess that a “second wave” would occur in winter was also based on the belief that the curve would flatten in the summer and would stay low through fall but would spike again in winter. The curve has not flattened, and is now going up again. If you are using a “second wave” to refer to a great increase in cases, we are experiencing the “second wave” right now.
@vpa2019 I’m not 100% sure about this, but I believe that Amherst has hired several security officers to patrol campus, since students are not allowed to leave, off-campus guests are not allowed, and they want to prevent mass gatherings from occurring. Also, you need a student ID to gain access to all residential buildings, and I believe they have attached face scanners to many buildings. They couldn’t be detained against their will, but they could certainly be punished (quite possibly through suspension or expulsion from the college, which Amherst has mentioned as possibilities for violation of their COVID-19 policies).
This is from today’s NY Times (yes, I’ve read what some of you all think of the Times, and to some extent I agree, but this is from one of the current administration’s “people”):
"Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus coordinator, said on the CNN program “State of the Union” on Sunday that the country is in a “new phase” of the coronavirus pandemic, and that it is much more extensive than the spring outbreaks in major cities like New York and Seattle.
She recommended that people living in communities where cases are surging consider wearing a mask at home if they live with someone who is especially vulnerable because of age or underlying medical conditions.
“What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread,” Dr. Birx said, adding that rural areas have not been spared. “So everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune.”
She emphasized the significance of asymptomatic transmission. “If you have an outbreak in your rural area or in your city, you need to really consider wearing a mask at home, assuming that you’re positive if you have individuals in your household with co-morbidities,” she said."
I’m still several pages behind, so forgive me if someone already posted this. But in Thursday’s Brown University newspaper there was an interview with the University’s
Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy about COVID-19 testing procedures. Basically, the entirety of the interview the gentleman said something along the lines of “I don’t know. We are working on that” when asked about details of the plan. Admittedly, he has a framework, but there are significant details missing.
This is the reality of the situation. It certainly doesn’t match with the University President’s NYT Op-Ed way back in April about the critical importance of rigorous testing, writing: “Testing is an absolute prerequisite." “Regular testing is the only way to prevent the disease from spreading silently through dormitories and classrooms.”
Questions asked of the EVP of Planning & Policy included:
- How frequently will students be tested?
- How will the test collection be administered?
- Where will the test collection be administered?
- What kinds of models has the University done, or what models created by other institutions, has the University considered as it determines the frequency of student testing?
- Is there a plan for if a student, staff or faculty member dies from COVID?
Evidently Brown had a summer pilot to see how testing went. One of the interview questions was about how long the wait time was between testing and receiving results. They had been getting results in a week or more, so they recently switched labs and have now been “for the most part” receiving lab results within 48 hours. Like many of the other schools in New England, they are looking into going with the Broad Institute, which is promising a 24 hour turn around time.
How many schools can the Broad Institute work with and still promise 24 hour turn around time?
FWIW, Brown has 180 beds set aside for quarantining. IMO that’s way too few rooms.
Here’s the link to the interview:
https://www.browndailyherald.com/2020/07/30/covid-19-testing-specifics-remain-uncertain-fall-semester/