My comment has nothing to do with FL, CA or any other hotspot, but with the belief that it will be impossible to control the spread of CV among college students on campus.
Local testing using national labs has been subject to the same delays we hear about in the hotspots. Add in all the testing necessitated by a million+ college students traveling OOS to attend school, plus all of the campus staff requiring testing…that’s a lot of tests. Very few schools will test every two or three days, and that those do not will be faced with outbreaks.
And really, these POC tests are going to run out of supplies cartridges, hardware. It is still over promising. $250 million isn’t going to do squat unless they are just supplying enough machines for tiny private schools only. Millions of tests per week in Sept is STILL not enough. We needs 100s of millions of tests. @ 20 million college students and 55 millions k 12s are supposed to be in school. Add millions of staff.
I’m sure there will be many more posts in this (already impressive) thread before it is over, but @CT1417’s point hits the nail on the head: Covid-19 can’t be controlled on campus.
Once you accept that, we can think about ways to make the best of this terrible year.
Now, since I’m an academic, I’ll have to qualify my statement above. It’s possible that Covid-19 spread on campus could have been contained if there were very low levels of circulating virus in the country (or, I guess, if you could do an NBA-type bubble).
Some gap year numbers reported by the Boston Globe.
Harvard 20% of first years
MIT 8% - the usual amount is 1%
Bates - 10%, usually its 4%
Williams - 90 kids, usually it’s 25
@allyphoe@xyz123a Not nearly as big a deal as it sounds for non-first-years. Most of the upperclassmen with all remote classes already had off-campus housing; I believe (but I could be wrong) sophomores and juniors couldn’t even apply to live on-campus this year. The all-remote seniors who were living on-campus will probably just find off-campus housing. Probably done because their plan for containing COVID-19 was woefully inadequate. Also, they are not making any adjustments to their instructional plans anyway. The “encouraging remote students to not live near Amherst” thing is just to try to score community relations points with townspeople; this move will probably actually increase the number of people living off-campus in the town. Bummer for freshmen though.
Does closing the dorms also close the dining halls? This would create a problem with all my children different state schools as many of the off campus students keep some sort of meal plan. We opted out of the meal plan this year because all of the state schools we are dealing with made it clear there were no refunds if the semester was cut short so we will go with dining dollars and pay as you go. Many of the fraternities do not have kitchens and students have been living there all summer ordering from local restaurants but plan to use the dining hall in the fall.
Covid is present everywhere. We can’t “control” it but we can mitigate it. I work in an organization with over a thousand employees reporting to work across many buildings. People aren’t all stationary, many travel between buildings doing their jobs. Some employees still travel to other states for periods of time. We’re taking precautions to mitigate the hazard. We have had mass outbreaks. We’ve had a case here or there. As per CDC guidelines we’ve only quarantined those that spent more than 15 minutes within 6’ of those individuals. In the many months this has been going on this system has worked.
Some kids on campus are going to get the virus. It is going to happen. It doesn’t mean there will be mass outbreaks with mass hospitalizations and mass deaths. The same with k-12 if they are allowed to open in any fashion.
The reality is most schools on both levels aren’t opening. Those that do will have some cases. It won’t be a mass casualty event though.
Why would the gap years cause a late pivot? Note, the gap years mentioned here are at super prestigious schools and the “late pivot” ones are merely mortal colleges.
Agree. These students who took gap years did so after knowing their college’s plan. I don’t believe any of the colleges listed here have changed their plans from their original statements, most of which were made on the early side before July 1.
Terrible year or 2 years… We can all just throw in the towel and stay in our nice suburban homes and ride this out and too bad for students and all the people laid off (probably permanently) can just deal with it.
I’m not going to second-guess any college’s decision making at this point. This thread has been going on since MARCH and there have been phenomenal shifts in crowd sentiment. I’ve posted lots of things I wish I could take back, but the one prescient thing was that the summer would be a “hot mess”. I just didn’t realize how much. A few of us also opined that there would be a lot of older kids with antibodies by now. Well, I guess we’ll soon find out.
I sympathize with Smith and its unique relationship with Northampton. Makes me wonder why there hasn’t been a similar pushback in Middletown (Wesleyan.) Very similar layout in terms of campus and town. And, unlike Amherst, Wesleyan students will be allowed to shop downtown so long as they adhere to local laws regarding masks and SD. I must say that adherence to mask wearing has been very high in Middletown all summer and may be contributing to a feeling that “We are all in this together” - even before students have moved in. Maybe it’s different in Yankee Connecticut; Wesleyan, Yale and Trinity mean local business.
That’s a good point; it’s not really a bribe if it applies to everybody. But, a 15% tuition discount does make the decision to stay home a little bit easier.
Any figures on how many layoffs colleges just enacted? There must be tens of thousands of unemployed food service workers and custodians at all those places closing residential living.
Actually, all we need to do is drive down the amount of circulating virus. It would take 4 weeks. If we did that, we could drive the virus down to a level where testing wouldn’t be overwhelmed, outbreaks could be spotted and contained, and students could have some semblance of a normal college experience.
When I said the ship has sailed, what I meant is that we missed the chance to control the virus this summer. We can still act, and should act, so that we can salvage the winter semester now.
Other countries have done this - we can too. We can live with a high amount of circulating virus, or a low amount, it’s our choice.
@roycroftmom I only have read about GWU but the entire events department and the building managers all lost their jobs. I heard overall cuts of over 10 percent. But changing to all online they are taking a 200Million dollar loss. DC’s requirements of Quarantine late in the game to the colleges is what killed GW/GT/AU. The unemployment in DC is going to increase. There is something else I would like to say in regards to a big event that is suppose to happen in DC, (missing the general Covid thread)
Well it’s August 7th. For Michigan that means, in theory, that the students will have their new final adjust class schedules. My son’s was about half remote and half live. Once he wakes up ?, this could change. They are giving the students till August 14th to drop room /board without penalty and stay home for remote if they change their minds. He’s going regardless. His move in is August 27th.
I wonder if UMass pivoted because of the recent addition of Rhode Island to the quarantine list. Before this week all of New England, NY and NJ were exempt and I assume that covers the majority of OOS students. But now that everyone coming from RI has to quarantine it might have been enough to push their move-in plans over the edge.
