It’s up to the school, but at both my kids’ schools, the RAs got a room and a meal plan, worth $14k at one school and about $9k at the other.
The room at the $9k school was just a double-made-single as all rooms were uniform in size and furniture. At the other school, for the freshman village a suite had 4 single bedrooms with single bed, 2 bathrooms, a kitchenette and living room. Two RAs shared one of these rooms and got a double bed, which took up most of the room but they got two rooms so could study in the other, store clothes, whatever. It was really a lot of room for 2 people.
I think the kicker will be if it starts to spread outside the kids at the party. Community spread on campus will be an even bigger deal. ND did change policy and said off campus kids will be quarantined in their on campus quarantine dorm so they are doing what they can now to make sure those kids stay away from everyone. Not sure how many beds they have…
ND is also dependent on kids offering to go get a test. There could be kids out there with mild symptoms and not getting tested. Obviously there could be asymptomatic kids too. If a school isn’t testing everyone regularly, they are going to miss cases. Just a matter of how long before the beds are all taken.
I expect teenagers, or anyone else, to follow through with what they agreed to do. They made a deal: they could come back to campus during a global pandemic, provided they followed stringent, one might say draconian, rules. Nobody forced them. They could have thought (as I think) that the deal wasn’t worth making. They could have stayed home. But they instead decided to make this deal.
The government is in fact undermining solid health advice; that is true. But these students didn’t make a commitment to the government. They made a commitment to their university. They made a deal, and they should have upheld their side of the deal. It’s contemptible to agree to a deal and then break it.
I blame the students who are breaking the deal: they have no honor and no character. But I blame the administration too: they knew some of their students had no honor and no character, but they (apparently) pretended the students would abide by rules they knew their students would flout.
My son was a JA at Williams. It is an unpaid position. However, the college gives the JAs money to be used for the many activities the JAs organize for their frosh group throughout the school year.
I am happy that Williams is having a closed campus as well. The college had another town hall meeting last night. I am impressed with the plans that are in place. I think it will be much easier for Williams to maintain its bubble than it will be for the vast majority of other schools.
If Williams can’t make this fall a success, I have zero hope that my D will be returning to RPI next semester.
I would require college students to comply with safety rules, but having had over a half century of experience with teenagers and young adult, I would not expect compliance. There will be students with every sort of belief and opinion on what is acceptable behavior with COVID, and other school/town laws. College kids, as a rule, do break all kinds of behavior rules. Anyone expecting wide scale compliance is not being realistic.
What are the penalties for breaking these COVID rules? Are they being enforced as of now, as the college administrators see disregard for them?
@homerdog - you mentioned your daughter is taking her tests in school on the remote days. Do you know what kind of assessment platform/etc. is being used for that? Our district is trying to figure this all out as well.
I watched the Q&A with Fr Jenkins yesterday. He laid out the case for why they should come back to campus when few, if any of the ‘top 20’ did. It sounded reasonable. They are partnered with medical professionals from Rush, Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins.
Do they know there will be parties? Yes. They are counting on the vast majority of students to abide by the rules. Are 18-22 year old students perfect? Nope, not even at Notre Dame. We all fall short. That doesn’t mean they should be attacked on a forum like this and called “garbage.” It is my hope that this spike will serve as a ‘wake up’ call to others considering similar behavior.
The letter linked to earlier stated that the students were all cooperating with the school and contacting tracing professionals. I am hoping this can be an example of how to recover from a mistake and not a big mistake that snowballs into more. Time will tell.
At my D’s school, their version of RAs do not get free room and board, nor do they get singles in a typical year. This upcoming year is the first they’re to be paid at all- I think it’s in the neighborhood of $800 for the whole year. Definitely the rawest deal of RA type positions that I’ve heard of.
When I want an RA at a large state school, I had a roommate and had to pay full price for my room and food. RA stipend was $1200 for the school year, which almost covered R&B. Couldn’t afford that, so I went back to working at the campus cafeteria (free meal and paid for 20 hrs/week). Turnover was a huge issue among the RAs.
@fretfulmother When I find out how they are doing their tests at home I will let you know. We don’t have details yet. The high school just said tests will be taken at home. I think it’s likely because classes right now are only 35 minutes long and part of that time will be spent wiping down their desks! Also, since they are broken into two groups, they can’t have group A taking the test on Monday and group B on Tuesday since there would be a lot of sharing of info. Making two versions of tests in most classes is not likely. I expect most tests will happen sometime between 1:00-3:00 when the kids are back home for the day but not sure how teachers will figure out that schedule so no student has two tests at the same time. Lots of questions.
Thank you! If it’s of general interest, please tell us all here - and otherwise, please PM me. How kids take tests this fall will be, I think, a germane topic to “school in the fall and coronavirus”!
Actually, I thought about it a lot, and it would probably be a huge deal for them to extend invitations after they already made their decision. It also probably relieved them that less students were coming back this semester than expected; since they are new at dealing with this, it probably relieves them they will have a smaller number, which will slower spread and more isolation/quarantine capacity. Bowdoin and MIT are bringing only one class back for fall to figure out the kinks in their system and intend to bring back the other three for spring after they work everything out; I suspect that Amherst may bring back all students in spring if their system works out in fall, and they just want a smaller number of students to start out with.
Also, the students are still customers: they don’t get paid a ton; over the course of a year, they make less than 1/3 the cost they pay for room and board. They make $5K, and R&B is $16K.