Amherst just instituted a last-minute change. The company they were using for pre-arrival testing has let them down, so they have arranged for all people arriving from non-exempt states to stay in local hotels after they are tested and until they receive a negative test from Broad Institute. The college is being for local hotels, and they will be staffed with Amherst College staff who will provide them with food, snacks, and drinks. They will be driven to hotels in cars that allow for physical distancing AND the drivers (in addition to the students) will be wearing masks. The students from non-exempt states will drop off their stuff at Alumni House and college staff will move it into their rooms for them.
While this is very frustrating and anxiety-provoking, especially 1 day before move-in starts, I don’t believe Amherst is at fault for this. Also, while I have not agreed with many of their decisions and communications, I have to admit they are going above and beyond to bring students back safely and successfully while some (ie Princeton and Penn) have just said ‘screw it, we’re going all online’.
Don’t be surprised if Columbia reverts to fully online soon: D reports a faculty/staff member leaked to a student that they have reverted to all online and to expect to receive an email in the next day. Somebody posted a picture of the communication on an Instagram page, with the faculty/staff member’s name crossed out, known as “Ivy Barstool”.
As many students are beginning to arrive on some campuses, our son just returned from moving out of his dorm that has remained unused since he left campus in March!
So for me, it’s fascinating to watch this all play out with different schools taking different approaches in clearly uncertain environments. I hope it all works out, but with so many moving parts I have my doubts about and f2f attendance. More interesting will be how schools respond when outbreaks do occur (and they will).
ND had 10 new cases today out of 40 tests. So that 4 the first day, 4 the second day, 7 the third day and now 10. Hope they have a lot of quarantine beds.
“Those taking a gap year are doing so in almost all cases to “preserve the college experience”. It would be 12 months of sheer boredom, as there are few (if any) opportunities that would make any sense.”
Just not true, there are a ton of things that most freshman gap kids can do. My D20 is working part-time, taking two online classes at a local community college (Spanish & PoliSci) and will probably travel next spring (if available) and do some community service/volunteer work. She also has a goal to read 20 books this year (she normally doesn’t read for pleasure). I assure you she will not experience “sheer boredom”!
The heart issues are so scary, to me. A small German study showed current myocardial inflammation in 60% (!!! SIXTY PERCENT) of patients two plus months after initially testing positive. This included asymptomatic patients. And the study found barely any difference between hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients, as far as the heart problems were concerned. One measure of heart health was worse in the hospitalized patients, but all the others were not.
I’m willing to believe that this might be a high estimate, but let’s say it’s ten times too high, and “only” 6% of patients have lasting heart issues. Say it’s lower in the young, “only” 5%.
So then we’re saying to young people, hey no problem, you might get sick, but then you’ll be fine. Most of you. Most of you will be fine, but one in twenty will have to stay away from sports and strenuous exertion for a few months. Or maybe forever, we don’t really know. But carry on.
We don’t know. We don’t know what the aftereffects of this disease will be. Caution is warranted.
If students can create a reasonably safe environment, why aren’t you doing it? Campus gatherings of 200, house parties, and other unsafe events are already occurring. If students want things to open and stay open, they should behave in ways that allow that to happen.
I’m glad you agree that those who are more compromised should stay home. Many college faculty fit that description, and a lot of students have remote classes this fall because that’s exactly what they’re doing.
This is another thing that current and potential students are going to have to sort thru when choosing a college and/or courses. Many immune-comprised and at-risk people won’t be able to get a covid-19 vaccine, should we ever even have one.
I’m really not sure how at risk profs would be able to make the decision to teach in person again…even if students are required to get the vaccine (a big ‘if’ legally to require a product that has no long-term safety data), all of the many people a prof would come into contact going to and from work would not necessarily be vaccinated. Again, if there is ever is a vaccine, it will likely be years before enough people receive it that we have herd immunity.
Tulane’s first year students have all moved in and sophomores start moving in today. Off campus students have also been tested or will be tested before they can enter campus buildings. Here is what Tulane sent out yesterday:
“Since July 27, Campus Health has tested 7,642 returning students, faculty and staff. Over these 17 days we have identified 33 positive cases. This is a positivity rate of 0.43 percent, which is far below that of the city (1.9%) or state (5.9%). Most of these individuals are currently isolating at home, and their immediate contacts have been notified. Many of these cases are local students, faculty and staff. Absent Tulane’s asymptomatic testing program, these cases would likely have gone undetected and led to further community spread.”
I am hopeful that this semester will go well, but no one can tell whether most students will follow the rules. I will say I was impressed with the arrival center, the pre-orientation for students and parents, and the temporary buildings and safety measures set up all around campus. They start testing of all Tulane community members (5% per day) next week, in addition to any folks who are symptomatic or have been exposed.
Tulane is doing their own testing and each student was given a thermometer and receives a daily text asking them to check any symptoms and report temps.
Crossing fingers for these guys and other schools trying to go back. If nothing else, there will be data on what works and doesn’t work for future semesters.
I remember my parents talking about enlarged hearts and scarred lungs. Those were side effects of childhood diseases like rheumatic fever and whooping cough, and they never went away. If Covid is causing similar side effects I hope they’re temporary, but I don’t think we really have any reason to believe that they are.
I can assure you that the average college student is MUCH more appreciative of guidelines than your average red state. In fact, I would also make the case that living at home- where those who would be engaging in the things you mention- would be more problematic for the community as it would infect a population that was much more mobile locally than your average college student.
I am not advocating for anything other than on-campus. Masks, distancing, no parties…those are a given. But the kids who insist on partying? They’re gonna do that wherever they are. I appreciate those caring about professors, et al. But you’re just shifting the sand…the people infecting professors will instead infect those in their local communities. AND…I would imagine that there will be greater controls over us in a college environment than otherwise.
These are unlikely scenarios as most young and healthy students would do just fine even if they got infected but some will get sick enough to need hospitalization.
What’s the hospital transfer strategy at your school?
Do they have a closure threshold or benchmark for your school?What would lead to a closure? Is it 5% students positive, 1 employee dead, lockdown in the city?
Did your school make you sign a liability waiver?
As at most schools, health center has little role in caretaking and mostly fellow students check on you, feed you, help bring prescription medicines from pharmacy or drive you to the urgent care or ER, what would happen if others can’t help due to COVID distancing rules? Would employees do all that or parents will come and take student home or stay in hotel until issues are resolved?
DS’s university has one of the most conservative plans for the fall of any of the schools in our province. Like most other schools, the majority of courses will be online, but unlike the majority of other schools, they have chosen to only open on campus housing on a very limited basis (nursing students, students residing +1 or more time zones away, and students with extenuating circumstances). On campus housing however is predominantly reserved for 1st year students only. The vast majority of students live in off campus housing in the neighbourhoods surrounding campus. According to an article in the local newspaper today, the majority of landlords who rent to students in the area are reporting that their tenants have indicated that they are planning to move into their accommodations for the fall. That means that the communities surrounding campus could potentially see a very large influx of students moving in in the next few weeks. If they do, it will be interesting to see if the students follow public health guidelines or if there will be an outbreak of infections. DS does have an off campus lease but neither he nor his room mates are planning to move in currently.
What are the specific restrictions at Vanderbilt that you consider “theater,” i.e. useless signalling? If that’s your assessment, and that of your peers, how likely do you think it will be that you and your peers will observe them in the medium term when the lifestyle restrictions start to get irksome?
Will you comply, or complain, when your professors have to enforce what you deem “theater”?
It is this attitude, among other things, that makes professors extremely reluctant to teach in-person this fall.
Even if this is true—and I have no reason to believe it is—we don’t care about the average college student in this situation. We care about the bottom tenth or so, the irresponsible tenth or so, the partiers, who will party, without regard to their safety or anyone else’s.
You say that they’d do the same if they lived at home. I don’t doubt that, but in college the hardcore partiers have a critical mass for more disease spread. Moreover, the hardcore partiers will party, but at college there are also the wishywashy susceptible people. If there are parties easily available, they’ll attend, but if they were home where parties weren’t so easy to find, they’d do something else. So we have the hardcore partiers getting together and sucking in the wishywashy susceptibles, to increase disease spread.
A superspreading hardcore partier who would spread disease to ten people if he/she were home will have an excellent opportunity to spread disease to fifty people at college. Bringing hardcore partiers together on campus is a bad idea.