Both of my kids graduated from Cornell, so I was particularly interested in what they were going to do this fall. Cornell is a big school with 13k+ students. I was surprised when I heard they were going to do in person learning.
The administration’s decision to do in person was they took a survey over the summer and found out 75% of their students were coming back to Ithaca whether they were online or not. The reason so many students were coming back was most students lived off campus after freshman year. The administration (and probably with the official of Ithaca) felt it would be safer to officially open the school and had a robust monitoring program in place. I read they are testing all students upon arrival, and testing students once or twice a week. It is not saliva testing, it’s all nasal swap (feel bad for those students).
Cornell has a big Greek culture. I am sure they will not be able to have parties in their house, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they would have them at their annex (off campus housing).
I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will work out for them.
I am curious to see how schools in NYS do…both public and private. NY is doing very well and has strict protocols in place. There are also some big schools …public and private. Cornell and SUNY Buffalo come to mind.
If the school did not call off dorms before my child moved into their dorm room I would let them stick it out if they wanted. The school had their chance to close dorms before the move in. It is good that they are not required to leave! If they are not closing dorms, health services, dining services, cleaning services etc. should all remain operational.
“Residents who have hardships, such as lack of access to reliable internet access, international students or student-athletes will have the option to remain on campus.”
I would assume not being one of those groups means you have to leave.
@homerdog,for the college class of '23, 3 of their first 4 semesters at college will be online. There are no guarantees that fall 2021 will be any different; most doctors I know doubt it. So I don’t think this is a short term problem for most students, and that, along with cost, should be calculated in any decision-making.
UNC didn’t fail because it’s a public school or because it’s large. It failed because a large portion of it’s students live off campus, so it’s impossible to control 3/4 of the students. There is the same potential at every college with of campus housing and the party culture that goes with it.
The town(s) will be the ones who have to deal with the off campus problem, and as parents we need to be careful our kid doesn’t get caught under in that hammer.
Any college that has a sizable population of its students who want any semblance of past college social life and the college doesn’t strictly enforce social distancing and mask wearing rules (how could it if it has students living off-campus or in fraternity houses?) will likely have major outbreaks sooner or later. These colleges are living on borrowed time and they need all the luck they can get.
I bet not a single person off campus will leave and would have moved in regardless of remote or in person learning. They have already signed their leases and are sick of living at home with mom and dad. Those residents are the “responsibility” of local officials. If there are outbreaks, it will be their job to close down parties, bars, enforce masks and social distancing just like in Boston or New York or other cities with vigilance. If they don’t, they will be putting their residents at risk (assuming most non student residents in the area “believe” in Covid). These adult students are not the colleges problem, nor the parents to be honest. They are the government’s problem.
I’m thinking there might be different practices re: guidelines and enforcement of parties, gatherings, etc. in NC as compared to MA or NJ, for example. And that’s part of the problem.
I expect an increase in law enforcement and an anonymous tip reporting hotline, along with more stringent penalties, will be enacted by many college towns now
UNC, along with the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, make up the school community. It is impossible to contain the virus given how the school and towns are so firmly entrenched within one another. That’s the beauty of the school… in a non-covid world. You walk across the street and join your chemistry professors for lunch. Families with children walk the campus, etc.
It’s a big school. Many students live on campus, and many students live in the neighboring communities. This is incompatible with Covid.
I also think the region may play a role in how seriously students take COVID. Very few of D’s friends from her southern high school are taking it seriously, but virtually all of D’s college friends are taking it very seriously. Could also be partially because Amherst has a very social justice-oriented student body.
There are 3 parts to every college experience: Education, Certification, and Socialization. Most schools are delivering the first 2 online. My daughter’s school is “open”, but none of her classes are available in person. She will interact with her professors the same whether she’s in a dorm on campus or on another continent (assuming good internet).
The third experience is what we all look back on fondly when we think of college. Parties, football, road trips, stupidity, intimacy, experience, exposure. Those are the things that happen beyond the classroom, and they are the activities that cause the spreading problems colleges are seeing. Being on campus without these experiences is kinda pointless. It’s a minimum-security prison with homework.
Schools are at best ignoring, or at worst exploiting, the emotional connection to the experience of college while attempting to put in place restrictions that make those experiences unavailable. A few university presidents have said as much, and their campuses are closed. The others have placed large bets they can get through a storm for which there is no control over. Imagine the first time a school that has been COVID-free for a month or two has to send everyone home because the state or county has shut-down? It’s a lot to risk for the romantic memory of a college experience that is currently counter to the institutional policies in place.
My son and his roommates have been living in their apartment near UVM since June. They are being responsible, have a nice small social bubble and are making it work. I think it can be done.
Towns and schools have to work together to enforce the local guidelines. Maybe instead of sending all the kids home from UNC, they should have kicked out the ones who were at the large parties.
We all expected virus spread among students (esp on large campuses with lots of off-campus housing and limited testing). Although admittedly, I can’t say I expected such massive parties in the first days—I thought they would work their way into that over a few weeks of at least trying to be more cautious! And fingers crossed, hopefully there will be very few serious illnesses among those students (and praying that when larger/longer-term studies of the heart inflammation or other possible-late-virus-effects occur, those issues do not turn out to be significant?).
What I will find even more interesting (and upsetting) will be if and how much virus spread there is to the community. The optimist in me cannot help but feel like there is a chance these cases can stay largely contained among students. I will be teaching on campus, and I am not feeling like there is a very significant chance of me catching the virus from my students, who I will easily distance from, with two layers of masks between us, etc. I also do not think there is a large risk to the custodians and other workers in the buildings—the students give them space normally and certainly don’t hover over them, and I would expect even more so now, in addition to the masks worn by everybody during the day (but not at parties!). I think with all of the non-students being on alert to wear masks and steer a wide berth from these germy 18-22 year olds, it seems possible to keep the vast majority of the outbreaks contained within the student population. Even when these students go to stores, or pickup food at restaurants, etc, they will be wearing masks (or at least in most states?) and there are protocols to help keep workers safe. My children both worked this summer in jobs with the public, and neither they nor any co-workers contracted the virus (tested quasi-regularly), and I did start to gain a lot of confidence in the effectiveness of our precautions, along with following news of how the virus really seems to spread (prolonged close contact esp indoors without masks). The biggest risk to the community-at-large that I am picturing is if we have a lot of student-workers working in the community. I can imagine that workers let down their guard in the breakrooms of many workplaces, so if some of those workers are students with a high possibility of having the virus, I can see them spreading it to non-student co-workers. I hope all of the non-students stay extra wary of the students and insist on masks-up and distance if those kids aren’t being careful enough.
Anyway, of course I’m not confident that there won’t be any community spread from students to non-students. But that will be a bigger news item to me as the spread among students seemed inevitable in those circumstances (large, off-campus housing, infrequent tests), whereas spread to the community doesn’t have to be quite as inevitable. Ok, I’m prepared to get yelled at, but please don’t interpret this that I am feeling blasé about the students reckless behavior—that is not the case. I’m pretty appauled.
We just don’t know. Search PPS (re: Polio) if you want to see an example of what’s happened in the past. I’m not worried about it, but we just don’t know…
You make an important point-there are tens of thousands of 18-24 year olds not enrolled in college in most cities, who are employed and seem largely capable of following good pandemic practices. Apparently we expect less from the young adults enrolled in college
I’ve seen it written that (many parts of the) nation have chosen bars over schools. The college towns may learn that the colleges/universities have been prioritzed over the k-12 schools.