I have a friend (former co-worker) who’s 2020 grad attending our local 40K undergrad state uni. Mom signed housing exemption form since we are local and promptly got her daughter and her friend an off campus apartment so the girls could have the “traditional college experience” that the restricted dorms wont’ allow. No wonder are cases are going up
Good point. For instance, look at the false positive situation at NFL - 77!!! that practically sent everyone in a frenzy and tizzy, and then turns out the next day or so that it was revealed it was a mistake at lab and false positive.
So actually, I do necessarily interpret this as all evil intentions as one would immediately assume from the headline. HIPAA does make it difficult. I read other posters saying that their companies told them for privacy reasons they also were not to disclose if a fellow employee tested positive. That is only those in direct contact would be notified and who probably have to keep quiet too ( presumably hopefully these employees ARE notified via the contact tracing process).
This is the society we live in. Should HIPAA be revised in light of the pandemic? Maybe. It’s definitely a fine line.
Anyway, if we were all to get the app on our phone (like some other countries have) where you are notified if you came within x distance of someone who tested positive, all of this would be a moot point. But of course, we all want our privacy and don’t trust the govt/or tech companies so this app (afaik) is not happening here in this country.
So Broad kept their commitment to my D’s college… she tested negative - results came back (via Broads portal) 34 hours after she swabbed herself at the school. The college has a dashboard showing that after 1400 tests with Broad, zero positives.
They will be doing weekly testing using Broad, of every student.
Agreed, the rules are very clear and enforcement is the key to success is ensuring compliance. Also, NESCAC schools have an advantage in being able to monitor and manage the campus with all the resources and staff they have.
Apologies if this has already been posted:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/live-coronavirus-updates-heres-the-latest
UMass-Amherst is to furlough 850 employees. I suspect we’ll see more of this soon…
UofSC now has free, quick-result saliva testing - a video showed long lines of students getting tested yesterday. In the town hall Wednesday night, Pres Caslen said these kind of numbers were what they expected for the first couple of weeks as the students adjust to a new normal. As of yesterday, 5 of 20 Greek houses are under quarantine, several off-campus parties have been busted (the university police have state-wide jurisdiction and can act off-campus), and the city has enacted an ordinance making large parties a chargeable offense. Saturday the students were notified that hosting parties or breaking quarantine/isolation would result in suspension.
Since the great majority (80%) of UofSC students live off campus, shutting down on-campus housing won’t necessarily stop the problem. The off-campus attention might be somewhat effective.
Thank you. That renews my hope.
According to its dashboard, nearly half the expected Wesleyan on-campus enrollment is now on campus and has been tested. Zero positives. The only question I have concerns the 17 “indeterminate” results out of 1094. Apparently, they require retesting. Students will continue to arrive a few hundred at a time through the weekend. Online classes start Monday and some will switch to hybrid or all f2f once everyone is done with quarantine.
Coming to the end of week one of classes at Purdue (end of week two for students being on campus). D had a a super week but did report some glitches. Monday there was a tech outage. Didn’t last long and didn’t impact her classes but one of her profs had issues getting the course page to load for 48 hours. Dining waits are longer than usual but D said not too terrible. She’s taking extra to go food so she has a snack if she has a tight window. Covid dash board seems to be updating regularly now. Students were informed of random testing starting and those number should hit the dashboard next week. Right now they have 61 positive cases (contact tracing, not random) and have quarantined two greek houses. 2.9% positivity this week from contact tracing on campus. Hoping to see that number go down as they start their random tests (4000 or 10% of the student population/weekly).
I hope… Lol. I am going back up for lunch when I go back to Chicago and will drive around Central campus. Might just walk around, go to Mden and lunch at Pizza Bob’s ??. I will also be talking to my son and see how’s its going.
Michigan does have student ambassadors. Some voluntary and some paid. This is what I mean about students sorta policing themselves. It’s up to them to make this work. Much better for another student to tell tell a peer to mask up then the police etc. But the police are working with the school /city to get the kids to follow the rules. Not everyone will. Once again, every student on /off campus knows what is expected of them. The school couldn’t of done a better job of getting the word out.
Are kids going to eat outside without masks. Sure. Hopefully they just don’t sit on top of each other. Are they going to meet friends and talk without their masks. Sure, but hopefully they are not shoulder to shoulder kinda thing. Just being respectful hopefully will make a difference.
Here is an update from Colby.
So far so good in Waterville. S18 has been back since Monday and classes started on Wednesday.
Testing
He has taken 2 Covid tests, the longest turnaround time from Broad for him was 28 hours. I think about 8000 tests have been done with 6 positives. (Two were faculty tested prior to student return). I think he is scheduled for another test this morning.
Classes
He has approximately 9 hours of in person (including labs) and 5 hours of remote instruction per week. He has no complaints so far and feels that In person classrooms are distanced, yet still engaging. He has one large class of 40 (large by LAC standards) that takes place in a small lecture hall, but the prof wears a microphone and he says hearing is not an issue. Labs begin next week, so we will see how that goes. Remote seems similar to spring, but he really had not complaints then.
Campus Life
His life has not changed much since he was home. Apartment style living has created a four person pod. They grocery shop, prepare meals, watch tv, and I am sure they will have a few beers this weekend. There is a gym in his dorm that is available to residents so he can exercise regularly. Because it is a dorm with faculty in residence, parties have not been an issue. He much prefers small gatherings to big parties, so this lifestyle suits him. His dorm is removed from the school’s main campus so he can’t really report on how well kids are following the rules, but has not heard of any big parties. He hears freshmen are the ones who are pushing the envelope, in his words, “because they don’t yet know what they have to loose”.
It has only been a few days, so I am not celebrating just yet, but will remain hopeful that small LAC’s in remote locations who are doing lots of testing have the best chance of lasting for the semester.
BC still has kids moving in at this point, so here is a short update. It took 30 hours for D20 to get her test results from Broad, and she was in quarantine for that time. When she was able to go out (last night) she and her roommate took a walk and did not see any kids congregating in large groups, (but many are still in quarantine at this point).
Based on what I’m seeing on social media and from chatting with friends, seems like some of the Virginia state schools are starting to see an uptick in cases including Radford, James Madison U, and Virginia Commonwealth U. (FWIW, Reddit says the cases are 100+ at each of these schools but I have not verified). There is also a controversy brewing about the provider that William & Mary, George Mason U, and VCU have contracted with to do testing. They hired a company called Kallaco to provide the students with self-administered rapid testing but some sources are reporting that the tests are not approved by the FDA to be used for home testing (even under the emergency authorization) – I think the issue is that students may not self-administer them properly which can result in false negatives. Kallaco was formed in late April 2020 and apparently the schools did not do a bidding process before award the contract. Hmmmmmm. As far as I am aware, none of the schools have gone completely online yet, but I think many of them are offering fully virtual options – wonder if that will change soon.
I really hope Michigan can pull it off! I live in the midwest and have a lot of friends with kids at Michigan, Illinois and Madison. I have been surprised by a lot of the move in photos on Facebook. Just the other day a college friend of mine showed her whole family packed into her Michigan freshman’s dorm with his roommate - no masks. Seeing the same at Madison. It’s just disappointing to see parents openly ignoring the rules from the moment they step on campus. They will be the first ones yelling when the schools close and their kids get sent home. Hopefully when the parents leave and the kids settle into life the kids will get the hang of the rules. My daughter has gotten so used to wearing a mask at her school she says she is shocked when she sees photos of people NOT wearing masks.
Friend of mine has a D at Butler. They advertised in person classes, moved kids in last Friday and then, on Sunday, changed to all remote. I haven’t heard many posters here discuss issues around remote classes and lack of space to take them but this student and her friends are having problems with that. They live in a sorority with seven girls to a (big) bedroom and they cannot take class at the same time. It’s completely distracting and there’s not enough room to even sit. Three of the girls can’t even sit up in their beds because they are bunked and close to the ceiling. The common areas of the house aren’t that big compared to how many girls there are. Library isn’t open nor are many other buildings on campus. Some took an uber to a (surprisingly) open neighborhood library but it wasn’t that close and they can’t do that every day.
I would likely have our kids come home and take class if this was my kid but Butler (rightly so) is telling kids that, if they leave, they should plan to stay home for the semester. No word yet on whether remote will continue but they think it will. It will be interesting to see if schools that were supposed to have in-person classes and switched to remote will try to go back to original plan.
Anyone know what ND is thinking? Wasn’t this two weeks supposed to be temporary for remote learning and then they would reassess?
My D’s college has classrooms available for students to use for online classes if they need it during the first week which is all online.
Re: ND - i’m disappointed in their continued low testing volumes. They are testing about 400 students a day - woefully inadequate. I’m not sure why since testing has opened up. Maybe they will spend their big dollars and buy the Abbot 15 minute tests that can be administered by their med staff and done simultaneously for multiple students (no machine required).
@suzyQ7 I haven’t been completely keeping up with the ND story. Who are they testing exactly? Still only kids who want to be tested? No surveillance/random testing?
Information about testing provided for VA schools by Kallaco:
TLDR:
I’ve done self collection at an urgent care in NY. It’s being used everywhere, and I don’t see why the samples university students collect in VA would be any more subject to false negatives than anywhere else.
As to why the schools chose Kallaco? It seems they were the only entity that could provide the number of tests needed with any guarantee of a decent turnaround time.
We needed leadership and government support for the development of a nationwide system for rapid screening tests starting in February. Since that didn’t happen, universities without their own CLIA lab are doing the best they can.
Butler has gone to remote learning for 2 weeks to start the year. No decision on the semester has been made yet.
Notre Dame to begin gradual resumption on in-person classes on 9/2.
In an online address to the campus community, University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced today that after a two-week break, all in-person undergraduate classes will resume in stages beginning Wednesday (Sept. 2).
https://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-to-begin-gradual-resumption-of-in-person-classes-sept-2/