Apparently, Wesleyan frosh have all arrived and yesterday participated in a “virtual orientation”, culminating in the traditional all-class Common Moment, only now from the remoteness of their own rooms:
UIUC with a notably robust model & system. The university developed it’s own saliva test and all students are tested 2X/week. A negative test result within the past four days is linked to student ID via a university-developed tracking app: Safer Illinois. Without a green light student won’t be admitted to university buildings.
App has several other features, including one that notifies your contacts if you have a positive result. Quarantine quarters have been set up.
Son a junior CompE. This was a collaborative system created among the research science and engineering departments. To mitigate spread, trace and tackle transmission via large scale, comprehensive testing.
Go, UIUC!
On the one hand, UIUC has what seems like a good system to test, trace and isolate.
On the other hand, we have the University of Alabama. They did pre-entry testing and found 310 student cases out of about 30,000 students. The first six days on campus, they found an additional 562 cases. Then, the next three days, up until last Thursday, they found another 481 cases. They’ve only released data through Thursday; perhaps they’re using the date the testing was performed.
They put out an odd press release saying, in essence, “Everything’s fine here. Isolation spots are only 30% full.” Someone should explain exponential growth to them.
https://uasystem.edu/covid-19-dashboard/
https://uasystem.edu/assets/2020/08/Press-release-2020Aug28-2.pdf
Clearly there is no trigger to switch to online at some schools. It’s as if we are living as 50 different countries.
NY recommends closing school/college if more than 100 positive cases on campus. Is there a predetermined number in Texas?
Williams for first month.
UC Santa Barbara is cancelling all dorm contracts and virtually all classes are remote for at least 1st quarter.
Arrival Day at Wesleyan was dubbed Arrival Week:
http://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2020/08/28/students-on-campus-arrivals-staggered-over-one-week-period/
Williams is considering Spring Street part of campus, so the kids will at least be able to go to the shops on Spring Street once they get their 2 negative tests.
My son leaves this week. His main friend group is also going back and 6 of them will form a family pod. Had it not been for his family pod, I would have encouraged him to do what some of his other classmates are doing and go remote.
Things have been normal in my area all summer. I am confident that my son will follow the rules at school, but it is going to be an adjustment.
Good report so far at Harvard. They are only having freshmen live on campus this fall (I think to work out their protocols for a safe spring), and they are staggering move-in dates so all the returning students are not on campus yet. But over 1000 are back now. There have been 0 positive cases of the 1104 undergraduates tested so far. Since June 1, there have been 10 positive cases among faculty and staff (11,342 tests) and 8 positive cases among the grad students (5,884 tests) along with the 0 positives among undergrads, which I think seems in line with, or lower than, the community rates (which are relatively low).
After their first negative test comes back (turnaround so far has been 12-24 hours), freshmen students move to “Phase 2 quarantine” which means they should stay in the area of their dorm but can go outside to their courtyards, pick up food in the dining halls, etc. After the first week (3-4 negative tests as they are testing every 2 days), they move to Phase 3, which is considerably looser. The school hasn’t been crystal clear about exactly what that looks like, but there are hints that it mostly means just abiding by Massachusetts requirements. Dining halls will be open to eat in, but they are considerably de-densified as they will still have all 13 dining halls open but only 25% of the students there. Loads of new Adirondack chairs and tables popped up in all of the green spaces. Students are allowed to go around Cambridge and Boston but asked not to travel beyond that. I think Massachusetts gathering rules are a combination of absolute number and square footage…I think 25 is the current max for indoor gatherings, but the space has to be big enough—you can’t cram 25 people in a small space. I think they indicated that libraries, gyms, other facilities, etc will open after 2 weeks if all is going well. Anyway, I’m hopeful that once they get all the kids through the initial quarantine, they will be able to contain any outbreaks because of the testing-every-two-days. Sure, there may be some cases introduced if students venture off campus (although I do not suspect there will be many—MA requires masks and compliance was truly superb when I walked around this week—only saw 1 person unmasked out of hundreds or thousands of people I saw), or possibly introduced by faculty/staff, although with remote classes and covid-precautions, I doubt there will be much of that either. But if a handful of students somehow contract the virus later in the semester, frequent testing I hope will prevent it from getting out of hand.
So I believe that although classes are remote and there are not all of the typical in-person activities, there will be benefit to the freshmen being on-campus and getting to know each other. I believe they will have plenty of opportunities to make friends, even if they can’t bond over crazy-fun parties and tailgates. And I think there will be a learning benefit to the school by having this portion of students live on campus this fall, they will be able to make smarter, experience-driven decisions for 2nd semester. The big question mark to me relates to single bedrooms vs. more. Right now, all students are in singles. I believe this is not just to reduce risk, but to allow for each student to have quiet space to attend remote classes. The school has hinted that it’s possible they will bring 3 or possibly all 4 classes back in the spring if things go very well, but they only have enough singles for probably 60-70% of students. So who knows, maybe they will allow doubles in the spring. Or maybe they won’t end up bringing so many students back in the spring. We will have to wait probably until mid-December to hear any official plans!!!
Seems odd to not look at per capita numbers. 100 cases at a school with 2500 kids is much different than at one with 25,000 students.
At Bates, all students will be tested twice a week. The college is apparently renting half the rooms at a nearby hotel for both students and employees. There’s an interesting article linked in their facebook page. Wow. The amount of planning is unbelievable. I truly hope their plan succeeds. As far as I am aware, most classes are in person.
At Binghamton, they tested all students over a period of days, during specific time slots. Students had to wait in the car for results. Nearly 6300 were tested, with 28 positive results. 24 of those students returned home and the others are in a dedicated dorm. I am not sure what the school is doing about follow up testing, but they are being super strict about socializing. No one is allowed in any other dorm rooms but their own.
I’m concerned about Bing though. There is no testing in place for off-campus students, of which there are MANY. Easily as many living off campus as on. They are going to congregate, but Bing has said that there will be police patrols to break up parties in areas where students live. I honestly can’t see how they are going to enforce it, but I hope, almost certainly in vain, that the kids will try to be responsible.
My son was supposed to have all of his classes remotely, but now one of them will be on campus one day a week. I’m glad of that. The governor has said that whichever number is lower, 100 or %5, is reached first, all classes will immediately be switched online fro two weeks. We will see what happens.
@homerdog I think it’s okay for this to be its own thread. It’s geared towards specific measures colleges are taking and if it was in the megathread, it might have had to be split anyway.
I believe it’s 100 cases or 5% of the campus community, whichever is smaller.
@taverngirl there are schools besides Amherst that are attempting to restrict students to campus.
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Williams for first month.
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College of Wooster students are also restricted to campus until Labor Day
5% of 2,500 is 125 so 100 is still the limiting number. So a 2,500 population campus shuts down with the same number of cases as 25,000 or 35,000 campus. I still don’t think that makes sense.
100 works for me as a NYCer. Test and control or shut down. Don’t bring hundreds of cases into my community. We’ve been through enough.
And it’s only “closing” for 2 weeks online, not sending everyone home. Unless they then still can’t get it under control.
Random testing started today at Purdue. I’m hearing reports of long lines and kids waiting in the sun for an hour. That’s not great. Hopefully they can streamline their system and have sign up times going forward.
Who decides which random students are tested?
@curiousme2 - It’s supposed to be randomly computer generated but their are parents reporting 15 people in the the same Greek house being “randomly chosen” so who really knows.