I can attest to this. My D is a sophomore there. I applaud the school for doing this. Everyone wants to make this fall semester as normal as possible or as close to normal as possible. It will only succeed if all students follow the guidelines and take this seriously. Unfortunately, a few students, mostly freshmen, violated quarantine on their first night on campus prior to start of classes by partying in one of the residential dorms. The school sent these kids home the next day and had lost the in-person privilege on campus. I read this morning, 4 more students from private housing (I assume upper class men) were also sent home for similar violations. There are still others who are not taking this seriously and are becoming constant issue with community leaders (RAs) in each housing.
They are. They’re testing 15% of all students each week (wish it were more). I’m not sure about faculty.
I think it’s so interesting that the MIT and Harvard incoming freshmen for this year would differ so much in their decisions to defer or not. Harvard also had record yield this year, with 84%, but then a very good chunk (I think over 20%) asked to defer (so they are still coming…just a year later). If very few MIT freshmen asked to defer and MIT had an equally generous open policy allowing deferral with no penalties, that seems especially interesting since the Harvard freshmen were invited on campus and the MIT students were not. I wonder if this has anything to do with personality type. It’s obviously a huge generalization, but it’s possible MIT attracts a greater percentage of introverted students who might not be as upset about missing some of the social aspects of residential college. By the way, I know that MIT is supposed to have some (perhaps surprisingly) crazy fraternity parties, so I certainly don’t mean that would apply to all MIT students, LOL. And perhaps students think the freshman STEM classes lend themselves better to remote learning than some humanities discussion-based classes. Just interesting!
I know for the business school, clearly one of the biggest advantages of HBS is networking (i believe that business school course content in general is not too difficult to learn on one’s own, but the networking with those other students and professors is truly invaluable), so it was not surprising that the b-school students were not remotely ok with a remote program for a year out of a 2-year program 
Even with the partially in-person program HBS ended up offering, the social networking opportunities are greatly diminished with SDing, no real gatherings, etc., so it’s not surprising many students would rather wait a year to get a more typical experience.
I think the extent of the “loss” of having to attend school remotely vs in person this fall must really vary tremendously based on the individual person and also what the various campuses offer in-person. For some, they are giving up a TON by going remote, for other people they aren’t giving up much (or certainly in the case of people who chose remote learning in the first place, they are giving up nothing whatsoever). I’m thinking back to the post a couple of pages ago where someone was saying many of their child’s engineering friends spend most of their college time in their room engaged in video games and only emerge for class and food. Students who are happy with that are really not missing much this year, and that’s totally great. (By the way, my engineering student loves a big party, so I am definitely aware that’s not true of all engineers!). Lots of different personality types make the world go round!
We already had 2 students cancel their leases because their classes are online and they are staying home. We just found other people. We didn’t keep their deposits. Students subleasing is a sticky issue, because then the tenant is not the person on our actual lease (among other things).
We are not holding students to their leases right now if they are not coming here. In a “normal” year, sometimes students want to sublease their room for the summer because they are not coming in until August, but they pay for the whole year. We’ve had problems in the past if we allowed that, so it’s not something we want to deal with.
Yeah, this doesn’t really apply to US at all. And that is certainly not the only reason not to permit subletting.
Today was our first day of classes. I had a 1-hour zoom meeting from home, then two 1-hour in-person labs, and a 1-hour and 45 minute in-person lecture. Everyone wore their masks and stayed at their approved places.
We had been assured that the classrooms would be marked as to where people could sit, but the lecture room had no sign of any markings whatsoever. I had a mask on for 4 hours straight and it got uncomfortable to try to lecture like that, especially since the lecture room was fairly warm.
I have one student who is in quarantine due to contact with a positive case. We’re going to attempt to patch him in remotely.
Overall, pretty exhausted.
@lehigh22 - yep on the positivity rate at Purdue but that is mostly from contact tracing and not from the random tests that just started. I’ll be interested in seeing what the numbers look like next week.
That said, there are a group of parents complaining that covid positive asymptomatic students shouldn’t have to quarantine. What?!?!?
Wait, so if asymptomatic people shouldn’t quarantine, then why do they think Purdue is testing asymptomatic people?
Did they not read the 10,000 or so emails or did it go to their spam? ?
The New York Times just had an article saying that the current virus testing practice is essentially incorrect, and that many of the ”positives” aren’t really positive at all That is, those people don’t have a viral load large enough to make them contagious. This could be as high as 85% of positive people.
“In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. “I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one,” he said.”
Apparently a key criteria of determining “positivity” is currently being ignored (the cycle threshold). “The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
The science isn’t there yet to even determine the definition of “positive”? As they go to the other types of tests they discuss, would we expect the numbers to automatically go down? Would they recount the current number of diagnosed positive cases?
@sylvan8798 Hang in there! My colleagues and I find ourselves much more physically exhausted by teaching with masks than ordinarily, with the stress of dual-mode instruction for quarantined students. It’s the second guessing whether we are projecting enough through masks, worrying about clarity of our speech and our content, worrying about connecting with students when no one can see the lower part of each other’s faces and when office hours require contortions of scheduling and distancing, plus the continuing worry about whether, and when, it might all collapse and we have to go all-virtual. After a “regular” day of teaching, I am wiped out. I had restructured my course, prepared for dual mode, done everything I could, but we’ve realized we were not prepared for just how exhausted we would be.
My D shared with me an email sent to students at Haverford with pictures touting the masking and social distancing happening outdoors on campus. Unfortunately the photos showed kids closer than 6 feet, even when I masked and eating. I’m not sure how they came to choose those pics and cannot decide if it’s funny or sad or if I’m maybe just seeing things.
Williams also reported one positive out of 1,500 tests in the last week and 2,500 tests overall. Largest wave of students arrive this week. About 1,700 returning to campus.
And it makes one wonder what else is being ignored also, yes?
There have been all sorts of promises made (except in the all-important area of ventilation/filtration concerns, of course, in my school district. But at least it’s listed – at least one neighboring district’s reopening plan doesn’t even mention that. But the point is is that if something so obvious as, say, social distance markings is being ignored, what things that aren’t visible are being ignored? When will the cleaning protocol start being relaxed, the filters not changed quite as often to save some money, the mask orders start to be ignored/relaxed, etc.?
Teachers in my district have been assured things (such as being able to teach remotely if they want) that aren’t happening for everyone. So what else isn’t going to happen the way it should be?
I think it is great that your leasing company is allowing cancellations and that is certainly not what I was referring to on the need to sublet. Many of these leases are 12,000+ per year per student and if they do not need the place, students are trying to recoup money. If they are allowed to cancel those leases even better and they can recoup 100%. Unfortunately, most are not allowing cancellations unless in some cases the unit is university owned. That kind of money is meaningful to most especially the students who work year round to pay it.
Pitt did its weekly dashboard update. There have been 60 positive cases since Aug 1, with 50 still in isolation. No info on quarantine numbers or on how many tests have been conducted overall. For reference, Pitt has about 20k undergrads.
They did provide data in the random sample testing they have been doing of those moving into dorms. There have been 6 positive cases from that since Aug 12 at a rate of 0.31%. All students that are moving into dorms are now in.
Taking together, I assume this means that 54 cases have been found because students were symptomatic and asked for a test or from contact tracing. I wish they would provide info on how many tests they were doing. My son reports that he know of no one who is sick or in isolation or quarantine.
I think it is exhausting for all teachers and students. The students are trying to keep track of professors method of delivery (each professor has a different way). They are trying to understand the professors through the mask when in person and trying to learn material that they do not currently know. They are also hot in those classrooms with masks on and the university that promised to keep them separated has them in assigned seats 2’ from each other. They want to connect to their professor but there is no way provided for doing so. Overall my kids report it to be very exhausting.
From Northwestern -
Basically they are working out an arrangement that students not permitted in campus housing are going to be able to rent room at the hotel in downtown Evanston. How is that reducing Covid risk? I feel like this defeats the entire purpose of the university only having juniors and seniors back:
Not creating goodwill in the community at all.
Rice’s numbers for last week were good. 3633 tests with 1 positive. Classes started a week ago.
I can understand why the community is upset. The Orrington is not only in the heart of downtown, it’s practically across the street from the public library and only a block from at least two large assisted living facilities.
A bed and breakfast/inn in Brunswick did something similar for Bowdoin students. I can see why the community may be unhappy but is it any different than students renting apartments when they’re banned from campus housing. And hotels are looking to survive financially as well.
Seems like many universities that tried to minimize their own responsibility for on campus students by shrinking the amount of on campus residents merely pushed it out onto the community.