Another peek at Wesleyan:
In broad terms, a reduction in the spread of the virus and organizational plans have have very limited impact on one another. As @homerdog correctly points out…it’s early. The models have big accelerations in viral spread the deeper we go into 2020, and the potential complexity of re-grouping communities after they’ve spent 6 to 8 weeks apart (at home Thanksgiving to mid-Jan+) is significant.
To the contrary, I wonder if professors who have migrated to distance learning might now actually prefer it, and will drag their feet with regard to returning to the classroom until they are forced to?
ok, I need to circle back and make a correction to my earlier post (I wish we could edit or delete). The whole UF thing just didn’t sit right with my D20, so she asked her friend more about it and it wasn’t anyone at UF who told her not to say anything. It was her mother who told her it would be best not to worry anyone up here and to wait until she was better to let anyone know she had it.
Sorry for the fake news post above!
Mods: I don’t know if this is allowable, but if anyone wants to delete my earlier post, feel free. I don’t want to spread misinformation.
I am looking for updates on hybrid public school experiences. My two kids are full remote until Nov and then transitioning to hybrid. We are in Massachusetts. Does anyone have high schoolers in a hybrid situation? How is it going?
@massmom2018 – My daughter’s San Diego HS is hybrid, and I could describe to you how it works, but I think it’s too early to say how it’s going.
Elon experiencing an outbreak.
An increase in the number of positive cases reported among students today has raised the campus alert level to Level 2 - Moderate Alert and prompted additional mitigation actions. In the daily COVID-19 Dashboard update at 4 p.m. today, Elon will report at least 24 new student cases, with the majority involving student-athletes. As a result, Elon Athletics has suspended in-person workouts, weight training, and operations in all sports until further notice.
Since Tuesday, 21 student-athletes have tested positive for COVID-19, including a cluster of cases among football student-athletes that will be reported by the local health department to the state. Currently 18 other student-athletes are exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms and awaiting test results. All students involved have been moved into isolation. Over the past two days, Elon has done extensive testing of students on the teams who may have been exposed and those test results could yield additional cases.
The spread of cases among student-athletes appears to be primarily related to social contacts outside of normal team activities. Elon Athletics has been practicing strict cleaning and social distancing protocols and has been regularly testing student-athletes, coaches and trainers.
In response to these and other cases reported this week, Elon is working closely with the health department to carry out established protocols for testing, contact tracing and notification, and quarantine. Numbers of students in isolation and quarantine have increased significantly as a primary strategy to limit the spread of the virus on campus. The available supply of quarantine spaces remains adequate to handle the increased demand of this increased number of cases. To date, the majority of positive student cases have either been asymptomatic or illnesses with mild symptoms lasting three to five days.
Logistics is a huge issue. My guess is that’s why you see saw so many large stat Us not requiring testing prior to campus arrival. The whole testing quagmire and eventual vaccination process is way more involved than creating an effective test and vaccine. For those who want everyone tested, and vaccinated, how do you do 330M of anything? Literally, how do you do it? How many humans does it take to stick 330M arms (twice!)? How many thousands of additional qualified people will it take to administer that? Where do they come from as the nurses who are already nursing are…already busy nursing. It is amazing the vaccine is coming along so quickly. The scale and magnitude that is required for both testing and vaccinating is staggering and likely never been done before (in a frantic pace).
Lots of parents on these forums seem to have have raised the priority of “close to home” this year.
The loss of the “residential college experience” that seems so valued around here theoretically could change some people’s decisions about colleges.
CALL OUT TO MODS - rather than delete original post, EDIT to indicate updated information. The information in original post has most likely been repeated, already some posters took what was said in original post at face value and responded.
Many were probably skeptical, but seems that since it is Florida and a public university, for whatever reason, other people seem to think the worst, or have very low expectations of them, hence the belief that original post could be true. And likely to have been repeated, since the claim/statement was so egregious.
Kudos to DeeCee for posting updated information.
If original post is deleted, most people will assume it was true and deleted to cover or avoid libel suit (LOL).
My DS is in grade 12 and doing hybrid (2-3 mornings a week). He only started this week so agree that it’s early days.
I have a 10th grader. The school is currently doing remote which was a change to the original plan of hybrid classes. The original plan was to divide the students into two groups and take turns going to school every other day while the other half does remote. This way they cut the number of kids in class and using the bus. BUT a week before Labor Day , the district decided to do completely remote and added that the district will re-evaluate third week of Oct. I got an email from school yesterday and today saying they will transition to hybrid beginning Sept 28! Its a mess and chaotic! Lots of parents angry which is understandable. I feel for parents with younger kids and the young students as well. Also I feel for all the teachers because of the huge changes and responsibilities placed on them by the district. I am not sure if they have all the resources and training they need.
Grand Valley State University (28K students) had a press conference with local media about the stay at home order issued by the county. The interesting thing that was said was that the problem was not 100 person parties, but rather gatherings of 4-6 students in a room. The interim director of the GVSU task force said:
https://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/20200916/county-tells-gvsu-students-to-stay-in-place
Northeastern is giving back $27,000 to each of the 11 students suspended for Covid infractions. That didn’t take long…
It’s two weeks in. We had a union meeting yesterday. The big topic of conversation was student behavior under the Covid-19 guidelines. My campus isn’t testing anyone, but is relying on a symptom tracker app. There is no enforcement unless the professor insists on checking student phones for the “green” code. Also, there is strong incentive to lie. The administration has sent out nanny emails reminding everyone to wear masks correctly (covering of mouth AND nose) and not move furniture in the classrooms. Students largely comply with the observable regs on campus but are partying and socializing like crazy off campus so there is no point. Some students aren’t wearing masks and we’re supposed to call campus police. Class is disrupted and the environment is poisoned. Also, some students are claiming they can’t come to class because of quarantine/exposure and those teaching in person are expected to provide taped lectures, etc. for these. I see nothing to make me think that my decision to teach remotely was the wrong one.
The upcoming battle is regarding permission to teach remotely in spring 2021. The administration has been dead silent about it.
Yes, best to put this behind them as soon as possible. In the big scheme of things, a lesson learned for the institution also. Their administration have bigger issues to deal with then to haggle with 11 families.
@NJSue - That is so disheartening to hear so I can only imagine what it feels like when you are dealing with it as a professor. So very sorry. I’m glad you are teaching remotely. I hope you have that option in the Spring, too.
This is probably the case at many campuses. This age group (on the whole) just doesn’t believe in the seriousness of covid-19.
We don’t edit if the post does not violate ToS. Posting inaccurate info is not a ToS violation
Our district is such a mess that they made the national news. People are not pleased, to say the least. The district is one of the main draws of this suburb, so it could affect property values as well as everything else.
It isn’t “serious” for them because they see their friends and fellow students getting infected and they’re have mild to no symptoms. They can conceptually understand that the virus is serious for some people but practically speaking their age group as a whole doesn’t fall into that category. There will be exceptions but that’s also true for the flu and we don’t shut down college campuses for that each year.
I’m not excusing the rule breaking or partying but as someone mentioned previously, colleges have spent decades sending mixed messages about partying and underaged drinking (rule/law breaking) and now they’ve gone full tilt enforcement. Thankfully that 180 degree pivot has been embraced by a good segment of the college population with decent results so far. However, there will be the group that only sees and hears that students ARE less likely to get seriously ill (and that’s what they’re actually seeing for themselves) and it makes all the drum beating and hand wringing of the “adults” seem disingenuous.