Purdue students have a petition circulating to add a reading day for this semester like they did for the Spring (they added three in the spring).
D would love a day off but says the pace is already so fast with the compressed semester that it might make things even worse.
University is posturing to say ‘no’ to the request.
The Positivity rate has oscillated between 2.5-3% most of the semester. Definitely nowhere close to zero. That said they are doing better than the surrounding areas in IN. Mask compliance is strictly enforced and they continue to aggressively contact trace and suspend students for violating the pledge.
@shuttlebus ha. Want to name the schools to help us out here? Lol. I’m guessing those schools aren’t testing all that much. For places where testing is happening two times a week, I bet the party factor is pretty low.
Yep. My son said they are like giving more homework and projects because they think the students have all this dead time. A normal one hour test just turned into an 3 hour test since kids can use their books with no one checking…On Reddit for Michigan kids wanted the normal long weekend that they would normally get. I think they all need a mental health day/weekend per se. Well to people reading…the kids are learning. No question about that. Just more work then they would think.
There are schools that are doing just fine and have all students back and most classes in-person. My son’s school is one of them. Quarantining and testing is managed and rates have dropped. So have the rates in the surrounding communities. I have friends whose kids’ schools are similar.
But we both feel like we can’t talk about this because of how other schools are going. It’s almost like we fear our schools would get shut down anyway because of political sentiments about the virus. Almost feels like some wish schools would stay closed.
Anyone know what Brown campus is like? Any students on campus? Any f2f or all online?
(I just did a quick search, sorry, I asked above question without thinking, and found some info…:but if anyone has any really recent info, that would be great, too.)
@123Mom123 Brown has roughly 2/3 of the student body on-campus, most classes online, a few in-person. They are following a three-semester model where they add a summer semester and everyone gets two semesters on-campus.
Not sure if this has been posted here yet: Swarthmore released their decision for Spring 2021 yesterday. Juniors and seniors on-campus for Spring 2021, freshmen and sophomores learning remotely; most classes online but a few in-person. They stated back in early July that they were inviting freshmen and sophomores back for fall and hoped to return to full enrollment in spring. They said that seemed unwise due to public health conditions.
Honestly, with how well many of the NESCACs are doing, I don’t know what else they need to return to full enrollment. Schools like Hamilton and Wesleyan have proved that a small residential liberal arts college can have full enrollment and students in doubles and still do very well at controlling cases.
The word on the street is that a floor at one MIT dorm violated social distancing rules and created a small cluster of cases.
Due to semi-weekly testing these cases were caught quickly, the floor was put in isolation, and next week the positive rate went back to 0.04% from 0.08% the week prior.
So you’re advocating sending kids to schools where they will attend off-campus parties, get infected, and pass it around the community and school just so they can “have a great time”?
I.e. encourage her to possibly play the COVID-19 (negative) lottery, although she may have better odds than older people of avoiding losing*?
*Although if a traditional-college-age person does lose the COVID-19 lottery, they will lose more decades of life (if they die) or have more decades of disability (if they suffer long term disability) than if an elderly person loses the COVID-19 lottery.
Firs year student enrollment is down 16%
Overall enrollment down 4%
Community Colleges hit hardest. Down 23%
Midwest hit hardest. Michigan schools down almost 10%
I’m sorry but what schools are these? Why would highly ranked colleges with large endowments not be doing this but others are full speed ahead? I’d love some thoughts on this. My gut said that “quarantining and testing” being “managed” isn’t exactly the truth at these schools that say they’ve got it all together with kids going to class.
I’m reluctant to rely on studies of “long term” effects when we’re 8-10 months into the Covid-19 era.
What percentage or 15-24 year old females are experiencing “long term” effects?
Are increase anxiety and PTSD in recovered Covid patients related to lock downs, or the isolation necessary with Covid quarantine, rather than a Covid side effect?
Believe me, I’m not trying to downplay the virus, but young people are faring pretty well as a general rule. Of course there are exceptions, and those exceptions can have horrible consequences. But, from the perspective of your average college student, they don’t have much reason to cloister themselves away.
Now, if you want to talk about their responsibility to the larger community surrounding their colleges/universities, I would agree that they should be taking greater measures to protect the more vulnerable.
Unless you never leave your home (and no one else in your household does either), have no visiters and santize everything brought into your home (self sustaining farmers may be able to skip that step but I doubt there are many who post here), you are playing the Covid lottery. Vast majority of people in US are playing that lottery. For most of those people its out of necessity: need to work to have money to live and do not have a job which allows them to stay at home.
Others play the lottery on a range of necessity to total frivolity. Where any given activity falls on that spectrum is in the eye of the beholder (as we have see over 860+ pages of this thread – with respect to college/school).
Also a time element in terms of the lottery. Not sure how long it will be something to be played. May be something long term (what that is can be in the eyes of the beholder as well). No safe and effect vaccines have been identified yet (several are in testing). Not sure when/if we will find one. Or how effective it will be (part of that is also wrapped up on how many people will take it). How long will immunity last. May well be the case that even with a safe and effective vaccine, the lottery is still played because the vaccine isn’t 100% effective. Also do not know all of the impacts or duration for those who survive the Covid lottery but still lost it. Lots of unknowns at this point.
All of those uncertainties, if known, would have huge impacts on decisions to play the lottery. Including college (this semester or next or even next academic year or beyond).