@CTCape, thanks for that UMass update. My D21 is applying there but we are in CA and thus the current status/experience of students is helpful. Intense is the word everyone I know seems to ascribe to their students’ experiences right now at many colleges. The exceptions seem to be for a few kids whose schools have such limited random covid testing that the kids live almost normal social lives via off campus events/parties.
I’d love to have some sort of abbreviated Fiske Book to record how each school is “doing” Covid this year. There are a pretty wide range of responses.
1 Like
My son is at one of those schools though I don’t know how many events/parties there are. Life does seem pretty normal for him though, other than classes being all online. He plays basketball only at an outdoor public playground since the school gym requires reservations, and he works out daily at an off campus gym for the same reasons. Otherwise life is normal. He still sees friends in his apartment and friends from the dorms come to visit. They wear masks outside but not in the apartment. Obviously they are not strictly following covid rules. He says he still doesn’t know anyone who has tested positive. He has been tested only once and that was done after he experienced some symptoms but it was negative.
Cases at his school have up-ticked a bit. There are currently 24 positive student cases in isolation (for a school with 20k undergrads). The school’s description made it sound like the cases were in clusters rather than randomly scattered.
The school has relaxed restrictions recently. More classes are in person, more offices are open, communal kitchens and lounges in dorms are open, and dining halls are allowing some inside dining. Only one month to go before Thanksgiving. Hopefully things continue to do well.
I’m with ya!
I think everyone will learn from everyone else by fall of 2021, and we will see a lot more similar plans. Wealthy/prestigious schools will be mostly remote, the next tier will be hybrid and try to spread the kids out, small schools close to a Broad type lab will try to “raise the drawbridge” after the kids show up, and big state schools will open and close things as the virus activity changes in their community.
Update from my D at Purdue as of last night:
One of her courses moved online, but another moved back in person. Seems like there have been a number of times a prof has had to isolate because of an exposure off campus. Because all the courses are already hybrid for those students unable to be on campus or in class, the transition back and forth has been seemless.
She continues to watch all online synchronous lectures with her classmates in an empty classroom. (9 of them in a class for 50 people so they spread out and wear their masks).
There is a class that she feels they are teaching themselves but there always is a better or worse teacher. D doesn’t think this particular prof would be any better in person. They have a rock star TA though so it balances out.
She had a 30 minute in person with her Dean yesterday because he makes it a point to personally know every student in his program (he’s teaching a part of her fluids class).
She leaves to go back to her co-op in January, is contracted for her internship in the summer with another company (they have a covid plan if things are still bad so the internship won’t be cancelled), and she just nailed down her housing for when she returns to campus.
D said her fun activities are a hybrid but she sees her friends every day. She’s also lining up zoom things to stay connected when she’s working next semester.
They are in the home stretch now. More than 2/3 of the way done. Bottom line - D sounds very happy and has had a meaningful, productive semester.
Dashboard numbers:
7 day positivity rate: 3.89% (trending down after a contact tracing spike)
Overall positivity rate since 8/1 - 2.94%
84 quarantine beds occupied out of 940
1 current hospitalization but unknown if student or faculty although by looking at the change in severity percentages, I think it’s staff.
Contact tracing is still very robust and the university continues to enforce the “protect Purdue pledge” aggressively.
For more perspective, the state of IN has a 7 day positivity rate of 7.8% and the county where we live is at 8.3% and we just moved back a phase.
That all said, D is hoping that when she returns to campus in January '22 after her co-op, that things will be back to normal.
Amherst just announced; transfers, first-years, juniors, and seniors on-campus in spring. They hope to bring back some sophomores (in addition to those who successfully petition to be on-campus) based on information of student intentions and space availability by mid-November.
Surprisingly, despite most other colleges cancelling study abroad, they ARE allowing Study Abroad in spring, and will evaluate Study Abroad programs on a case-by-case basis; they said sophomores who wanted to do their Study Abroad in spring (instead of next year) can do so.
I personally think if they were going to exclude one class for spring it should have been first-years because every other class already lost at least half a semester. Luckily D automatically gets to stay because she is a CA (Amherst equivalent of RA).
Oboy, what is that former poster going to do – the one who was insistent that he could NOT sit at home?
BC has announced their spring calendar. Classes start Jan 28 – originally was Jan 19. No spring break, just a day off on the Wed of that week. No real Easter break either – usually they are off Thur.-Mon. This year just off on Good Friday. Getting the usual day off for The Boston Marathon is TBD. If the race is run, then they get the day off, if not, then classes as usual. Exams as previously scheduled. Graduation still scheduled for May 24.
They will use the same return to campus testing protocols as they did in the fall.
Boston Marathon was cancelled for the spring yesterday. May have it in the fall.
MIT still plans to invite years 1-3 to campus for the Spring semester, which will be pushed back two weeks to begin on Feb 16 (after the traditional MIT Independent Activities Period in January that will be fully online this year). Spring break will be replaced with several long weekends.
They have been testing everyone on campus 2x week for a total of ~16,000 weekly tests with only Senior undegrads and graduate students on campus in the Fall. They are preparing to deliver ~24,000 tests a week in the Spring with increased undergrad population.
They have been allowing groups of up to 6 students to enter a “pod” contract and mingle in common spaces without masks and distancing (but without intermixing with other pods’ members). They plan to continue with this approach.
The Dropbоx link to a brief presentation with Chancellor’s recommendations is included in The Tech article below:
Denison has announced that the Spring semester start will be pushed back to the end of January, so students will have a break of about two months. The school had a small outbreak about two weeks ago, with six students (I think all were students) testing positive. After contact tracing, a larger group who had close contacts were quarantined. The group in quarantine (including S19’s roommate) were just retested and all came up negative, so they will be released from quarantine this weekend. The school also signal-tests a random group of students and staff every week, and all those tests came up negative this week as well, so it seems that community spread was avoided. It appears the outbreak may have started when students attended an event at another local college, against the Denison guidelines. The school cut back to allowing no visitors in dorm rooms after the positives but will now be relaxing the rules somewhat again. Three more weeks to go, and I think they will make it. Denison has also pushed back course selection for next semester until late December/early January so they can absorb lessons learned from this semester and plan accordingly. Given the long winter break, they are also going to be offering up some study/internship options that students can take advantage of. They did this over the summer, and S19 had a very good experience. I don’t think the NCAC conference has made any firm decisions about winter/spring sports, but Denison is moving ahead with planning for a couple of indoor track meets, maybe dual-school meets that will make social distancing easier.
Here’s a question for The Vulcan or anyone else with a student at a school using “pods” (or really anyone with an opinion on the matter):
There are obviously benefits to pods, allowing students to have something akin to a family where they can be more comfortable, while still preserving SD and masking in most situations. It all sounds very reasonable in the abstract.
I’m curious about the reality of social situations. Are there a lot of kids who struggle to form a pod? Who feel like they are the 5th or 7th (depending on allowable pod sizes) most desired person with a lot of groups? I’m wondering if there are a lot of kids who are left out of the pod they want to be in. Or who are torn between podding with their girlfriend/boyfriend and their friends. And for the incoming freshmen at MIT, how do they form a pod full of compatible people—will it just be their assigned suitemates, who they may or may not like? Can you change pods?
I think there are a lot of positives to this approach, but it also seems somewhat unhealthy. (On the other hand, I guess you go through a sorting process when you figure out who you want to live with each year, so maybe it’s just like that, no different). I would think that given how much more comfy it is to hang out with your pod vs have to SD/mask with others, this really gives an incentive to largely cut non-pod people out of your life. So in that sense, it’s different from picking who you are going to live with—even if you don’t live with certain friends, you might still spend a tremendous amount of time with them.
I just can’t help but think of all the harm this is doing to interpersonal connections. How many people who might normally get along are sitting in very harsh judgment of each other (either because they are crazy to wear a mask or crazy not to wear a mask, etc), families who are fighting about whether to gather for holidays or not, and now students have to ration who they will be talking to without a mask, and they may or may not get “chosen” by the people they like. It’s just so unnatural, I can’t wait until it’s over.
I can tell you how pods worked at my son’s school. For those living in the dorm, pods were assigned based on where you were living. Kids in rooms that were close together were put in a pod. This worked well for some, not so well for others. There was a bit of jockeying around with kids changing pods at the beginning and it seemed to work out in the end. I don’t think the school cared if you changed pods and I even heard stories of RAs helping people find new pods when there were issues. Off campus kids were considered to be in a pod with their housemates but there was no policing of that…
We are dealing with a number of least worst alternatives. None of which work out for everyone. What works for one may not work for others. But that any alternative (such as pods) doesn’t work for all, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be pursued. And at the same time, you try to find ways to help kids for whom pods (or other alternatives) are problematic.
I expect that there are a lot of pods that have been created (some officially sanctioned by schools and others not) that are working at colleges across the country. Some better than others no doubt but its all a balance. DIfferent people are comfortable with different balances.
All valid concerns and good answers. I don’t have much to add as our DS is a freshman and is thus learning at home this semester, while taking advantage of the research, extracurricular, and social opportunities available in this new normal.
From the limited feedback we have about life on campus some kids are having a blast with their pods while others are mostly staying in their rooms.
No one went into this expecting a normal year, and no one said it was going to be easy.
But the alternative is a wide spread of infection seen on many other campuses that should not be acceptable to anyone, and I, for one, am glad it is not acceptable to my son’s school.
Their weekly positive rate just spiked to 0.12% from the prior average of 0.05%. While some schools declare a success with thirty times this rate, I am sure these numbers are a concern at MIT right now.
We shall see how the remaining four weeks of the Fall semester go.
@EmptyNestSoon2 , my sophomore son is hitting some of these issues. I don’t know if his school uses the term “pod” but depending on their “Alert Level” they have a number of people (more specifically, non-roommates) that they can socialize with. My son is in a single and the remaining 4 of his close friend group live all together, so when his school is on higher alert, that leaves him out as the fifth and he has no “pod”. He’s OK with it, it’s not perfect, but he’s a small-circle-of-friends kind of guy so this is the natural consequence of that! The higher alert levels have been temporary (1-2 weeks at longest) so it’s doable. Another thing he is running into is lining up his housing for next year, most of that small group want to be RAs so he needs to find roommates…but he’s not talking casually with anyone outside of his pod, and not even seeing his acquaintances or classmates that much to deepen any relationships. The effects of covid+introvert!
There are definite social costs, but my son is still happy. He realizes that the alternative is at home in his bedroom, and he would choose this on-campus-with-social-constraints 100%. These difficulties are probably much harder for freshmen who didn’t get to start the year with relationships established. Honestly, I think the fact that everyone had to experience that reality in the spring (at home learning) is probably making the fall, with its challenges, easier to handle…they know the alternative, and many got to make the choice.
Oh, yeah, to be clear, I’m not anti-pod. In fact, I think they make a lot of sense (as a least-worst option). I was merely curious to hear stories of how they are actually working out in practice, and the real impact on the students (vs a defense for or argument against their existence). TS0104, I’m so glad your son is relatively happy and sounds super well-adjusted with great perspective, but yes, that is kind of what I was picturing happening all over the place. While he really sounds like a trooper, and I hope you are very proud of his attitude, I am still a bit heartbroken that this stuff has to happen. But I think you are also right, having the at-home spring definitely makes any on-campus version much more appealing for many! Me29034, it sounds like it is largely working out at your child’s campus, I am happy to hear that. Hopefully it won’t be too, too, too much longer.
I think I’m in the mood to just wallow in a little of “what stinks about covid”…and (beyond the obvious HUGE things) the idea of these pods being somewhat reminiscent of kids approaching a middle school lunchroom table where there are no empty seats makes me a little sad. But it is still a smart way to mitigate risk while making life more livable!
Elon’s plans for Winter and Spring Terms.
Winter Term 2021
Most classes will be held in-person or in hybrid mode, similar to the models used by faculty during Fall Semester.
Classes will begin on Wednesday, January 13.
Winter Term classes will end on February 2, with exams on February 3 and grades due on February 5.
Spring Semester 2021
Most classes will be held in-person or hybrid mode, similar to the models used by faculty during Winter Term and Fall Semester.
Spring Semester classes will begin on Monday, February 8.
The traditional extended Spring Break will be replaced by several shorter breaks, with no classes held on:
○ Tuesday, February 23
○ Tuesday-Wednesday, March 16-17
○ Monday, April 5
○ Wednesday, April 21
The final class day will be Tuesday, May 11, and Reading Day is May 12.
Final exams will be held on May 13-19, with grades due May 20 and senior grades due within 24 hours of the exam period
Commencement is tentatively scheduled for Friday, May 21. The form of Commencement has not yet been determined.
Wow. I looked up Elon’s COVID dashboard, and they just had a 3% positive rate on a random screening sample - yet they plan to push forward with in-person instruction.
https://www.elon.edu/u/ready-and-resilient/health-wellness/covid-19-dashboard/
Just goes to show how different the approaches are that different schools are taking.
Elon’s coming off of a giant recent spike, which may inflate that latest random sample number. They are testing a majority of all the student body this past week, I believe. The latest spike was said to be mostly sorority and fraternity spread and attributed to small social gatherings. They do list out the clusters in an email when they have a large spike.
Elon’s communications continue to assert that their contract tracing is showing that spread is not coming from classrooms.