D20’s chosen college announced their “plan” for returning to campus this fall. Even though NY guidelines clearly spell out students from quarantined states can not quarantine with students from non-quarantine states, college has decided that their way around it is to have a mandatory quarantine for everyone and are sticking with their original rooming assignments. A kid from a high-Covid state (say TX) has a negative test 48 hours before moving in and leaves TX on a plane, arrives in NY and quarantines with a student from NY and shares communal bathroom space with the other dozen or so kids on the floor.
A phone call to the county health department where the college is located in says college is “bending the guidelines to meet their desired outcome” and not really satisfying the rules of quarantine. If it was your mother/aunt/friend, and you chose to let them quarantine with you, that is a “voluntary” arrangement, where this is just assigned. “Best practices” would be to create cohorts of students based on where their home is (all students from quarantine states live on the same floor) but the school is ignoring that and saying that quarantining everyone is leveling the playing field.
Complicating matters is that if the NY student is identified as a close contact of a student who later tests positive, they have to go home to quarantine, not be put in university property set aside for that purpose since they live too close.
It doesn’t even sound like a plan to me, just put random kids together and cross our fingers that no one is sick at the end of 2 weeks. If your kid’s school announced this “plan”, would you send them?
That sounds like a ‘throw spaghetti at the wall’ plan; the colleges I am familiar with, are not rooming any students together, but, I think every student should be quarantined, regardless of their home state.
And sometimes home state does not mean anything. My son is from TX but hasn’t been in the state, or had contact with anyone from the state, since the second week of May. He has been in a state not on the quarantine list (for his school). I don’t want to tell you how many times he has had to explain that one!
I wouldn’t call the county health department to complain. I’d call the governor’s office. I’d be really surprised if the quarantine rules are a suggestion.
I can understand how that feels very unfair to kids from non quarantine states, and well, it is. But from a virus-on-campus perspective, it seems pretty effective to just quarantine everybody upon arrival. After all, every student is going to have some chance of contracting the virus in between their test and arriving on campus, no matter where they live. And factors such as how these kids were social distancing (or not) before coming to campus may matter more than their home state. A kid in TX who was social distancing would be less likely to have the virus once getting to campus than say a NE kid who went to a party on his/her last night at home.
I personally wouldn’t have that plan stop me from sending my kid if we were both all on board before it. But if you or your student had doubts already, or were considering a deferral or gap year, it could be a factor…I guess I would just weigh it in with everything else I knew about the school and felt about sending kid there (or anywhere) amidst all this.
I do think quarantining everyone is the right thing to do. I also understand students may not be coming from home and could be in another state or staying with friends or family in the state. I just feel very let down by the school. D was seriously torn between applying ED at 2 schools and is absolutely beside herself because the other school has a much better plan. My biggest issue is DH is immunocompromised and has been working from home (will continue to do so for the foreseeable future) and it is upsetting to think D could be identified as a close contact because of someone in her living quarters and we have to deal with her being sent home.