Yup.
My DD has said being on campus but heavily restricted and with all classes online would be the worst-case scenario in her mind. Paying towards room and board, not being able to socialize, classes online either way- what is the fun in that? If they limit clubs, sports, or even hangouts and she can’t even interact face to face with her professors and has to do work digitally it is not a huge step up from being at home and taking online classes (even worse when you consider the expense).
They will socialize. It will just be a bit different. Nice weather they will go outside and sit with friends. Maybe eat lunch outside kinda thing. Kids will adapt. I don’t think we are giving them enough credit.
Yep, and I’m gonna confess right here that we let D20 go visit a friend today. First time since mid March. They’ll be social distancing outside, but at least they can socialize in person. The weather finally allows it.
@Knowsstuff I actually think kids are very smart and will quickly work around any system the school sets to attempt to limit social distancing. I have a friend whose child upon hearing about tracing apps said they might pick up an extra cheap phone so they can’t be traced at parties (if the schools crackdown on over so many ppl). These students are smart with finding ways to do what they want- even if it is not in their best interest.
If a 14-day quarantine is required for close social contact I predict schools struggling to get and keep students locked down. And no one is staying 6 ft apart. Half the time I think people have forgotten how to measure because without markers of some kind everyone is much closer than 6 ft but I digress.
As for keeping students on campus with an outbreak- good luck with that. Parents will swoop in and want to pick up their students (especially if they test negative). Forcing them to stay will be “putting students’ health at risk” very tricky business.
Personally, I just do not see schools being ready with workable plans in less than 60 days when they will need to announce plans for the fall. Hopefully, I am wrong but I suspect schools will simply need more time to figure out a plan that doesn’t end with them closing campus again mid-semester.
My S is currently on campus. The college has very strict rules about interactions and social distancing on campus. He has extremely limited physical interactions with anyone, even with his suitemates. He tried to keep himself very busy with his courses and other projects. So far, he hasn’t complained.
Not if they are in apartments. I know I sound like a broken record but both my kids are upperclassmen. They both stayed in their apartments. One was basically by himself since his roommate was local and went home but a senior and basically done with classes anyway and my senior daughter lives with one other person and they are taking social distancing seriously and so are her friends on campus
Heh, they can still have a drink and party and be 6-10 feet apart right? Today she’s outside with some friends by the river at her school sitting having a picnic and working on her senior thesis.
I think colleges may try to condense the semester so there’s less time for an outbreak to occur. Could be late start to give more planning time (getting tests, devepoing plans so sick students, etc.). I think they may limit breaks b/c they don’t want students leaving and coming back with the virus. My D’s winter break is almost a month – it could be 2 weeks which is rough for international students but we don’t know how many of them will make it back to campus this Fall, sadly, and if they do they may have to stay over the break. You could go mid Sept to mid Dec and get a semester in. Thanksgiving is tricky, but honestly I they should probably stay on campus, though that may not be popular.
I think colleges will be turning large spaces into classrooms so there can be distance between desks. Art galleries, performing arts spaces, etc. I like Stanford’s idea of outdoor classes when weather permits. Start the semester w/ as many outdoor classes as you can, and keep going until the weather turns.
As has been said, mask wearing in public places (but hopefully not class), no large gatherings and no sports. All classes zoomable.
Curious – if a student is identified as in close contact (that 15 minutes w/in 6 feet threshold) with someone who tests positive, how long do they need to isolate? Or do they just get tested? If they have to isolate 14 days that’d be rough. What if it happens more than once? 7 days isolation and then testing is what I’ve heard some countries doing recently – just don’t know the data behind that decision.
Colleges are free to be optimistic and of course they are going to say they want to welcome students in the fall ON campus but don’t take that as false hope. Stay grounded in reality. Haverford is smack dab in the middle of a hot spot Montgomery County, PA and in fact in the worst hit township-Lower Merion. We are still fully in the “Red” part of PA and locked down tight. In order to get to “yellow” where schools are still closed we need to have our daily new cases to fall to an average of 30 per day for 14 days. Recently we have been running around 150 new cases per day or so per day. We have a long way to go. I don’t know what it will take to get to “green” when school and traditional work places will open here. That hasn’t been defined as far as I am aware.
We could still be with friends, we just couldn’t have massive parties or massive gatherings, hence the “may need to LIMIT the number of people you are in close contact with.” Much better than being entirely alone in your parents’ house. I was not one for huge gatherings anyway, and I am miserable being stuck in my parents’ house and being unable to go out.
@ChemAM – Agree. My D would much rather hang with small groups of friends and practice as much social distancing, etc. as feasible than be stuck at home!
The quarantine period here has been 14 days, though it may end up being reduced to 10 or 7 I suppose. Getting tested is not a substitute for being quarantined; someone can be infected and not have developed the disease yet.
If someone is unlucky enough to need to be quarantined twice, they’ll have to be quarantined twice. If that is happening, the school is doing a bad job managing an outbreak.
I agree that there will be lots of potential to socialize outside, weather permitting, in smallish friend groups. That’s pretty easy in places with good weather and plenty of outdoor space. But if it is going to be the predominant mode of socialization, I’d much rather be in southern California, Arizona etc than in the northeastern US this winter.
It is also going to be a lot easier for upperclassmen who have already established a tight knit friend group, compared to freshmen who will find it much harder to meet new people.
I agree and thought haverford’s student communication was far too optimistic. Their (eventual) email to parents was more realistic. Their tiny size is kinda the only thing they have in their favor on this- definitely not their location. So many people I know in Philly are not taking this seriously or think it’s all blown out of proportion. It makes me worry for all Philly area schools.
At this point, if all of our discussion is spot on, I’d rather Bowdoin just do online. To put us in the position to try to decide if Covid-19 reality on campus is “worth it” is an impossible guess. Maine weather isn’t going to hold out very long for kids to sit outside to eat. What do we picture here for those of you that know the campuses of small residential colleges? Lunchtime will be kids lining up six feet apart to pick up bag lunches and then go back outside to sit six feet apart to eat? Come on. Not an option. These scenarios being painted are not realistic options.
Where would you be allowed to “hang” with your friends if they aren’t allowed in your dorm room? Will buildings be open for kids to group together to study? And, within one friend group say at the library, they have to sit six feet apart?
If every returning student is tested, and tested regularly, the strict social distancing rules can probably be relaxed. They may still be required in places where staff and others who do not live on campus are present, but relaxed in their dorms and other areas where only students are allowed.
My D says in her opinion that social distancing won’t work at her school. Even though there are small class sizes, there are small classrooms to go with them. The library doesn’t have space for one per table to study. The dining center would have crazy long lines for take out since it’s all buffet style and she said there were long lines at main mealtimes anyway. The hallways in the dorms are small, the bathrooms can be cramped. The only social distancing she can see working is just everyone on campus social distancing from the outside world. Faculty that live off campus would have to work remotely in that plan, but many faculty do live on campus. It doesn’t account for the support workers at all though. Basically it just isn’t really possible. They could go outside for a bit, but it’s super hot when they arrive for fall and way too cold way before winter break- and the campus isn’t that big for every class to be outside. The vast majority of kids are athletes there, but that’s off the table too… as are clubs… performing arts. Strict social distancing at a college like hers would almost certainly be a worse experience than just staying online- and she really doesn’t like that. I’m glad she has the option to take a leave should it end up being the best thing for her.
@homerdog Who said they wouldn’t be allowed in dorms? And Amherst didn’t say we would have to stay six feet away from everyone. They said we would have to limit the number of people we were this close to; in other words, no major gatherings. Also, they could hang out in common rooms if they couldn’t enter each other’s dorm rooms.
I am holding out hope for the results of all the genetic studies going on. Maybe they will find something in common in the genomes of younger people who get seriously ill with Covid-19. It is likely that there are genetic factors in host response, as there are for all infectious diseases. People’s immune systems can fail to respond well to certain illnesses (or overreact).
It is rare for people under 50 to have bad outcomes with Covid (I would like to know exactly how rare, but it’s too early in the pandemic to have reliable data). Even for people between 50-65 (professors, administrators, staff), the majority do well, especially those who do not have pre-existing conditions. (The pre-existing conditions I’ve seen show up in research studies as risks are hypertension, diabetes, obesity and certain active cancers. The jury is definitely still out on those and others.)
If we could identify people under 65 who will have immune issues with this virus, they could make decisions about how to be protected, and the colleges could figure out how to protect their at-risk employees.
If we knew who needed protection, then we could dispense with most of the logistical questions of social distancing, dorm living, testing and contact tracing. College kids would get the virus, just like they get all kinds of other illnesses and likely are healthier overall due to the exposure. Professors would likely still want to take precautions such as observing 6 feet of distance, washing hands, Skype office hours etc.
The time that it would make sense to test kids would be before they headed home. That way they could make a decision with their families if they tested positive. It is more likely that they would encounter at-risk people at home than at school, due to age being such a big factor.
So, that’s my best hope for a plausible scenario without better treatment or a vaccine. I’m not a geneticist or any kind of scientist, so I can’t say how likely it would be to find genetic variants that make people susceptible or how long it might take. I just know that many research teams across the world are looking and collaborating.
This article is a straight-forward overview of the idea: https://www.biospace.com/article/studies-suggesting-genetics-is-behind-patient-response-to-covid-19/
@homerdog. They will have box lunches that they will go pick up like I saw on North campus at Michigan. Kids then can go wherever to eat. Maybe when they can or maybe just this. They will have normal cafeteria food but it will be served to them.
Maybe larger spaces will be open for lunch to spread the kids out. At Beloit where my daughter is they built a new student center that should work well for this. Yes, some creativity will have to be done. They will have to open up spaces that most likely are not intended for this like a gymnasium maybe? Maybe groups of kids go eat in a larger lecture hall? I don’t know the layout of Bowdoin. But imagination will come into play. It might suck in the beginning but then they will adjust and move on. It’s NOT an easy decision and I am not trying to look past the problems. If your kid was a junior /senior you might have a different view.
When I just now asked my son about this if he was a freshman or sophomore he said that students are still taking their core classes and except maybe for a few classes all can be learned online. He thinks the smaller discussion groups will still happen but maybe in larger spaces when they can do that. My daughter was at two lacs one around 1800 students and one 1300. Both have spaces that can be used. Maybe a theater or black box theater room can be used for some classes or meetings? Class sizes must be smaller to begin with so I would think this would be much easier at Bowdoin then at a large university. Sure stating the obvious. Libraries might need to be dual purposed. Basements that can be used might be for discussion groups. You know the layout. What do you think they might do with the buildings they have there?