I’m confused about this plan on a couple of counts: (1) if the students all go back to the dorm at the end of the day and mingle, how does this help, and (2) how does this protect the faculty and staff (who are probably at higher risk)?
Many will go back to their off campus apartments and mingle in the city. That will occur regardless of campus reopening
Cities and states will deal with their own numbers (and potential stay at home orders) but what happens at a dorm (outbreak) will fall under the school’s liability.
This is why I’m worried about dorms: a Louisiana women’s prison dorm recently tested all the inmates. Of the usual ~195 who live there, 192 tested positive. (It’s not clear whether there were in fact 195 inmates there at the time of testing). Two thirds were asymptomatic at the time of testing.
This is remarkable for a lot of reasons. First, it sure doesn’t look like many people are going to have natural immunity, does it?
Secondly, this suggests a very fast spread. People who are asymptomatic usually clear the disease in a week, or at least that’s what the people who quarantine asymptomatic people for seven days would have us believe. So the first one or two people who had the disease must have infected dozens to get everybody infected before the first people recovered.
A college dorm is not as much of an infection-spreader as a prison dorm, but it’s close. Once coronavirus gets into a college dorm, seems like everybody will get it, fast. Most students will be asymptomatic, so they’ll have time to spread the disease to the rest of the college, and (if intercollegiate sports are allowed) to other colleges as well.
Fa
Faculty and Staff will do the same thing the rest of us ( dental hygienists, office workers in business offices that see customers, retail employees etc… ) will have to do at work - social distancing. They have the ability to do it better than most - speak at the podium, 10 feet away from the students video conference in, etc… Cleaning staff can wear masks (like cleaning staff is currently doing in hospitals), etc. They are no different then the rest of us workers that will eventually have to go back to work (and ARE at work now, since not all everyone is not luck enough to be able to WFH - like I am).
The students are adults and will have to follow rules as they see fit. Again, no different than students off campus.
I believe the process at universities is this:
- They're currently formulating multiple plans, costing them, and looking for the best plan at the best price. They're worried about deciding on a plan and then not being able to buy the necessary supplies. Like plan to use thermal imaging at dorm entrances to identify students with a fever, but can they get the thermal imaging equipment and train staff?
- They're trying to stop the melt and get solid numbers for the fall. Once they have a better idea of who is coming they can determine the revenue they have to work with.
- They need to hear what the state will require, and match that up with their favored plan.
- Finally they will be able to give students the details.
I live near the downtown of a major city. The kids here don’t have a pool either and even if they did it’d be too cold for swimming.
But they do have near-empty city streets and parking lots they have transformed into bike riding/stakeboarding/ rollerblading courses. Neighbors have organized sidewalk chalk-art exhibits. The playgrounds are closed, but the parks remain open to pedestrians and bicycles provided distancing rules are observed.
Sorry, I still don’t buy the fact that kids are suffering majorly. Ask anyone who lived through polio epidemics or armed conflicts for their opinion, too. As Americans we’ve lived in our own bubble. Still do.
I think schools are trying to release plans as soon as possible to avoid summer melt, but they don’t want to release plans too soon and have to renege on them. Thus all the hedging.
During the town hall the MIT administration reiterated that no decisions have been made about the Fall semester, and that they will wait until there is as much information available to them as possible to make the best decision among the range of options they are preparing for. They currently expect to make the final decisions by early July.
In answer to a question from the audience about tuition reductions for online instruction they sounded very noncommittal.
In answer about deferrals and gap years they stated that despite the COVID outbreak they experienced their **record undergraduate yield/b, that they intend to “offer an experience that is very much MIT” regardless of what fall semester ends up looking like in terms of return to campus, and that while they do not think there are going to be more attractive ways to spend the next year, they will always try to make the decision that is best for the student.
They also invited feedback from the community, discussed social distancing options and personnel issues, reiterating their commitment to doing everything possible to avoid layoffs.
It was a nice event, and the recording is available online:
However, they reiterated their commitment to meeting full financial need of their students, and are allocating more resources towards this goal in light of the unprecedented spike in unemployment numbers.
Also, regardless of whether and when some of the students and faculty/staff return to campus, they anticipate widespread social distancing and mask wearing requirements, and will allow vulnerable members of their community (both faculty/staff and students) to work/teach/learn remotely, so they are preparing for this new hybrid mode of functioning as well.
[quote=“gwnorth, post:2303, topic:2088334”]
[quote=“roycroftmom, post:2262, topic:2088334”]
Won’t the students be in their leased apartments regardless of whether school is in session?
[/quote
If you have that ncaa link please link it. Also so now everyone will party at the social distancing bar or dorms etc. Students aren’t just going to not watch the game. Maybe on big screens in a park (have no clue)… Maybe they should sell separated tickets… OK. That’s never going to work… ?
Princeton has said they won’t guarantee that students who take a gap year will be able to return immediately after taking said gap year.
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2020/05/final-cpuc-administrators-discuss-gap-years
How many staff will they have to lay off and how much will the salaries of the remaining staff have to be cut to make this happen?
Yes. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is the dorms. What does a college do if there is an outbreak in a dorm? Quarantine the dorm? Send everyone living in the infected dorm home? Move the infected students to an on-campus medical facility? I don’t see a realistic solution here.
I suppose you could resume in the fall without dormitories, but that just pushes the problem out into the neighboring communities (and assumes that they have the capacity to absorb the additional student housing needs). Obviously, many students do live off campus, but I’m not convinced that residential colleges will open on that basis. Essentially, if colleges resume face-to-face teaching and brings in a large influx of students, and there is a spike in infections, the college will be to blame. (And conversely, if a college doesn’t bring students to campus, but the students choose to move nearby anyways, any spike in infections is not the college’s fault.)
That just seems like an off-putting scare tactic to me. They know exactly how many students take leaves or deferrals in any given year, and can easily plan their following class accordingly to have the right number of people on campus. Wash, repeat each subsequent year.
Well this adds to another level of stress for the families but I also understand their position
[quote=“katliamom, post:2408, topic:2088334”]
@katliamom These high school and college kid’s grandparents didn’t live through polio epidemics or armed conflicts. History says we go back to 1918 (over 100 years- Spanish Flu) for a pandemic like this. Can you recall schools and much of society shut down for a length of time? I cannot.
The concern is there’d be many more students taking a gap year (or leave of absence) this year than usual. For very selective colleges, that’s the likely tool (probably more than a scare tactic?) they’d use instead of outright restrictions.
@1NJParent I agree it’s a scare tactic, and not a subtle one at all. It makes me think less of a school pulling it. It’s Princeton- they could have a ton of gap year requests, still fill the class from the wait list, and have a head start on an even lower admission rate next year. It won’t hurt them at all.