Vassar planning on bubble. Big time. Listen to this
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/making-the-call/id1506107320?i=1000479373430
@homerdog Could you provide a summary? Very long (29 minutes).
Re: Vassar’s plans for fall- lets go to the source: Here is Vassar College’s President’s current plan. BTW, she is on the NYS’s Advisory Board to help shape re-opening policy.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/vassar/FMfcgxwHNVxDmCVwLhfwtgpJMVbsdgSK
So if you live off campus at Bowdoin, come spring time you are not allowed on campus. What about faculty and staff? I am assuming they will continue to live off campus, interact with the community in their town and then come to campus. So the stipulation on students seems unfair. If they are creating a bubble but faculty and staff are exempt, then there is no bubble.
And if sports return for spring, then off campus athletes as well as freshmen are out of luck?
Now I am not so sure about the “keeping students on-campus in shutdown to keep room and board” thing; in the UNC system housing contract for the upcoming year, students have to agree that the university does NOT have to refund them if they get kicked out!
^^Students interact much more with each other than faculty/staff with each other or students, especially when most classes are online.
Why is the assumption that parents didn’t set reasonable expectations for the kids? Are we all forgetting the teenage brain? On a regular basis my two teens remind me their brains are not fully developed. They don’t always make great decisions. They are sometimes guided by their emotions rather than logic. It doesn’t always matter if H and I have what we think are stellar conversations with them, and that we are certain to have set them on the right path. They are teens and don’t always get it. Sometimes, they get it for a week, and then go back to making a foolish decision or having unrealistic expectations. Don’t we see that with the numerous CC posts about students being surprised they didn’t get into Harvard because they had a perfect GPA, stellar extracurriculars, a few awards, and “really, really, great” essays?
I’m glad so many of the posters have perfect teens with fully developed brains that easily glide through life’s disappointments as long as their parents have “fully prepared them” with “realistic expectations.” I guess the rest of us are just failures as parents.
Cut the Bowdoin students (and parents) some slack.
@wisteria100 yes I know. But I asked and that’s what they said!
Vassar’s President is interviewed on that podcast. Kids will test before coming. Test on arrival. Not allowed to leave the actual campus. She said that, if they get to 85 percent capacity in their quarantine beds, she will have to keep all students in their rooms. That’s the first time I’ve heard a plan for what it would take for a school to “shut down”.
@homerdog I think keeping them in their rooms until the situation cools down is a much better strategy then sending them all home.
Has this been announced for all schools? ECU Chancellor spoke yesterday and said they would in fact offer housing refunds if campus closes due to covid19. However, both WCU and UNCG have announced it is system-wide that no refunds be offered…
Has any announcement been made for UNC-CH, UNCC, NC State, or App (all under the UNC system)?
How about cutting some slack for universities who tried to do the right thing? How about not harshly criticizing most plans because they simply not good enough? How about cutting some slacks for professors who want to stay safe? And i can go on and on. We are going through hundred of pages of despair and criticism and grievance of anything short of a perfect situation. Can you blame us for some reflection? I don’t see anything wrong with honest opinions and lessons learned here. Take it or leave it.
@MBNC1755 I’m not sure; I just know a lot of people who went to UNC system schools from my high school and it is getting shared a lot over social media.
@Nhatrang There’s a difference between honest opinions about university plans and condescending insults towards individuals.
@socaldad2002 @mom1720 - thanks for the replies! I saw this, which is basically saying that there will be no forced triples - (which students opt into). I was wondering about the pod or family idea. I get it now. Thanks again!
I am pretty sure insulting someone is against TOS. It wouldn’t be allowed.
That’s all fine, but you’re making assumptions about conversations that you feel did or did not happen in households of people you really don’t know at all. You have no idea what their parenting style entails. People come to CC for a lot of different reasons. I remember earlier in this thread someone mentioned that they don’t share their worries with their kid, they come to CC for that. People express frustrations here that they would never utter to colleagues, family members, or friends. It often acts as a sounding board. Posters should stop assuming they know how others parent their children. The judgmental tone is unwarranted.
And for the record, I agree that posters are also unfairly judging professors. I find that extremely annoying too. If you read my previous posts, you’ll see I repeatedly try to express another view to balance that. However, I can do that without being condescending.
I can literally stay at our current phase until 2021 with no problem (restaurants open outside, only partially inside, masks inside, working from home -which I’m not a fan of… etc) but if I have to have my rising freshman (teenage girl) here at home for another semester, I’m going to lose it. Honestly - I’m sure all your kids are happy sunshine and all that, but mine is still disappointed with a loss of senior spring (did you know, they lost EVERYTHING?) and is ready to live on her own. So are we. She is fine when she is out with her bubble of friends (every day -all day), and at work (4 nights a week) but more than 1 hour at home, and nothing I say to her is good enough. She needs to be on her own with her people. Us old farts are currently not her people. Sigh.
@ProfSD I didn’t make any assumption to be honest. I don’t know what they said or didn’t say at home. It’s just the reaction seems like some level of expectation was off. That was it. If you read my comment, it was just about this is what I do, doesn’t mean i said others didn’t. I thought “you do you” was clear enough.
Online classes can work very well in numerous cases. They however don’t work well for courses with hands on components like labs, practicums, clinics, and design projects. DS19 has 5 courses in the fall. 2 of them are math (calculus III and linear algebra II) and online will be no problem for them though I hope he can find a way to manage some kind of virtual study group for them as he really enjoyed collaborative learning for his math courses this past year. The other 3 courses however are supposed to have lab components. One is a computer course so should be fine to manage online. I’m hoping the other two get moved to 2nd semester which is supposed to be in person, rather than them attempting some form of online lab. If the spring semester is also online then it’s really going to become problematic because the 1 lab course he has scheduled for that semester is all about actual lab techniques.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: OK, please move on.