We just received an update from D’s school. Of note is the fact that face shields will be a required supply item for some classes.
Our son is finally coming home from school today. He’s driving the 500 miles to New England as I type. He hasn’t been home since Christmas. As a family we’ve decided he’ll “quarantine” from others, but we’ll roll the dice at home and let him stay in his room, rather than the basement.
@GKUnion That’s so exciting!
I don’t know how many employees in business attire carrying a briefcase/laptop bag want to climb up 64 flights of stairs to get to their office all hot and sweaty. No thanks…
@socaldad2002 and then there would be how many people in the stairwell?? yeah, that’s not going to happen.
See if your campus has Hillel or Chabad. We did passover with my son being the IPad. We sent him a hagadah and something we type up every year that reflects the current world we live in. My wife cooked and sent him food with me when I visited a week prior. We all ate together and took turns reading etc. It worked out surprisingly well and kinda fun.
@TheGFG Does your D attend a college or a K-12 school?
A small LAC. I am thinking the face shields in addition to masks may be for lab courses where social distancing is not as easy, or else as additional protection for vulnerable professors.
Some football teams always stayed on campus through their bowl game, which could be days before christmas up to New Years day. Other schools let the players go home and then flew them to the bowl game site before or after Christmas. Few players went home for Thanksgiving at the big schools because they had games and conference championships.
They’ll live. If they need to be home for Christmas, they need to give up football.
My friend’s son has been doing the Jewish holidays on campus for a few years. The first year she made all kinds of plans for him to go to relatives (closer than home) and she learned that it was easier for him to go to the services on campus and have meals with his friends.
My first Seder was in my sorority house. A few of the Jewish sisters put together the entire thing with some help from their friends. It was very fun, educational, and meaningful for them. It’s a new world. Try a new way to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas because I don’t think it is going to be like it was in the past.
Which is why I said “ many of” instead of “ all”.
I have a feeling our High Holy Days services will be online this year. I know our rabbi sent a survey to congregants to get their feedback already. This year will not be like previous year’s for many religious activities. I have already “attended” remotely a bar mitzvah, wake, D’s confirmation services, passover seder, and shabbat services this year, why would the holidays be any different!
Yep… Doing one tonight and tomorrow. I am active in our men’s club and my wife is president of our sisterhood. Attendance is actually pretty high for events. I would assume there might be renewed interest online at campuses (see how I came back to this thread… Lol). I know some schools hillel’s etc will have new ways to join programming. At Michigan you can take a walk or a Kayak through the Arboretum there and hear the sounds of the Shofar. How cool is that?
My son’s private conservatory / university is 3000 miles away from home. He is sophomore, majoring music performance. In-person performance classes / ensembles are about 1/2 of the curriculums every semester. More detailed information will come out next week but I got some brief information.
About dorm (and sharing bathroom) and off-campus option—
His school offers on-campus students “all single rooms” so their dorm capacity for 2020-2021 is 1/3 of normal year. There are two kinds of dorm buildings, one dorm building with communal bathrooms (men / women) in hallway and another dorm building with in-room bathroom. The first building’s communal bathrooms will be used by only 4 students at most. So, it will likely limit to 4 male and 4 female students in each floor.
His school traditionally requires all freshmen and sophomore to live in on-campus housing but they will accept off-campus apartment requests by sophomores this coming year. They also offer a gap year / leave-of-absence “only for 2020-2021”. They do guarantee dorms for all freshmen and sophomore. However, mathematically, it won’t work even estimating a half of freshmen decide to take a gap year. So, his school is going to rent a local hotel(s) within 3 blocks (all single room) to house all overflowed students and require them to purchase the “grab-to-go” meal plan same as on-campus dorm students. The housing fee for 2020-2021 is one flat “double-occupancy” rate, no matter which “single” room students are assigned.
About isolation—
What makes me feel better with a very limited meal plan with single room (on-campus dorm or hotel-dorm) with social distance restrictions is, his university will have an “isolation” building / area in campuses for students whose test result is “positive” and provide healthcare service (monitoring, etc). I know his school is very serious about testing and tracing for all university-wide students who take in-person classes. It is very appealing to me even living on-campus dorm or hotel-dorm would cost more than living own off-campus apartment with freedom and independence because an isolation with healthcare service is only for students who live in on-campus dorm and hotel-dorm, not for students who live in their own apartment. Hopefully, we will find out more details on testing, quarantine, isolation, tracing and students healthcare in next week.
Students health insurance for Covid year—
I am seriously considering to purchase his university students health insurance plan for 2020-2021 which is cheaper than our current private “co-payment” health plan to make healthcare access / charge simple.
MIT Hillel and other Jewish organizations already reached out to welcome prefrosh to their online programming. DS is actually in a Zoom service with MCM folks right now. He feels like he is part of the community already.
Some preliminary info from Dartmouth. They won’t host all kids on campus every quarter. Student choose two quarters they want to be on campus (including summer). Not sure if everyone will get their first choice.
So more good news from University of Michigan… No tuition hike this upcoming year ?.
Presuming you mean this story…
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29369877/16-302-nba-players-test-positive-coronavirus
For clarification, it looks like about 5.3% (16 out of 302) tested positive for current infection, as opposed to antibodies indicating past infection, since some reports of COVID-19 testing do not clearly state which kind of test, or combine the two kinds of tests.
@JeJeJe would you mind sharing what school or what region of the country?
I hope my college does the same. I plan to wear both a mask and a face shield when teaching this fall. I hope the students can hear me okay. I usually project my voice for the students in the back, but I obviously can’t do that this fall. This will be interesting.
Why not wear a small levelar microphone clipped on to your shirt? Wireless mic if you want to move forward a bit with that face shield. It should work well. Just a suggestion.