There are currently increased cases in the area where my son’s school is and an email was sent out to all student’s yesterday reminding them to wear masks and socially distance. The email stated “Students who have COVID-19 positive test results and have been on campus in the last 14 days must report test results to Student Health Service.” This makes it sound like they don’t even know if people have been on campus with it or not and they are just scrounging for information. The email also advises that if you have symptoms you should contact your healthcare provider. Nothing about the school providing testing. It seems like night and day compared to what other schools are doing. I really think the Vice President of Magical Thinking is in charge.
@KMEJ1809 All I know about housing is that rooms selected back in April through the room draw will remain unchanged. Freshmen will be placed based on surveys that were filled out (which is consistent with past years), and they will work to place students who are on the housing waiting list - I assume those are the students who were supposed to be studying abroad. There are very few triples at Colby, so I assume that all freshmen will be placed in doubles and the hotel will be used for upper classmen who were studying abroad. Just my guess, however.
Maybe things have changed since I was a student there decades ago. I had 1 or 2 classes in Independence Hall. But I don’t recall it being half full most of the time. I took more finals in that room than classes because they could spread you out. There were at least a couple of other lecture halls that were decent sized. Hitchcock Hall was one with I think about 600 seats. Had a balcony/mezzanine level. Took intro accounting class there. Couple large classrooms in physics and chemistry buildings as well (250-300 maybe). Had intro physics and chemistry classes there. All of those classes broke out into smaller recitation classes once or twice a week. Would think those classrooms are still there but maybe not. So much has changed since I was there.
Will be interesting to see what happens with large lecture halls in general. Will they continue in the short term? Do larger classes go totally online and smaller classes use the larger rooms to allow for distancing?
that isn’t what I said, @syballa, I asked if you would expect to teach on line in perpetuity if the situation remains the same,or does not substantially improve. It sounds like the answer is yes.
Hmm, I wonder how he got it…Maybe extensive contact tracing could provide a clue.
How will they handle:
A. Classes that are populated by students of one class level?
B. Classes that tend to have a mix of class levels among the students?
What should I recommend to my son? He’s in western Michigan. He has one quarter left before he graduates. His SLAC hasn’t officially said what they’d do, but they’ve said they are de-densifying housing; juniors and seniors need to find off-campus housing. I’m pretty sure all classes will be available online for those who need them, but small classes (and all Fang Jr’s classes are small) will be in person too.
So, he will need to pack up his apartment and come home to the SF Bay Area, either after Thanksgiving if he wants to take classes in person when he can, or now. He was thinking he’d stay for his last quarter.
But now it looks like the situation is only going to get worse nationwide. His college might or might not go all online. He could be forced into more dangerous travel in December, without having the benefit of in person classes. It seems like he’s better off packing up, leaving, doing his classes online, and missing whatever in-person classes he has.
If he’s going to come home during the summer, the best time would be now.
What would you recommend?
@“Cardinal Fang” how far/easy is travel to his school to SF and when must the decision be made?
He has to fly, a regional flight to either Detroit or Chicago, then a flight to San Francisco or San Jose. He can make the decision any time, but once he decides it will take him a few days to arrange to get his stuff shipped.
He doesn’t drive, so driving is not possible.
@saillakeerie Hitchcock seemed to be used for engineering students when I attended. Hitchcock’s lobby would get very crowded during class changes. 600 seats or so? would be 150 at 25% capacity so perhaps with one way exits foot traffic can be managed and crowding avoided. Now that Fisher has its own campus area I’m sure they probably built business lecture venues, too. And Drake, and other auditoriums abound. I wonder if the exits from the other smaller lecture halls are typically less crowded.
I’m just particularly nostalgic about Independence since nearly every undergrad I know has had a class there. I took Marketing with Blackwell there. Outside Independence, it’s usually one of the busiest pedestrian areas when classes dismiss and the new one piles in. From some of the statements I’ve read, pedestrian flow (even outside) is one of the factors planners are taking into consideration. Campus seems so much busier now as a parent when I visit than when I attended forever ago.
It will be interesting to see if non traditional classroom venues will need to be utilized so they can continue to offer some big in person classes and how they will alleviate pedestrian congestion. I hope they can… those big lectures were a good way to meet students from other parts of the university outside of one’s own college.
Does he have any interest at all in staying in the Michigan area after graduating or is he planning on finding work in California? If he’s at all interested in staying in the midwest, he could get an apartment off campus through the spring.
He plans to return to California.
Obviously, any decision made now would be speculative, and could be revealed as the wrong one later.
It seems like the conservative choice in terms of virus risk would be to come home now and do the last quarter remotely. The question really becomes whether the remaining courses are those where the possibility of doing them in-person offers substantial value, both generically (i.e. if he would learn better in-person for any class) and specifically (i.e. the specific class is one where the difference between in-person and remote is particularly large, like those with labs or arts), such that it is worth taking the extra risk (both virus wise, and not getting the in-person classes if the college goes fully remote in the end) and cost to stay on campus.
We pretty much decided that DS20 is staying home as long as it’s an option at MIT (and I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be), even if freshmen are among those invited on campus - though we would prefer that MIT makes that choice for us.
What is left of the on-campus experience (which does not include in-person instruction, social and club meetings, group living and dining, etc) is not worth the costs and the risks of likely further learning disruption.
If I was in your shoes, I would suggest the following to my student and let him decide.
Assuming that all the classes he needs to graduate will be online, I say return to SF now and take classes remotely. I say this because I agree with you that the chances of having to take the classes online even if you are on campus is high and travel will be more problematic in December.
Should he decide to stay on campus (or in apartment), I’d suggest he pre-ship most of his belongings home now so that in the (highly probable) case that he needs to come home on short notice he will not be weighed down by his belongings.
Just my $0.02
I’m coming around to agree with this. If Bowdoin had kids back and it was as restricted as some other LACs I see, I would feel like we would be forced to send S19 to campus and to pay room and board for a vastly lesser experience. At least this way, he could choose to stay at home and take class. We aren’t trying to figure out if life on campus would be worth it.
Can he petition to live on campus since he just has one quarter left?
If not, if he can take everything online that might be more convenient for him to move home now.
but remember it is just an inconvenience to get him home by Thanksgiving. He’s going to graduate and you’ll make the rest work.
Good for Cornell!!
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/06/cornell-plans-reactivate-ithaca-campus-fall-semester
“The analysis determined that two to 10 times more people could be infected with COVID-19 during a semester conducted entirely online, with significantly higher numbers becoming seriously ill. That’s because surveys indicated a large percentage of Cornell students planned to return to off-campus housing in Ithaca even if all instruction was conducted remotely. In that scenario, Cornell would have had no authority to mandate testing or restrict students’ behavior.”
If it were just inconvenient, we wouldn’t care. We’re in our mid-sixties, and we do not want him to bring us covid.
In no way is that what I said, so I don’t know how you got that, but yeah, go ahead and make of it whatever suits the narrative best.