@twoinanddone Sorry I was just repeating what my mom said yesterday.
9/11 was almost 19 years ago ( yikes!) so naturally it’s cultural impact has been diminished with time. Today’s High school seniors where not even born when it happened. But I think that racism towards Muslims and other “ brown” groups that began in the aftermath of 9/11 is still being felt today. I fear that the Chinese may face a similar legacy.
The impact of 9/11 has been profound and lasting (and ongoing) for many many people, as will the impact of COVID-19. That some people will go about with their lives with no noticeable ramifications hardly diminishes the experiences of many others, colleges and universities included.
9/11 had a profound impact on air travel – it’s not just about taking off shoes. Air travel in the U.S. was very different prior to 9/11.
But most people don’t do air travel every day. Some places operate differently, but the vast majority of people’s daily routines have not been impacted. I’m not saying the country as a whole hasn’t changed a lot.
I remember flying in for an interview and having the boss meet me at the gate! No security checkpoints at all. Same at the office. No security card required to enter the building, get on the elevator.
Don’t know how to bring it back on topic. Sorry.
“Impact” can mean a lot of things.
These 4 approaches by the Michigan schools are different but it seems Oakland University is the most realistic. Each school is just either a few miles to 45 minutes away from each other. Different approaches.
A couple of things. First, 9/11 was a man-made disaster. It was a one-day act (although we didn’t know it at first), and then we started to rebuild. Coronavirus is a natural phenomenon that we have very little control over at the moment. We don’t know if we EVER will have control over it. A vaccine is not guaranteed, and the virus won’t just disappear magically. The danger is present every second of every day.
That said, your mother is understating the everyday after-effects of 9/11. She’s habituated to it. We used to be a much, much more open society. We didn’t need the type of security we have now. Nobody ever – EVER – searched my bag or wanded me to go into a stadium, museum, theater. Even airport security was minimal. As someone above said, non-travelers could accompany family and friends to the gate, and meet them at the gate upon arrival. Surveillance cameras were rare. Nobody had to swipe an ID to get into their work building, and visitors to offices just walked onto the elevator without having to sign in. On my college campus in the 1980s, the only time I ever had to show my ID card was to get into the dining hall. Libraries, student unions, gyms, dorms were all completely open. Friends could just walk into my dorm and up to my room. In contrast, my daughter had to swipe for all of these campus sites. She even had to swipe to get into the hall bathroom.
Armed military personnel are sprinkled throughout main U.S. train stations and major sites, like the the Oculus in NY. NEVER in my life, before 9/11, would I ever think there’s be armed military on the streets in peace time.
While there has been a general increase in security, security theater, and surveillance, not all of it was directly due to Osama Bin Laden (some of it was, particularly in airports). The 101 California Street mass shooting in 1993 led to increased office building security. Further back in the early 1980s, a building at UCB targeted by the Unabomber was equipped with a then-expensive card key entry system for after-hours access, and had security cameras taking videos of every entrance (and they were probably much better ones than the typical ones of the time that recorded fuzzy images on video tape recorded over too many times). The cost of good card key and video surveillance systems back then probably kept most places from using them, even during the 1980s-1990s crime wave. It was also why obvious cameras (or signs saying that cameras are in use) were often fake deterrents, because real cameras and their maintenance (changing out the video tapes, etc.) were too expensive.
Of course, the greatly falling cost of card key systems and video surveillance now makes them attractive to use now by anyone who has any concern about crime where these things could be useful in deterring or catching.
What I remember from decades ago was that the dorm exterior doors were locked, and the RAs told everyone not to prop the door open (which they did anyway) because thieves could come in (which they did, and people got stuff stolen because they also left their room doors unlocked or open when they were away).
The I-9 form dates from the 1986 IRCA law. Using a US passport to prove identity and work eligibility was always an option, but not the only means of doing so. That did not change in 2001 or after. What did change was that more Americans got passports (and hence found it convenient to use them when filling in I-9 forms), because there was less leniency on going to Canada or Mexico and back to the US without a passport, although there was already a general trend of increasing passport holding among Americans (but the trend accelerated in the mid 2000s).
I’m not clear why the risk in the Fall is any less than the risk this past Spring, when most institutions stopped face-to-face teaching.
Ohio State, to take one example, stopped face-to-face teaching on March 9th. On that date, there were 259 new cases of Covid-19 in the U.S.
Yesterday, there were 26,509 new cases.
Now, I understand that we are talking about the situation four months from now, so we shouldn’t be seeing those kinds of new numbers.
But will there still be a few hundred/day? This wouldn’t be surprising, especially if social distancing is relaxed sooner than later.
So, the decision will be the same, face-to-face or online, with objectively similar circumstances.
And there are other problems. What about international students? What about students from China, Italy, the U.K.? What about students from NYC? Are they all good to come back to campus?
@Mindfully The reason they shut down is colleges knew it was going to explode, and they didn’t have the resources to handle it at the time, and had no plan for it. However, many colleges are intent on gathering PPE and planning out how they can manage the risk of COVID-19 for fall. Two colleges (University of Nebraska - Lincoln and University of Oklahoma - all campuses) have made a firm decision that they will be fully in-person and residential next semester, and some more (such as Purdue) have said are committed to opening in-person next semester as long as it is legal. Nobody has confirmed online yet, and the only institutions which have said they are leaning online (Cal State Fullerton, San Jose State, and Wayne State) are state schools which already have tuitions low enough to justify distance learning, have almost no students living on-campus, and already have extensive online education systems. Most of these students are going to be back in their college towns anyway next semester, because virtually all of them were already planning to live off-campus.
https://news.yahoo.com/students-return-class-shanghai-beijing-045217198.html
Quote:
Beijing (AFP) - Tens of thousands of students returned to school in Shanghai and Beijing Monday after months of closures intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus, as China’s major cities gradually return to normality.
Shanghai students in their final year of middle and high school returned to classrooms, while only high school seniors in Beijing were allowed back on campus to prepare for the all-important “gaokao” university entrance exam.
But the students found life is still far from normal, with smaller classes, temperature checks, strict social distancing, and no physical education sessions.
I am becoming increasingly hopeful about fall return on campus, in part because of the Op Ed penned by the president of Brown yesterday. I also think that there is a big difference in our preparedness in the fall vs. in early March (back then there were no masks available, barely any tests available, no sanitizer available, less understanding of the virus, no time for planning and reallocating space and moving desks further apart and other physical changes to promote social distancing, etc.). In just the past 6 weeks, we have come SO far in many ways, and I can only imagine that 4-5 months from now we may be light years ahead (also in terms of treatments that will lessen the severity of the disease—there are many promising clinical trials currently ongoing that will have preliminary findings in the next month or two. So much information we are still waiting on, but plenty of reason to be optimistic. I am not so optimistic that if it happens it will be totally normal and the same level of fun and socializing and connection and engagement, but it will be worlds better than college in my basement which my child is currently experiencing. I also teach in a local college, and I am over 50 and I am not afraid, as I learned as much as possible about transmission and I will wear a mask and keep my distance and use a sanitizing wipe on my chair and table and items I use and I will wash my hands and use hand sanitizer when a sink isn’t available. I feel comfortable that taking these measures will protect me and my fellow colleagues.
Additionally, the more people who recover from COVID, the better off we all are. The studies show that in places like NYC and parts of Boston, etc, over 20% of the population has already been exposed and is in the process of recovering. That’s in just a couple of months, and could easily be double to 40% by fall. Although I think I read that for true herd immunity, we need 60%, it certainly must reduce transmission if the rates are so significant. I know that we do not have thorough “proof” of long-term immunity with antibodies, but it is generally expected to provide immunity by the bulk of infectious disease specialists, and it is hard to imagine that by August we won’t have a much stronger opinion on that. I would love to have my classroom filled with kids from NYC who have already been exposed and are over the virus and can no longer catch it or pass it on, so students coming from hotspots is not necessarily a bad thing. No one will be allowed on campus without testing, which will be available in great enough quantities by the fall to enable that, there will be places available for quarantining if necessary, and other changes to make it safer.
(Regarding the changes to security on campus, as a college graduate in the very early 90’s, we were already using our school ID to swipe into buildings. We didn’t yet have the perks of using it as a charge card—I still needed quarters to do laundry. But clearly many/most of the security tightening that was mentioned upthread was not necessarily caused by 9/11, but concern about other crimes/burglaries and improved/more affordable availability of technology. I am annoyed in my son’s dorm that his card is required to use the hall bathroom, but I do not believe that is related to 9/11. I would agree that for many people that largest lasting impact may be related to airport travel, but for many others there has been an overall impact in their psyche that would be hard to detail.)
Anyway, I am cautiously optimistic about on campus school in the fall, but a week ago I was certain it was impossible, so who knows what I will think next week!
Thank you EmptynestSoon2 all well said.
Did anyone see 60 Minutes last night and the technology that China and Toronto were using to track where Covid19 would be traveling? First, it proved that China knew this virus was circulating and exactly where those hot spots would be (can we say NYC) but secondly it shows how much more prepared we will be moving forward. The Governor of CA is already doing this.
I don’t believe we will be forever changed after this other than maybe many will think more about hand washing and hygiene. Public health and leaders have learned a lot that will be used moving forward but we will get through this. It will become a distant memory. My grandparents never talked about the pandemic they lived through.
The seasonal flu is a strain of the 1918 Spanish Flu. We will have strains of Covid19 in the future. We will have a flu shots for both. It won’t even be a thought.
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I was hopeful as well until I saw all those pictures of people gathering in defiance of social distancing orders. If that continues and becomes more widespread, could a second wave be far behind?
I thought the same. That’s how Chicago and NYC are going to look once it gets warm too.
A couple of points:
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Almost all current antibody tests (with only a few exceptions) are inaccurate with either unacceptable amount of false positives or false negatives. FDA has practically given up on regulating and testing by granting almost universal emergency uses. Therefore, the percentage of people who have been infected is uncertain even with proper sampling (which isn’t the case either for most of the recent studies you hear in the media).
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Having antibodies doesn’t equal immunity. There’re still lots of questions regarding reinfections, duration of immunity (if any), etc.