InsideHigherEd, here:
Aug. 17, 4:05 p.m. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has announced that all of its undergraduate instruction will be remote, effective Aug. 19 — nine days after the university held its first in-person classes for the fall term.
The university cited a “spate of COVID-19 infection clusters” in making the decision. Three announced clusters last week were in student housing, with the fourth linked to a fraternity. UNC on its COVID-19 dashboard reported 130 new positive student cases reported in the last week, and five positive cases among employees.
In addition to shifting its instruction to remote learning, the university said it would continue to “greatly reduce residence hall occupancy.”
Barbara K. Rimer, dean of UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, on Monday wrote on her blog that the university should “take an off-ramp and return to remote operations for teaching and learning.”
UNC Chapel Hill Faculty Call Emergency Meeting After Fourth COVID Cluster
Aug. 16, 4:41 p.m. The Faculty Executive Committee at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will hold a meeting Monday to discuss the growing number of coronavirus cases after the university reported a fourth cluster of cases on Sunday, the Raleigh News & Observer reported. A cluster is defined as five or more cases in close proximity.
Three of the announced clusters were in student housing complexes, and the fourth was linked to a fraternity.
The chair of the faculty, Mimi Chapman, wrote to the UNC System Board of Governors over the weekend urging it to give UNC Chapel Hill’s chancellor authority to make decisions in response to the pandemic.
I still think UO is going to do this before classes start.
Since they now market UO as a party/football school, we can expect some of this come September:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/17/alabama-georgia-college-parties-covid/
We’re going to have this whether we have in person classes or not.
Prediction: mental health related deaths > covid deaths that would have happened w/ in person classes. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/08/17/suicidal-ideation-rise-college-aged-adults-due-covid-19-pandemic
Oregon universities need to go remote NOW if we want to have any chance of getting our K–12 schools reopened sometime during this academic year. If universities open in-person (or if they wait so long to announce that university students move back to Eugene/Corvallis/etc. and sign leases instead of staying home with their parents), the case rates will not decrease enough for us to open schools. Having kids are home for the whole school year will perpetuate the child care / working from home challenges that many families are experiencing.
THey aren’t opening. The teachers union played games with all of us last year. Talked to a few teachers that are speaking openly about the details. Basically half of the teachers refuse to teach until they get a vaccine. So what we do or don’t do has no affect on k-12 stuff.
UO admin is on a runaway train to in-person. Only intervention by the state or unions will stop it.
UNC is much wealthier and has one of the world’s premiere medical schools in a region of concentrated medical research excellence. If they can’t prevent outbreaks there is no way the UO is going to succeed. Delaying the inevitable announcement that we are moving online, hope before but maybe after an outbreak, just makes it harder to make the best of a bad situation in a few weeks. I don’t think poorly of all our admins and acknowledge they have been hard at work trying to develop robust protocols for in-person instruction. And I understand and appreciate why they want to, why we all have that dream. But the math doesn’t work and longer we delay and the more resources we throw at this pipedream the worse the inevitable transition to remote instruction will be. This is obvious to everyone who appreciates the rank incompetence of the federal response.
UNC didn’t do any testing other than sick students. The BoG of the UNC system is populated by Republican Trump voters who tweet about sports should go on and shutdowns are a hoax. I don’t know if the UO can succeed, but it is wrong to use UNC as an exemplar of a university that went into this with a solid plan and failed.
UOM check this from IHE about about excellence in leadership we should expect from Johnson Hall…:
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/institutional-awe-makes-bad-leadership
ps. can you get Vegas to provide an over/under about Johnson Halls gamble to open us up to disaster?
Sooo, this morning I saw what looked like students moving into the dorm(s?) at the erstwhile NWCU (now Bushnell) at 11th and Alder. I hope we’re watching that closely, if indeed that’s what’s going on right now. They do outline their policy (and controls), so it’s clear they are intending to populate the campus: https://www.bushnell.edu/covid19/students/
It will be interesting to see what happens with them.
You can place your bets here: https://i.redd.it/5vfg0elkqdi51.jpg
Nice one Canard – thanks. I like our bracket on the Left Coast.