(Except a few lab and performance classes). That’s the rumor down at the faculty club. Apparently the dorms will stay open.
Here’s hoping JH’s well-paid strategic communicators have the good sense not to blame this on our students. Or the faculty. Or the staff. Or the unions.
On Thursday, the Board of Trustees will meet to rubber-stamp the “UO Health and Safety Operational Plan re COVID-19” as required by Go’v Brown’s executive order:
Full plan and meeting info here. I know nothing about these issues, but here are a few snippets from the plan which will presumably guided UO’s decision on this, and will guide the decision about restarting classroom teaching in Winter:
Note that Lane County just decreased to the “low” zone of 10 new cases per 100,000 people (39 cases in the whole county) as of August 9. Updated data is available here:
https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/DISEASESCONDITIONS/DISEASESAZ/Emerging%20Respitory%20Infections/Weekly-County-Metrics.pdf
The week ending August 16 had 29 new cases in Lane County (8 per 100,000 people), an encouraging trend. Meanwhile, however, the nearby counties of Linn, Benton, Lincoln, Clackamas, Multnomah, Marion(88 per 100,000!), and Washington all have much higher case rates. Our students, if they return to Eugene, will be coming from many of these places and then doing what students do.
I find it difficult to imagine that if UO students return to Eugene, Lane County will be able to maintain this low level of new cases. I hope that the UO encourages the students to stay in their home towns, if at all possible (I recognize that this is not possible for all students).
The students are done social distancing. They walked in some BLM protests for the greater good this summer, and saw that being a large group of people didn’t kill them at that moment.
After being outside for altruistic reasons, the students are basically done with lockdowns and just want to get on with their lives. This
I would like to think the Alabama experience will have some influence on decision making: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/08/25/905992043/university-of-alabama-reports-more-than-560-new-covid-19-cases-in-first-week
agreed; many potential hometowns are not likely in the low zone yet …
From Schill’s missive this morning: “I want you to know that our faculty has put a huge amount of effort into preparing classes this fall that will provide the high quality education you have come to expect from the UO”. Well, yes, except that many of those classes were prepared as in person classes. If only we could have seen this coming earlier and prepped accordingly…
Did you really buy that classes were going to be in-person? It was a bait-and-switch to get the students here from the beginning. Knowing full-well that classes were going on-line, that is what I have been preparing for all summer. I can only hope others did the same. One can and does step into the same river over and over.
yes but is the central admin helping us river dipping sameness faculty
with any extra equipment and tools in order to do things better this
fall than last spring?
Seems like TEP is doing a lot – if you give up your IP.
How could you have not seen this coming? If you were fooled by early administrative “we will open in person in the fall” magical thinking, that’s on you. Scientists have been showing us all summer why opening would not be possible. We’re academics. We listen to experts before administrators. These categories rarely overlap.
This decision, made one month before classes start, is the right one. It’s the first decent thing I’ve seen JH do during the pandemic. Let’s encourage them a little.
I knew that sanity would prevail and that we would all be teaching online. I knew it in the same way that I knew Trump would not be elected in 2016. Conclusions: 1) shit happens, and we’re not as smart as we think we are; 2) If I’m employed to prep and teach an in person class, I don’t have much excuse for not doing that prep. If I do that and then I’m required to change to online with a month’s notice, I have every excuse for not being ready for that. Myself, I prepped for online anyway, because I’m not much for excuses; but I have sympathy for those who are now scrambling to live up to Schill’s words above. It is not “on” us.
right, and all us faculty preparing for this obvious eventuality will be rewarded with a pay cut …