COVID IN COLLEGE

With fall comes the start of a new semester for college students; football games, tailgates, lecture halls, and student housing. Any other year these places and events are met with anticipation, but this year they bring the possibility of infection. 

Just weeks into the new semester colleges have produced 88K cases of Coronavirus. As cases skyrocket on college campuses, the surrounding towns and cities also feel the impact. Of the 25 emerging Coronavirus hotspots across the United States, 19 of them are occupied heavily by college students. 

The increase in cases on college campuses has caused many universities to shut down in person instruction all together, transitioning to a remote learning model. When a college is shut down, those students are forced to go home, often to a house that has older people and who are more at risk for contracting the virus and getting seriously ill from it. Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci both insist that staying on campus and quarantining there is a better option than sending students home. Dr. Birx stated “It’s really important that these students are continuously tested, isolated and cared for and don’t return to their multi-generational households where they could dramatically increase spread,” 

But what happens when universities aren’t equipped to deal with quarantining and caring for hundreds, if not thousands of students? This exact situation is playing out all across the country from NYU to U Michigan. Students at NYU went viral on TikTok for exposing their NYU provided quarantine meals. A lot of students who requested vegetarian meals were receiving meals with meat and some students went 24 hours without receiving any food at all. Sam Burnstein turned to TikTok to explain his quarantine situation at the University of Michigan after testing positive for COVID-19 “We were given almost no supplies; no food, no masks, no gloves, no microwave, no bed sheets, no soap, no cleaning supplies–nothing”. 

President Trump has encouraged schools to open across the country, including higher education. He even publicly denounced Harvard’s plan for remote learning saying “I think it’s ridiculous, I think it’s an easy way out and I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves.” With no set of guidelines put out by the Federal government on how to reopen safely, many universities have been unable to deal with consequences of in person classes during the pandemic.

Colleges have shown that they are not equipped to deal with this crisis. Is it responsible to hold in person classes with the potential of on and off campus events becoming super spreader events? 

Yours in Strength,

The Take Back Control Team