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Originally Posted by AGDee
I see no way to manage a pandemic with dorms and greek housing in play. Community bathrooms and close living quarters, even on campuses where all kids are in singles are petri dishes. My friend's son has been back at LSU for less than 2 weeks and he has tested positive for COVID along with 12 other guys in his fraternity house. He cannot travel home. He has an inhaler and steroids and she's worried sick about him. She didn't want him to go back but he did.
There are several campuses where whole fraternity and sorority houses are on quarantine because of multiple positive cases in the houses. I don't know what the right answer is. How many house associations/corps can pay the mortgage without the students paying rent? Not many, I'm guessing. The response has been mucked up from the beginning and we are far past the possibility of containment.
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All of this. And it's just going to keep happening. And then students are potentially missing a week+ of classes. My mom had COVID (and fortunately made a full recovery!), and her whole company was working from home, but she had numerous days where she'd log in, start working, and very quickly realize she felt too miserable to even sit up in bed and type.
And then professors are having to figure out how to have students make up the work. Imagine having to miss two weeks of class when you have a lab, for example. I started my college career in engineering, and I had to take Chemistry, which had both a lecture and lab component. The lab was once a week for three hours. I missed one lab because I was sick, and arranging to make up that class was a pain in the a**! Imagine missing two to three weeks and then having to work with the poor professors who have to help everyone figure all this out.
I also understand it's difficult to teach a class such as that when it's virtual, and it becomes observational rather than hands-on, but isn't that better than dealing with the chaos?
But again, the US could have handled this so much better, and we didn't. And half this country believes in social distancing and wearing masks, and the others don't. So... this is where we're at.
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As for the military being an option- my son's buddy in the Marines is quarantined on their base because there are so many positive cases. There is also no way for them to social distance, so that's not a great answer either.
I'm relieved my kids are grown and working in jobs they can work from home.
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Exactly. The military isn't necessarily a better option. I wonder what their recruitment practices look like right now? My brother joined the Army years ago, and I went to his basic training graduation and saw the barracks, and let me tell you... it's not any better than college dorms. In fact, they're worse. At least in the dorms there are only two people to a room. Do a Google search on "Fort Jackson barracks" (or any military base, really), and you'll see that this shouldn't be a recommended course of action for avoiding COVID.
If I was 18 and was looking to start college this year, I'd probably put it off entirely if it was possible. Or attend a community college with online courses, save some money, and start my on-campus college career later. The thing is, everyone is in the same boat and struggling in the same ways right now, so the "fear of missing out" isn't really as strong as it would be under normal circumstances. And I wouldn't want my freshman year to be all about sitting in my dorm all the time, wearing masks, not being able to socialize, and taking most of my classes online.
