Virus outbreaks shut down University of North Carolina a week into fall semester
(AP) — North Carolina’s flagship university canceled in-person classes for undergraduates just a week into the fall semester Monday as college campuses around the U.S. scramble to deal with coronavirus clusters linked in some cases to student housing, off-campus parties and packed bars.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said it will
switch to remote learning on Wednesday and make arrangements for
students who want to leave campus housing.
“We have emphasized
that if we were faced with the need to change plans — take an off-ramp —
we would not hesitate to do so, but we have not taken this decision
lightly,” it said in a statement after reporting 130 confirmed
infections among students and five among employees over the past week.
UNC said the clusters were discovered in dorms, a fraternity house and other student housing.
Before
the decision came down, the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, ran
an editorial headlined, “UNC has a clusterf—k on its hands,” though
without the dashes.
The paper said that the parties that took
place over the weekend were no surprise and that administrators should
have begun the semester with online-only instruction at the university,
which has 19,000 undergraduates.
“We all saw this coming,” the editorial said.
Outbreaks
earlier this summer at fraternities in Washington state, California and
Mississippi provided a glimpse of the challenges school officials face
in keeping the virus from spreading on campuses where young people eat,
live, study — and party — in close quarters.
The virus has been blamed for over 170,000 deaths and 5.4 million confirmed infections in the U.S.
Many
schools already have flipped from in-person classes to mainly online in
recent weeks, and more are expected to do so, said David Long of
Tuscany Strategy Consulting, which teamed up with the Johns Hopkins
Center for Health Security and the Council for Higher Education
Accreditation to develop reopening recommendations for colleges and universities.
“It’s
because it’s so difficult to create these systems where everybody is
essentially behaving appropriately, meaning social distancing, wearing
PPE and not gathering in groups,” he said, referring to personal
protective equipment. “It’s challenging when you’re trying to control
behavior in young adults, particularly in areas that are outside the
classroom and off campus.”
Some schools are opting for social
contracts and strict codes of conduct as a way for students to keep
pressure on their classmates, he said.
At Oklahoma State in
Stillwater, where a widely circulated video over the weekend showed
maskless students packed into a nightclub, officials confirmed 23
coronavirus cases at an off-campus sorority house. The university placed
the students living there in isolation and prohibited them from
leaving.
“As a student, I’m frustrated as hell,” said Ryan
Novozinsky, a junior from Allentown, New Jersey, and editor of the
student newspaper. “These are people I have to interact with.” And, he
added, “there will be professors they interact with, starting today,
that won’t be able to fight this off.”
OSU has a combination of
in-person and online courses. Students, staff and faculty are required
to wear masks indoors and outdoors where social distancing isn’t
possible.
The University of Notre Dame reported 58 confirmed cases
since students returned to the South Bend, Indiana, campus in early
August. At least two off-campus parties over a week ago have been
identified as sources, school officials said.
Paul J. Browne, vice
president for public affairs at Notre Dame, said the university is
prepared to suspend or otherwise discipline the hosts of such parties.
“We
believe we have a very strong chain of health protection, but these
parties represent the weak link in that chain, and they can be
responsible for a disproportionate spread,” he said.
University
officials in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama were likewise frustrated by
the lack of social distancing and scenes of crowded bars and other
nightspot areas on the first weekend many students returned to school.
In
Tuscaloosa, the home of the football-mad University of Alabama, Mayor
Walt Maddox appealed to students’ love of the game in urging them to
take precautions.
“If you don’t want to protect yourself and you
don’t want to protect your family and you don’t want to protect your
friends and thousands of jobs, maybe, just maybe, you would want to
protect football season so we can have it this fall,” Maddox said.
Some
universities are still moving ahead with fall classes. At Bradley
University in Peoria, Illinois, where a dozen students tested positive
last month after an off-campus gathering, classes start Aug. 26 and
students are moving into dorms this weekend.
“We have tweaked the
move in process this year and are requiring students to sign up for a
time slot so we can keep things spaced out and distanced,” university
spokeswoman Renee Charles said.
Balancing the health risks with
educating students has been keeping university presidents up at night,
said Mildred García, head of the American Association of State Colleges
and Universities. She said many are reconsider their plans as things
change rapidly.
“They are doing the best they can with their staff
and trying to educate the students about masks and social distancing
and the effects of this virus,” she said.
“They’re doing all they can — and yet these are young people. When we think back about when we were young, sometimes you think you’re invincible.”
Associated Press writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Katie Foody in Chicago; Collin Binkley in Boston; Dave Kolpack in Fargo, North Dakota; and Jonathan Drew in Durham, North Carolina, contributed to this report.