U.S. campuses reeling from pandemic

Staff report
Chronicle of Higher Education
March 21, 2020

Police officers in riot gear cleared more than 1,000 people from the streets of Dayton, Ohio, on the night of March 10 after the University of Dayton announced it was closing student housing due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The Dayton police later said its forces had shot pepper balls into the crowd.

Despite some reports that the crowd had gathered in protest, the campus newspaper reported that the news was being treated as an occasion for a party.

As more cases are reported of coronavirus and Covid-19, the disease it causes, colleges are canceling study-abroad programs, moving courses online, and even asking students to leave campus.

PHOTO CAPTION: Large tents have been set up at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and at West Chester Hospital where UC Health officials are testing patients for coronavirus.
PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Martin

The crisis could have lasting ramifications in the months and years to come. It could financially devastate institutions, their students and employees. It will test the strength and efficacy of remote instruction.

And there are likely to be a host of unanticipated effects that will become clear only with time.

At Ohio University, officials made clear on March 16 that students’ plans for a huge “Coronafest” party on March 21 would be nixed as a violation of a state order prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people.

And legal experts questioned the jurisdictional validity of an email, sent to parents by the University of Pennsylvania, stating that students in both on-campus and off-campus housing are expected to vacate by March 17.

At least 4,442 cases of the virus had been reported by March 16 in the United States. Earlier in the month, colleges were among the first institutions to take drastic action in response to the growing sense that the disease could no longer be contained.

In addition to restricting travel (more on that later), many campuses have canceled in-person classes and moved most or all coursework online. (A March 5 memo from the U.S. Department of Education gives “broad approval” to institutions to set up online instruction for students affected by closures or suspensions.) The University of Washington was the first major campus to do so, on March 6.

The move has prompted a scramble among instructors to move their courses online. Some institutions have, in turn, announced changes in their grading policies, given the circumstances. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Smith College announced a mandatory switch to pass/fail grading for the spring, while Grinnell College is giving students expanded access to the option.

Several prominent colleges have announced that they would either require or urge students to leave campus for the time being. Among them are Harvard University, the University System of Maryland, Rutgers University, and MIT.

The prospect of mass student departures has also prompted fears over the well-being of nonessential staff members, such as food-service workers. But Andy Brantley, president and chief executive of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, told The Chronicle that “we are not aware of any planned employee layoffs.” That could change, however, if the pandemic stretches into the fall semester.

Student workers may also be affected. The Chicago Maroon reported on March 14 that resident assistants at the University of Chicago had been told they would not receive their stipends in the coming quarter.

Colleges’ decision to suddenly urge or order students to depart prompted some critics to express concern about students who couldn’t easily leave campus.

Two Amherst College students wrote a critical op-ed in The Washington Post, taking their institution to task for choosing to “opt out, leaving students to fend for themselves.” (Amherst was among a few institutions, joined by Harvard University and Smith College, to say they planned only prorated charges for room and board this semester, Bloomberg reported.)

Colleges, including the Universities of Michigan at Ann Arbor and California at Irvine, have already begun canceling commencement ceremonies. One notable exception is Liberty University, which still plans to hold an outdoor graduation ceremony, according to its president, Jerry Falwell Jr. The university will also continue holding in-person classes after its students return from spring break, Falwell said. (The outspoken president appeared on Fox News on March 13 and floated a conspiracy theory about the origin of the virus.)

Falwell responded to critics of his decision to keep the campus open by noting on Twitter that “we are even moving classes to larger rooms, gyms, arenas, even outside when weather permits so students won’t be sitting elbow to elbow.” He added that “I don’t want to become one of these college presidents who are pushing this problem off on someone else by sending 20-year-olds with near zero mortality risk to sit at home for the rest of the semester.”

However, on March 16, Falwell announced that Liberty’s in-person classes would be moved online after spring break, citing a new ban in Virginia on gatherings of more than 100 people.

Which American campuses have reported cases?

As the number of cases reported in the United States has ballooned, reports of connections to campuses have become common. Here are some of the most recent:

After a Stanford University undergraduate tested positive for the virus, the university announced on March 13 that nearly all students were required to leave the campus by March 18. Earlier in the week, the university said students were “welcome” to stay in their residence halls.

Also on March 13 the president of the University of Texas, Gregory L. Fenves, announced that his wife, Carmel Fenves, had tested positive for the coronavirus, and that he and she were self-quarantining. The same day, the chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles, Gene D. Block, announced he would self-quarantine after coming into contact with someone who had tested positive.

Yale University, the University of Minnesota, and many other campuses have also confirmed cases in recent days. Michigan State University did the same on March 14 and added, “we anticipate there will be more.”

Deborah Beck, executive director of student health services at the University of South Carolina at Columbia and a member of the American College Health Association’s coronavirus task force, said colleges should avoid housing students with suspected coronavirus cases in residence halls. Isolation and quarantines “would not work very well in an area that’s high density,” Beck said. (Read more about best practices for campus quarantines here.)

How has Covid-19 affected study-abroad programs and travel?

In a national address on March 11, President Trump announced a ban on all travel from Europe for 30 days. While American citizens will be allowed to enter the United States after being screened, the new restrictions could leave colleges scrambling to get some students who are in popular European study-abroad destinations back home before the policy takes effect, on March 13. Most institutions have barred college-related travel as the coronavirus spread, but some chose to leave study-abroad participants in place rather than expose them to the disease by traveling.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 1 issued guidelines that recommended American colleges and universities “consider postponing or canceling student foreign-exchange programs.”

This is the first time the CDC has released guidance about students’ travel abroad, said Natalie Melo, vice president for programs, training, and services at the Forum for Education Abroad, a nonprofit organization that promotes health and safety in academic travel.

“What surprised us is that the CDC has never issued guidance like that before,” she said. “People were scrambling as far as how to respond to it.”

Citing that guidance, many American colleges are advising students studying abroad in countries where coronavirus cases have been reported to return home. Some colleges are also imposing self-quarantines on people returning from affected countries. Other colleges have banned campus-sponsored international travel more broadly. A slew of other institutions have canceled all campus-sponsored spring-break trips abroad. At many of the same institutions, campus-sponsored domestic travel has also been curbed.

How has Covid-19 affected college athletics?

The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced on March 12 that it was canceling all spring postseason tournaments, including its lucrative March Madness men’s basketball tournament. The decision closely followed the cancellation of several major conferences’ postseason tournaments, and an announcement from Duke University that it was suspending all athletic activity indefinitely. The NCAA subsequently announced that it was extending the athletic eligibility of athletes who participated in spring sports.

The cancellation is likely to be a major blow to university athletics departments. Proceeds of the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament account for a majority of the association’s revenue each year. The NCAA disburses that money to athletics conferences, which disburse it to member institutions. Read more about how that disbursal works.

USA Today reported that the NCAA had once assembled a nearly-$400-million rainy-day fund to help cover such a cancellation, but subsequently spent it, including on a $208.7-million legal settlement with athletes who had not received scholarships covering the full cost of attendance at their institutions.

Spring competition in other sports has also been canceled at some colleges. On March 11 the New England Small College Athletic Conference announced that it was canceling the entire spring semester’s athletic competition.

It’s the height of the admissions season. How will coronavirus affect enrollment?

A chaotic week on many campuses, prompted by the coronavirus, has upended the enrollment process. At many colleges, the calendar has long revolved around May 1, the national deposit deadline for applicants. But that won’t work this year, some enrollment officials say. As of March 15, at least three dozen colleges had pushed back their deposit deadlines by a month, and several more were expected to do so soon.

Concern for applicants and their families is driving those decisions. So is concern for the bottom line. “Our work in admissions has to continue,” said Tony Sarda, an admissions official at Lamar University. “The question is, how can we stop for a second and acknowledge people’s humanity?”

The virus is also forcing admissions offices to work on parallel tracks for international students. On one, it’s business as usual. On the other, they are planning for myriad contingencies. Will the students be able to come to the United States for the fall term? Will they want to?

“We can only base our decisions on the information we have, so the coronavirus just can’t come into play,” one admissions officer told The Chronicle in an article published on March 5. Still, in the back of her mind, she is thinking about “Plan B, Plan C, Plan D.”

Meanwhile, the coronavirus’s swift spread has exposed the vulnerabilities of a globally interconnected world, and it could prompt some families to keep their children close to home.

Where can reliable information about Covid-19 and the novel coronavirus be found?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines for how to protect yourself and those around you from infection, while news outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post have useful explainers on the virus.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering is tracking the spread of the virus in an interactive dashboard displaying the locations of confirmed cases of Covid-19 and the number of deaths it caused, among other data.