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Cornell University President Martha E. Pollack sent a message to the community Wednesday to attempt to address accusations that the reason for reopening the Ithaca campus are financial, rather than on health grounds.  She said that approximately 20,000 students plan to return to Ithaca, and acknowledged that new cases can be expected.  But she said that would happen even if Cornell does not open its campus.

"As Cornell’s president, I feel acutely our responsibility to safeguard the health and well-being of not only our students, but of our entire community: those who study and work at Cornell, and those living in the region we call home. As we have determined our path forward during this pandemic, I want to be absolutely clear that every one of our decisions has been, and will continue to be, driven by that responsibility, not by our own financial considerations. Rather, we made the choice to reopen based on our finding – counterintuitive though it may be – that an in-person semester is the best possible way for Cornell to limit the spread of the coronavirus, on our campus and across the Ithaca region," she wrote.

Pollack said thousands of students have said they plan to return to Ithaca even if all instruction is online, and argued that Cornell students are adults and private citizens.  But she said the 'behavioral compact' that Cornell has made acceptance of and adherence to a condition of remaining at Cornell will be enforced.

"The consequences for knowingly submitting inaccurate information to Cornell, or for violations of Cornell’s public health rules, will be significant: ranging from loss of access to campus facilities to suspension from the university without refund of tuition. It is equally critical for our entire non-student community to model safe behavior in all aspects of on-campus and off-campus life," she said.

On July 30th Cornell Provost Mike Kotlikoff said in a message to students that Cornell will not be able to provide quarantine housing for all students, noting that because of the state travel advisory, students would be responsible for quarantining for two weeks before returning to ithaca.

Students were advised, "If you are unable to quarantine for 14 days in New York or in a state not currently under the NYS travel advisory, you should prepare to begin the semester online. As states are removed from the New York travel advisory list, or quarantine requirements otherwise change, you will have the option to return to campus. Cornell Housing will monitor the travel advisory and communicate arrival options as states are removed."

Pollack said Cornell expects there will inevitably be hundreds of students testing positive, but emphasized the testing protocol Cornell is instituting.  She also said that an in-person semester is likely to result in less infection than an online one.

"Because of our plan for surveillance testing of faculty, staff and the roughly 20,000 students we expect to return to Ithaca, we anticipate finding many hundreds, and probably more than a thousand, of coronavirus cases in the Cornell community over the coming semester – many of which would have gone undetected without the rigorous testing protocols we have put into place. Inevitably, some cases will be more severe, and a small percentage may result in hospitalization," she warned. "While this is clearly a distressing outlook, it is nevertheless by far the best available option: according to our modeling, with an all-online scenario the number of infections may be as much as six to nine times higher, with several thousand infections. The precision of numerical projections based on modeling is necessarily limited, but in any reasonable scenario, modeling predicts a greater level of infection for an online semester than for an in-person one."

Cornell has posted a document explaining modeling that is being used in its decision making.  the document concludes the university "can achieve meaningful control over outbreaks on Cornell’s Ithaca cam- pus in the fall semester if asymptomatic surveillance is sufficiently frequent and if we have sufficient quarantine capacity."  It describes a model in which in-person instruction is not offered, predicting more infections than in a scenario in which the campus does reopen.

"Our nominal parameters assume that 9000 students would remain in Ithaca but outside the control of the University in off-campus apartments without asymptomatic surveillance, and that a population of 15000 faculty, staff, and graduate students would remain on campus with asymptomatic surveillance. The median number of infections over a 16-week period in the no-reopen scenario is ∼ 7200, which is significantly larger than the ∼ 1200 that occur under the nominal fall-reopen param- eters. This is because the loss of asymptomatic screening allows cases to grow significantly in the unmonitored student population. It is also because infections from outside Cornell, a large driver of cases in the residential-campus scenario, continue to drive cases."

Cornell's reopening plan includes 'gateway' and regular ongoing testing.  Students are being asked to self-quarantine for two weeks before coming to Ithaca, and to be tested before coming here.  Those testing positive are being asked to remain in place until they have recovered from the coronavirus.  She said the university continues to work with the Tompkins County Health Department and Cayuga Health System.

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