Archive: News

Ithaca College (IC) announced Tuesday that their campus will be almost entirely closed for in-person learning (click here for the story).  While the news was disappointing to the IC community, the college is in good company: Michigan State University also announced Tuesday that it is going fully remote for the semester, and the University of Notre Dame announced that all instruction would be online for the first two weeks of the fail semester.  But in an online 'town hall' Tuesday, Cornell University and Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) officials said they are going forward with reopening their campuses, and how they are going about it.  Some Cornell students have already arrived, and the bulk will begin coming back this Sunday.

Cornell Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi said there are still about 5,000 students who have not cancelled their on-campus housing contract, and while the deadline hasn't passed Cornell officials are expecting between four and five thousand will opt for living on campus in the fall semester.

That leaves the approximately 50% of students who rent apartments off-campus. Lombardi said a lot of them are locked into leases, so would likely come back to Ithaca even if the campus were closed entirely.  On August 5th Cornell President Martha E. Pollaack justified Cornell's decision to reopen by saying that studies showed there would be more infections whether or not the campus were to reopen, but fewer infections if they do.  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.  In other words, opening campus gives the University the authority to enforce regular COVID-19 testing, and mask and social distancing rules.

On Wednesday Lombardi added that all fraternity and sorority parties have been banned with the acceptance of those organizations' leaders.  He also said 'behavioral compact monitors' will be patrolling on and off campus to insure as best as possible that students are adhering to the compact.

"These are actually full time staff that work on campus that will be roving campus and the surrounding neighborhoods, specifically in the Collegetown area, doing spot checking and intervening," he said. "When they see students who are violating standard public health guidelines that we've outlined , they will encourage them with respect and appropriateness, encouraging them to put on masks or if they see congregations, or students too close together and not properly distancing to address those issues and ask the students politely and respectfully to make changes to their behavior. But just like anyone, if they find an instance where the students are not compliant or refuse to support or anything like that, they can also report them and allow for the appropriate followup through the Dean of Students office."

Cornell Provost Michael Kotlikoff said about 340 students arrived in the dormitories Monday.  He said that almost all of them were tested before being admitted into the dorms, while a few arrived late and had to be tested Wednesday morning.  of that number, four tested positive for COVID-19 and were quarantined.  Kotlikoff said that the Cornell administration had predicted 4% positive test results among returning students, and that the 2% in this small group was encouraging news. 

Lombardi said he was on campus Tuesday and that he was encouraged that student compliance with masking and similar rules was quite good.  He also explained that Cornell has the capacity to deal with the overall situation, including quarantine space for students who test positive.

"We have secured an extensive amount of isolation and quarantine space for our students," he said. "As soon as our regular moving process starts this coming Sunday -- and that drags on for about eight days so that we could stagger move in and cadenced it to make sure that we could test all of those students as they come in and on arrival into Ithaca."

Cornell students are being given the option to switch from on-campus to remote learning after Thanksgiving.

TC3 Provost ‎Paul Reifenheiser stressed that TC3's student body is different from many colleges, in that most students are local, and many are disadvantaged when trying to learn from home.

"One of the core things we learned was that COVID brought to the forefront a lot of equity issues for our students," Reifenheiser said. "A lot of our students, for example, were trying to complete classes only on a cell phone because they don't have access to a computer, or they're trying to share laptops or they're fighting over WiFi in their home, or they just don't even have WiFi where they are -- or reliable WiFi. We know that many of our students are vulnerable in a lot of ways, and it can be really small things that can really be to them just giving up on their education.

He said that residential density in the dorms has been reduced, as well as in-person class time.

"It's worth noting we already had over a hundred sections of fully online courses each semester," Reifenheiser explained. "So that would mean, of course, that was fully asynchronous and had no meeting time. So we just kept all those the same. However, for our other classes, by default, we took every course that had a synchronous meeting time and we cut those meeting times typically we cut them in half. So a class that would meet on Tuesday and Thursday, but now only meet on Thursday. And the other work would be shifted into the online environment for asynchronous learning."

v16i34