UNC moves its classes online as virus spreads across campus
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the largest schools in the country to bring students to campus for in-person teaching, said Monday it will move to all-remote instruction for undergraduates after testing showed a pattern of rapid spread of the coronavirus.
Officials announced the abrupt change just a week after classes began at the 30,000student state flagship university. They said 177 cases of the dangerous pathogen had been confirmed among students out of 954 tested. Another 349 students were in quarantine because of possible exposure to the virus, they said.
The remote-teaching order for undergraduate classes will take effect Wednesday, and the university will take steps to allow students to leave campus housing without financial penalty if they wish.
“We understand the concern and frustrations these changes will raise with many students and parents,” wrote UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Robert Blouin in a statement. “As much as we believe we have worked diligently to help create a healthy and safe campus living and learning environment, we believe the current data presents an untenable situation.”
Clusters of cases had popped up in three residence halls and a fraternity house at UNC Chapel Hill in the first week of the fall term, sending students into isolation and quarantine rooms and raising faculty worries about how far the dangerous pathogen will spread in the campus community.
One influential administrator, the UNC Chapel Hill dean of public health, called for a change in approach because she said the in-person method is not working.
The public health conditions at the university are being closely watched as colleges and universities around the country move this month toward the first day of class, some with entirely remote instruction and others with a mix of teaching online and in person.
Reports have emerged of risky gatherings of students in close quarters, without face masks, in college towns including Tuscaloosa, Ala., home of the University of Alabama, and Dahlonega, Ga., home of the University of
“The fact that it is happening this early in the school year, just a week into classes, has everyone quite concerned and quite alarmed, quite frankly.”
— Mimi V. Chapman, chair of UNC Chapel Hill faculty
North Georgia. A cluster of 23 confirmed coronavirus cases also hit a sorority house at Oklahoma State University.
In the week before class started Aug. 10 at UNC Chapel Hill, 10 students and one employee tested positive, according to the university. But clusters of cases piled up in the residences known as Granville Towers, Ehringhaus and Hinton James, as well as the Sigma Nu fraternity house, according to text alerts the university sent students in recent days.
“After only one week of campus operations, with growing numbers of clusters and insufficient control over the off-campus behavior of students (and others), it is time for an off-ramp,” Barbara Rimer, dean of public health at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote in a statement Monday. “We have tried to make this work, but it is not working.”
Faculty, too, were calling for a review of the situation.
“The fact that it is happening this early in the school year, just a week into classes, has everyone quite concerned and quite alarmed, quite frankly,” said Mimi V. Chapman, a professor of social work who is chair of the UNC Chapel Hill faculty.
Clusters are defined as at least five cases in a residence.
The public university has about 20,000 undergraduates and 10,000 graduate students. This month, it is housing about 5,800 students in campus housing — less than twothirds of capacity — with many more students living off campus in Chapel Hill and nearby communities. More than half of classes had at least some in-person teaching
on opening day, although many faculty have been switching in recent weeks to all-online delivery.
Before the first day of class, university officials said they were confident in their plans but would closely monitor how many cases emerge and other data, including the number of students in quarantine.
Officials say many students appear to be taking public health seriously. Masks are worn all around campus, they said, and students are maintaining physical distance from each other when they go to class.
“It has been heartening to hear reports from faculty and staff and to experience for myself the excellent compliance on campus this week,” the provost, Mr. Blouin, wrote Thursday. “Our goal, certainly, is full participation both on campus and off among all members of our Carolina community.”
But they were deeply concerned about gatherings off campus. The chancellor, Mr. Guskiewicz, wrote a letter recently warning fraternities and sororities and other groups that they must follow health rules.
One dorm was set aside to isolate those who test positive and another to quarantine those who had come into close contact with confirmed cases. One first-year student, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons, told The Washington Post on Monday that she had been in quarantine since Thursday night. This student said the problem arose because she had breakfast one day just off campus with a classmate who later tested positive.