Colleges struggle to salvage semester amid outbreaks
MADISON, WIS. >> Colleges across the country are struggling to salvage the fall semester amid skyrocketing coronavirus cases, entire dorm complexes and frat houses under quarantine, and flaring tensions with local community leaders over the spread of the disease.
Many major universities are determined to forge ahead despite warning signs, as evidenced by the expanding slate of college football games occurring Saturday. The footballobsessed SEC begins its season with fans in stadiums. Several teams in other leagues have had to postpone games because of outbreaks among players and staff.
Institutions across the nation saw spikes of thousands of cases days after opening their doors in the last month, driven by students socializing with little or no social distancing. School and community leaders have tried to rein in the virus by closing bars, suspending students, adding mask requirements, and toggling between inperson and online instruction as case numbers rise and fall.
Tension over the outbreaks is starting to boil over in college towns.
Faculty members from at least two universities have held no-confidence votes in recent weeks against their top leaders, in part over reopening decisions. Government leaders want the University of Wisconsin-Madison to send its students home. Republican Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis, alarmed by what he sees as draconian rules on college campuses, said he is drawing up a “bill of rights” for college students.
In Rhode Island, Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, this week blamed out
breaks at two colleges for a surge of virus cases that boosted the state’s infection rate high enough to put it on the list of places whose residents are required to quarantine when traveling to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison had seen more than 2,800 confirmed cases in students as of Friday. The school shut down in-person instruction for two weeks, locked down two of its largest dorms, and imposed quarantines on more than a dozen sorority and fraternity houses. The school lifted the dorm lockdown just this week.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi has demanded the university sent all its students home for the rest of the academic year.
“( The virus) was under control until the university came back,” Parisi said.
C h a nc el lor Reb e c c a Blank has fired back, saying tens of thousands of students with off- campus housing would still come to the city. She accused Parisi of failing to enforce capacity restrictions in bars and off-campus parties.
“You can’t simply wish (students) away, nor should you,” Blank said in a statement directed at Parisi.
Amid the fighting, thousands of students around the country have been quarantined in dorm rooms.
At Kansas State University, more than 2,200 students have been placed in quarantine or isolation since class began. Student Emily Howard was isolated in what students have dubbed “COVID jail” after she and her dorm roommate tested positive for the virus on Sept. 4, just three weeks after arriving on campus.
“Now you walk around campus (and) pretty much everyone says they’ve had it,” Howard said. “Now we don’t really care as much because we know we had the antibodies.”