How will our universities, colleges reopen safely?
It’s anyone’s guess as the great, annual August migration commences in fewer than eight weeks — when everyone comes to town
Virginia’s summer of discontent embraces many topics (lord knows), but, in this instance, we’re talking about state higher education and COVID-19.
How much uncertainty can Virginia’s colleges and universities handle?
How much ambiguity will students and parents stomach? What about the faculty and staff?
And the campus bean counters, the ones who must balance the books and keep these academic institutions financially afloat, how will they manage when revenue projections come with large, head-grinding asterisks?
The great, annual August migration commences in fewer than eight weeks. If you live in one of these university/college-centered communities, you know. Young people. Not-so-young people. Everybody. They come to town all at once.
No big deal, in prior years. Not so now.
Administrators are earning their money. The conferences, the sit-downs (masks included), the Zoom sessions are incessant. How are we going to handle this, they ask?
Answers get formed, decisions get made, but contingencies run to the distant horizon. There’s Plan A and Plan B and all the rest of the alphabet.
In 2019, Virginia educated around a half million students at the college and university level.
In 2020, all bets are off. Most students will arrive, but campuses’ managers anticipate a fall-off.
And, of those who arrive on campus, how many will take a look at what’s happening (how many parents will negatively react to what they hear or see on TV) and return home, soon to request a refund? No one knows.
“Students who move into Virginia Tech’s residence halls for the fall term are on notice,” The Washington Post reported on Thursday. “They must wear face masks indoors except in their own bedrooms or bathrooms or when eating a meal. They also must follow a regimen of ‘physical distancing’ from people and other measures to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.”
Will they? Will the edicts command obedience? Tech will require students to sign an agreement prior to getting access to dormitory space. No signature, no room.
“Functionally, when considering the spread of the virus, there is no difference between a dormitory and a nursing home,” one university pooh-bah told me.
Proximity is proximity. It works the same way on submarines and aircraft carriers. More than 100,000 Americans have died. The danger is real. All must take precautions.
But, again, will the students do so?
You will not see any attributed quotes in this essay, by the way. There appears to be a minimal enthusiasm for getting out front publicly on what may or may not happen. And, you know, it’s understandable. Because no one really knows.
Virginia Tech does provide a sublime example. It’s all the way out there in Blacksburg. Some 32,000 people or so will literally descend upon a relatively small community.
And they will come from everywhere. From all 50 states. From 40-50 foreign countries.
How do you handle that? Maybe more to the point, why even try?
As this was being written on Thursday afternoon, Gov. Ralph Northam released his “Higher Education Reopening Guidance” and helpfully answered that very question:
“COVID-19 has put at risk the more than $39.074 billion in annual economic impact higher education creates for the Commonwealth, and the 167,000 jobs tied directly or indirectly to Virginia colleges and universities,” the governor’s statement said.
In other words, Virginia cannot afford for these institutions to not open — and he’s right about that.
Northam insists that “plans” be in place by July 6. Those would battle plans not to defeat the virus, but to contain it and allow these most valuable and essential institutions to proceed.
Like most battles, the July 6 plans may survive only to July 7.
But that’s the nature of the challenge, though two factors will largely shape outcomes: compliance and testing.
Will the students do as asked? Will the commonwealth step up and ensure a “testing strategy,” as its Thursday guidance demands?
To this moment, both questions
remain unanswered.
After writing editorials for The Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot in the 1980s, Gordon C. Morse wrote speeches for Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, then spent nearly three decades working on behalf of corporate and philanthropic organizations, including PepsiCo, CSX, Tribune Co. and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Dominion Energy. His email address is gordonmorse@msn.com.