DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Sept 17, 2020 6:09:23 GMT -5
It is obvious to those who are at risk and/or elderly that they should stay away from many settings at this time, universities and places where youth are likely to be would be chief among them. College students don't interact with people twice their age or more and those at greater risk due to their health concerns can avoid the college and its students. That is a- infinitely easier for them to accomplish through their own actions than expecting others to change everything about how they live their life and b- a responsibility and burden that should be shouldered by that portion of the population. I agree that everyone, students included, should wear their masks, quarantine themselves when they test positive or feel sick and limit indoor gatherings as much as possible to limit the spread. maybe that is the point of this article and it is lost on me since the focus of it seemed to be how many students were infected. Regardless, if they all get each other sick and none of them get hospitalized then I am not concerned about it. I think this is a very narrow view of the world that assumes people have choices. Do the university janitors have a real choice to go to work when - if they don't - they will be homeless and their children will go hungry? What about dining center employees that serve the students food? And the countless other university staff employees that keep the universities up and running? The NYT has counted 60 deaths of college staff members THUS FAR: www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/world/covid-19-coronavirus.html#link-734306aaAnd then what about the restaurant workers? Grocery store employees? I can go on and on, and the examples are endless. College students don't live in a bubble just filled with college students. They live in communities. And, college students have proven to everyone that they do not wear masks, they party, they socialize, and then they catch covid as a result. And then they spread it to their college communities, and the broader communities. And people die. This is accurate. And it’s not that “college students don’t get sick” - they do. They just don’t get ICU sick and die at the rate us old farts do. I’ve treated people in both categories at both ends of the age spectrum.
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Oct 1, 2020 13:41:13 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 1, 2020 15:38:23 GMT -5
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Oct 1, 2020 18:58:55 GMT -5
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BSM
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Post by BSM on Oct 10, 2020 21:04:52 GMT -5
GW announced today that they are going to continue remote learning through Spring Semester. Also, Graduation will be virtual in May 2021
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 13, 2020 10:57:12 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 13, 2020 15:36:46 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 15, 2020 9:51:41 GMT -5
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Oct 21, 2020 5:55:16 GMT -5
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Post by LizziebethHoya on Oct 23, 2020 16:11:25 GMT -5
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 23, 2020 19:18:50 GMT -5
I have to say, I supported the university when it decided not to bring students on campus for the fall semester. However, I am positively surprised that some universities were able to successfully open their campuses with very few Covid outbreaks and I see no reason why Georgetown can't steal their playbooks, at least for the undergraduates. Two reasons: 1. Many of the universities with on-campus population have significantly larger campuses. Duke has 3,000 students back on roughly 1,000 acres. The non-medical portion of Georgetown's campus measures 77 acres. 2. The larger reason is that DC's rules make it very difficult, which is why AU, GW, Howard, and UDC are all in the same boat. One could argue that it is successful. Last week, DC had 371 reported cases. Wisconsin, roughly 8x in population, had 65x more new cases, or 24,701, including an 18% positive rate at Marquette University. As to the helicopter parents threatening transfers if they don't get their kids on campus...well, call their bluff. Georgetown has many, many more wanting in than asking out.
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tgo
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Post by tgo on Oct 23, 2020 19:39:19 GMT -5
I have to say, I supported the university when it decided not to bring students on campus for the fall semester. However, I am positively surprised that some universities were able to successfully open their campuses with very few Covid outbreaks and I see no reason why Georgetown can't steal their playbooks, at least for the undergraduates. Two reasons: 1. Many of the universities with on-campus population have significantly larger campuses. Duke has 3,000 students back on roughly 1,000 acres. The non-medical portion of Georgetown's campus measures 77 acres. 2. The larger reason is that DC's rules make it very difficult, which is why AU, GW, Howard, Catholic, and UDC are all in the same boat. One could argue that it is successful. Last week, DC had 371 reported cases. Wisconsin, roughly 8x in population, had 24,701, including an 18% positive rate at Marquette University. As to the helicopter parents threatening transfers if they don't get their kids on campus...well, call their bluff. Georgetown has many, many more wanting in than asking out. Someone is a helicopter parent is they want their kid to go to college? You are not using that term correctly. I also take issue with #1, how many acres per student do you need in order for it to be "safe" to allow students to live on and and take classes on campus? And a question, the 18% of Marquette students who tested as sick, have any of them been sick enough to need to go to the hospital? I will bet my mortgage payment the number is closer to zero than it is to ten.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 23, 2020 19:48:04 GMT -5
Unfortunately, I don't see any way that this doesn't become a nasty, public dispute, with the University caught between a rock and a hard place. I don't envy those charged with making these decisions. The challenge here is that people are not very good at risk analysis and probabilistic thinking even when they have all the relevant information at their disposal - and with this virus, there is much that remains uncertain. This flawed thinking is widespread generally, but seems particularly acute among Americans, if our continued widespread denial about climate change is any indication. The situation is exacerbated by two really unfortunate realities: 1. The dynamic that one's attitude toward the pandemic has become a partisan marker, thanks to Trump's continued denialism, such that taking a maximalist view of the risk and advocating for maximum restrictions has gotten coded as being the progressive position, irrespective of the data. 2. Even in jurisdictions with Democrats in charge, the approach to restrictions has not been particularly risk-informed, reopening various non-essential commercial operations while keeping things like playgrounds closed. We're seeing this all play out in a particularly problematic way around the debate about reopening secondary and especially primary schools. But while people across the board generally acknowledge that there are significant downsides toward primary schools being closed from a childhood development and socialization perspective, that recognition quickly recedes as the age of the students increases (and, to be fair, as the risk to the students and of the students increases as well). Hence, you're going to see backlash. Not picking on this particular person, just giving an example: Circling back to your point, Liz, some of the measures that reduce risk are going to be opposed by students and/or other stakeholders for their own reasons that are certainly not without some legitimate grounds, e.g.,
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C86
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Post by C86 on Oct 24, 2020 11:16:38 GMT -5
“Many of the universities with on-campus population have significantly larger campuses. Duke has 3,000 students back on roughly 1,000 acres. The non-medical portion of Georgetown's campus measures 77 acres. “ Tufts has brought back its undergrads, and its urban/suburban Medford campus is similar in size to GU’s. Tufts’ plan of continuous testing and immediate isolation of cases has been successful. Why couldn’t Georgetown adapt this playbook? coronavirus.tufts.edu/testing-metrics
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Post by LizziebethHoya on Oct 26, 2020 9:34:33 GMT -5
Two reasons: 1. Many of the universities with on-campus population have significantly larger campuses. Duke has 3,000 students back on roughly 1,000 acres. The non-medical portion of Georgetown's campus measures 77 acres. 2. The larger reason is that DC's rules make it very difficult, which is why AU, GW, Howard, and UDC are all in the same boat. One could argue that it is successful. Last week, DC had 371 reported cases. Wisconsin, roughly 8x in population, had 65x more new cases, or 24,701, including an 18% positive rate at Marquette University. As to the helicopter parents threatening transfers if they don't get their kids on campus...well, call their bluff. Georgetown has many, many more wanting in than asking out. Counterpoint: I'm in NY -- arguably a place with more stringent rules than DC -- and a lot of the universities here have opened, have successfully kept case numbers down, and have not contributed to community spread in a statistically significant way. If they did, Cuomo would be the first to say so. City schools like Fordham and NYU are open without many issues and even party school Syracuse never has had more than 100 cases at one time. Yes, some SUNY schools have had to close but by in large those are exceptions and not rules. I don't have a magical ball and there is literally no right answer. Again, I was completely skeptical about all of this at first and 100% believe that the schools need to put a ton of rules in place and come down with the hammer very, very hard on any violations. Some state schools have let their covid numbers get out of hand; those are not the playbooks we follow. But I don't think we can ignore the fact that three semesters of ZoomU is going to have a negative impact on the school in the long run when our peer schools are bringing their students back to campus. I'm sure Georgetown can fill a class, but who exactly are we going to fill the class with?
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tgo
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Post by tgo on Oct 26, 2020 10:46:01 GMT -5
Two reasons: 1. Many of the universities with on-campus population have significantly larger campuses. Duke has 3,000 students back on roughly 1,000 acres. The non-medical portion of Georgetown's campus measures 77 acres. 2. The larger reason is that DC's rules make it very difficult, which is why AU, GW, Howard, and UDC are all in the same boat. One could argue that it is successful. Last week, DC had 371 reported cases. Wisconsin, roughly 8x in population, had 65x more new cases, or 24,701, including an 18% positive rate at Marquette University. As to the helicopter parents threatening transfers if they don't get their kids on campus...well, call their bluff. Georgetown has many, many more wanting in than asking out. But I don't think we can ignore the fact that three semesters of ZoomU is going to have a negative impact on the school in the long run when our peer schools are bringing their students back to campus. I'm sure Georgetown can fill a class, but who exactly are we going to fill the class with? Also, since when is it ok, on a customer service level not to mention a moral level, for GU to say "others want your spots so you need shut up or leave if you don't like the fact that we are not giving you what you signed up for?"
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 26, 2020 12:06:58 GMT -5
But I don't think we can ignore the fact that three semesters of ZoomU is going to have a negative impact on the school in the long run when our peer schools are bringing their students back to campus. I'm sure Georgetown can fill a class, but who exactly are we going to fill the class with? Also, since when is it ok, on a customer service level not to mention a moral level, for GU to say "others want your spots so you need shut up or leave if you don't like the fact that we are not giving you what you signed up for?" Three points: 1. There are plenty of things Georgetown does that seem byzantine and bureaucratic to a fault. But in the end, they're listening to the public health experts on this. If you can't provide a safe environment for not only students AND faculty and staff, the risk is not worth the reward. This is compounded by stricter rules enforced by DC, which is why GW is already committed to almost 100% online for the spring and AU announced a spring plan today which will keep the vast majority of classes (and students) online. So if things are looser at Duke or Northwestern, know that the DC universities are in this together and given that DC remains in the lowest quintile of cases, the District is not likely to declare victory and move on. 2. This isn't about customer service or morals, but health and safety. Parents who want Georgetown to relent on public health so their son and daughter has a nice place to spend the spring aren't being smart on this; then again, some of these parents would be the first to sue the University if their child was hospitalized or put on a ventilator because too many students were hanging around together. And if the need to be on a campus, any campus, is that material to these families and GU is not meeting its needs; yes, they should consider other options. 3. As we are discerning over this next week, the mettle of leadership is not when things are good but times are tough. It's easy to make popular decisions but tougher to stand by decisions that aren't so easy. One of the unsung heroes of this COVID-19 era is a man named Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, TX. On March 6th, when the national case count was just 252, he made the tough decision to cancel South By Southwest (SXSW), which was expected to draw 200,000 people from all over the world congregating [read= standing in the streets, packing into bars and listening to music) in the downtown area for a week. He cost that city millions in tourism dollars but potentially saved thousands of lives for COVID-19 in the process. Why make that call? He listened to the experts. Not so for the folks of Sturgis, SD, which gladly welcomed 462,000 bikers in August for a rally because it drives their economy. Where are the states today with the highest rate of infection increases? The Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, and Wisconsin. From the WPost: "When it comes to infectious diseases, it’s often the case that the weakest link in the chain is a risk to everybody,” said Josh Michaud, an epidemiologist and associate director for global health policy for the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. "Holding a half-million-person rally in the midst of a pandemic is emblematic of a nation as a whole that maybe isn’t taking [the novel coronavirus] as seriously as we should." If Georgetown is taking this seriously, and it is, that speaks more for the University's care for the whole person than merely opening up for parents who want a nice Spring Break and a graduation weekend for their kids.
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Elvado
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Post by Elvado on Oct 26, 2020 13:32:02 GMT -5
Also, since when is it ok, on a customer service level not to mention a moral level, for GU to say "others want your spots so you need shut up or leave if you don't like the fact that we are not giving you what you signed up for?" Three points: 1. There are plenty of things Georgetown does that seem byzantine and bureaucratic to a fault. But in the end, they're listening to the public health experts on this. If you can't provide a safe environment for not only students AND faculty and staff, the risk is not worth the reward. This is compounded by stricter rules enforced by DC, which is why GW is already committed to almost 100% online for the spring and AU announced a spring plan today which will keep the vast majority of classes (and students) online. So if things are looser at Duke or Northwestern, know that the DC universities are in this together and given that DC remains in the lowest quintile of cases, the District is not likely to declare victory and move on. 2. This isn't about customer service or morals, but health and safety. Parents who want Georgetown to relent on public health so their son and daughter has a nice place to spend the spring aren't being smart on this; then again, some of these parents would be the first to sue the University if their child was hospitalized or put on a ventilator because too many students were hanging around together. And if the need to be on a campus, any campus, is that material to these families and GU is not meeting its needs; yes, they should consider other options. 3. As we are discerning over this next week, the mettle of leadership is not when things are good but times are tough. It's easy to make popular decisions but tougher to stand by decisions that aren't so easy. One of the unsung heroes of this COVID-19 era is a man named Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, TX. On March 6th, when the national case count was just 252, he made the tough decision to cancel South By Southwest (SXSW), which was expected to draw 200,000 people from all over the world congregating [read= standing in the streets, packing into bars and listening to music) in the downtown area for a week. He cost that city millions in tourism dollars but potentially saved thousands of lives for COVID-19 in the process. Why make that call? He listened to the experts. Not so for the folks of Sturgis, SD, which gladly welcomed 462,000 bikers in August for a rally because it drives their economy. Where are the states today with the highest rate of infection increases? The Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, and Wisconsin. From the WPost: "When it comes to infectious diseases, it’s often the case that the weakest link in the chain is a risk to everybody,” said Josh Michaud, an epidemiologist and associate director for global health policy for the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. "Holding a half-million-person rally in the midst of a pandemic is emblematic of a nation as a whole that maybe isn’t taking [the novel coronavirus] as seriously as we should." If Georgetown is taking this seriously, and it is, that speaks more for the University's care for the whole person than merely opening up for parents who want a nice Spring Break and a graduation weekend for their kids. Spot on by DFW. That said, the cost structure is way out of whack if this is the long-term direction of the University. It cannot be credibly claimed that the virtual experience is fungible with the real experience.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 30, 2020 10:03:30 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 30, 2020 11:31:44 GMT -5
I enjoyed this rejoinder:
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