[ad_1]
As students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill scrambled to leave their dormitories on Tuesday, make decisions about their college future and demand reimbursement of tuition fees, they had a message for administrators.
We told you.
“Everyone told the university not to reopen, and it was only a matter of time,” said Nikhil Rao, a senior student government adviser who participated in online meetings with the provost. Bob Blouin every month since April with other student leaders. “I would be shocked if I didn’t know this was going to happen.”
The university, which ignored the concerns of faculty members, staff employees, black student leaders, student campus leaders and local county health officials to become one of the most major campuses nationwide to reopen to students amid the coronavirus pandemic, announced Monday it was moving to fully distance learning after reporting 135 new cases of COVID-19 and four clusters.
All this after a week of lessons.
Now faced with both a literal and figurative “clusterf —” – as the college newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, described the situation in an editorial – many students told NBC News that the the university’s attempt to scramble together an “off-ramp” made them indignant and despised.
“Why did we wait until everyone’s life was in danger?” Rao said. “They put us all in danger.”
Since the campus closed in March, Blouin has met regularly online with student leaders such as Rao and senior student government advisor Raleigh Cury to discuss plans to reopen the campus.
“There was a consensus among all the student leaders who attended these meetings that distance learning was the best and the only option,” Cury said. “The only exception was for students who needed to be there due to a lack of internet access or any other barrier that was not conducive to academic success at home.”
Even with preventative measures, it would be unrealistic to expect thousands of young adults in their late teens and early 20s to walk away properly socially, student leaders have told Blouin since April, Cury said. UNC’s flagship campus has nearly 30,000 students, including graduate students.
“It’s not the fault of young adults to do the things that young adults want to do,” she says.
The main office of UNC-Chapel Hill did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
In an emergency meeting Monday between the university administration and the faculty council committee, Blouin said if infection rates had declined over the summer, the university would have had a “good chance of doing it”.
“I make no apologies for trying to give this campus the opportunity to return to its mission on behalf of the people of North Carolina,” Blouin said, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Blouin said in a statement that the growing number of cases had created an “untenable situation”.
“As we have always said, the health and safety of our university community is paramount, and we will continue to modify and adapt our plan as necessary,” they said.
The announcement of the move to virtual learning came less than an hour after the university updated its CV-19 dashboard, which tracks metrics such as tests completed, positive cases, and capacity quarantine and isolation.
For the week of August 10 to August 16, the Dashboard reported 135 new cases of COVID-19 – 130 students and five employees. Most students have mild symptoms, according to the university.
The cumulative rate of positive COVID-19 test results is 10.6%, according to the dashboard – higher than the rate of 7.5% statewide. And of 954 tests done that same week, 135 positives, or 13.6%, were reported – a peak from 2.8% the week before.
“We are working with the UNC system office to identify the most efficient way to continue de-densification of our residential halls and campus facilities,” Guskiewicz and Blouin said in the statement.
Before the university flip-flop, less than 60% of residences were occupied and less than 30% of total classroom spaces were taught in person. The university’s student-athletes will take online classes but will continue their fall sports seasons.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s decision to walk away is a model that many other universities are likely to follow, according to education and health experts. In the past few weeks, hundreds of colleges have already backed down from reopening for in-person teaching. The University of Notre Dame suspended in-person classes on Tuesday after 146 students and one staff member tested positive for COVID-19, while Ithaca College announced it was expanding distance learning and not did not wish to welcome students for the fall semester.
To make matters worse for students at UNC-Chapel Hill, “Monday’s announcement came an hour and 15 minutes before the 5:00 p.m. deadline for fall tuition waivers,” he said. said Lamar Richards, student chair of the Commission on Campus Equality and Student Equity at UNC.
“It is extremely clear that it was never about the students,” said sophomore Sadie Tice. “Every decision they made was about money, and announcing it just a week after class started and an hour before the tuition was due is almost cruel.”
Richards said the commission, which surveyed more than 1,000 students on how the university should handle the transition to virtual classrooms, found that the majority wanted extensions to the timelines for tuition reimbursement and an option school-wide pass or fail for classes this fall.
A spokesperson for the university said more information on the reimbursement of tuition fees will be provided in consultation with the UNC system and will be released in the coming days.
Students and the campus community as a whole did not have time to rest, Rao said. “We’ve been here for a little over a week and now the students have to wait until the weekend for their parents to send them home,” he said. “It’s absurd how chaotic it has been. There are so many questions about funding, about repayments, about what students should do. “
Tice hopes other universities pay attention – and heed the struggles at UNC-Chapel Hill before reopening campuses for the fall semester.
“UNC leaders have had the tools and information they need to make the right decision all the time and they have chosen not to do it,” Tice said. “The only thing that changed last week is that we have proven the predictions to be true.”
[ad_2]
Source link