The View from the Hermitage, Day 113

It seems that Harvard University has announced that all 2020-21 classes, undergraduate and graduate, will be held online. Interestingly, they are encouraging freshmen (what the university here calls "first-year students") will be invited to live on campus though they will still take courses remotely in their rooms. The reasoning is that freshmen need to start building a network of Harvard people and resources, something best done in person. One possibility for the spring semester is that freshmen will move home and seniors will be invited to live on campus. I can't say I disagree with that. They need to tie together their network of Harvard contacts just as the freshmen need to start theirs. Any student choosing to live on campus will be tested every three days. Finally, fall tuition of only slightly less than $50,000 will not be lowered for students learning only online.

Harvard is by no means the first to make such an announcement. Cambridge University announced in May 2020 that all classes until summer 2021 will be streamed online. Decisions about attendance or not had to be made in June, explaining the May announcement date. That was about the same time that the California State University system announced that it was moving all fall 2020 classes online.

The University of Southern California has moved its fall 2020 semester online. Students can still live on campus, but they will learn virtually from their campus housing. USC is serious about not letting the novel coronavirus on campus or allow it to spread should it arrive. Here's a look at their basic requirements. If students do not follow all of these, they are out:

Daily Requirements

• Residents are required to complete and submit a daily symptom screener.
• Residents are required to wear a mask at all times when outside your room/suite/apartment.
• Residents are not permitted to bring any guests/visitors into the residential community.  This includes parents, guardians, siblings and other relatives.  This restriction will be in place for move in days.
• Residents are not permitted to have any person in their room/suite/apartment that is not an official occupant of that space.
• Common spaces (i.e. lounges, recreational rooms, gyms, etc.) within the community will be closed. Some of these spaces will only be available for telehealth meetings.
• Laundry rooms and elevators will be limited to no more than one person at a time.
• In residence halls, residents are restricted to designated bathrooms on their floor as well as specific stairwells and entrances for accessing their building.

Rumor has it on the Charlottesville sub-Reddit that the university here is rethinking its decision to open in person while doing all classes online with no in-person instruction in classes with 40 or more students. There's some evidence rumor may come true; the deadline by which students must pay their housing deposit has been extended to August 5. And arts and sciences administration has announced that all discussion sessions, even small ones, will be held online.

Also on the education front, Georgia apparently will not require students to wear masks, something that has university faculty members angry. I can't say I blame them. I would not want the husband teaching a room full of unmasked anyone, students, peers, anyone. I know that some would wear masks even if they were not required, but I doubt they would be in the majority.

And so life goes on with seemingly endless possibilities. I read a report of a person who knew he had covid-19 who still went to a large gathering on July 4. I've seen the footage of a tightly-packed crowd of people throwing around a giant beach ball. I cannot believe that the case numbers will not be worse in a week or two. I wonder if the bookmakers in the United Kingdom are taking bets on what will happen in terms of specific aspects of the virus. I'm sure there's some action under the table here. If I were a betting woman ... but I'm not, so I have nothing to offer here.