When North Carolina-Chapel Hill students crawled out of their bedrooms on Tuesday to make decisions about their academic futures and tuition fees, they had one message for administrators.
We told you that.
“Everyone told me not to reopen the university, and it was only a matter of time,” said Nikhil Rao, a senior student board adviser who has attended online meetings with Provost Bob Blouin and other student leaders since April each month. “I would be shocked if I did not know this was going to happen.”
The university, which ignored concerns from faculty members, staff, Black student leaders, student campus leaders and local health officials to become one of the largest campuses in the country to reopen to students amid the pandemic of coronavirus, announced Monday that it has shifted to full distance learning after reporting 135 new COVID-19 cases and four clusters.
All this after one week of classes.
Now dealing with both a literal and figurative “clusterf —” – that’s how the college, The Daily Tar Heel, described the situation in an editorial headline – many students told NBC News that the university’s visit a ” off “scrape-disaster” plan have left them feeling angry and disrespectful.
“Why did we wait until everyone’s lives were in danger?” Sei Rao. “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 advisor to student board member Raleigh Cury to discuss plans to reopen the campus.
“There was a consensus among all the student leaders involved in those meetings that distance learning was the best and only option,” Cury said. “The only exception was for students who were needed there due to 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 at a social distance, student leaders Blouin said since April, Cury said. The flagship campus at UNC has close to 30,000 students, including graduates.
“It’s not the fault of young adults to do the things that young adults want to do,” she said.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Provost’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an emergency meeting Monday between the university’s council committee and the faculty, Blouin said infection rates were tapered off in the summer, the university would have a “high shot of making this happen.”
“I do not apologize 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 spiral expansion of affairs had created an “unsustainable situation”.
“As we have always said, the health and safety of our campus community is of paramount importance, and we will continue to adapt and adapt our plan as necessary,” they said.
The announcement to move to virtual learning came less than an hour after the university updated its CV-19 dashboard, which metrics such as tests performed, positive cases, and quarantine and isolation capacity.
For the week of August 10 to August 16, the dashboard reported 135 new COVID-19 cases — 130 students and five staff members. Most students have mild symptoms, according to the university.
The cumulative rate of positive COVID-19 test results is 10.6 percent, according to the dashboard – higher than the statewide rate of 7.5 percent. And out of the 954 tests conducted the same week, 135 were reported positive, as 13.6 percent – a spike of 2.8 percent the previous week.
“We are working with the UNC system bureau to identify the most effective way to further achieve de-densification of our residences and our campus facilities,” Guskiewicz and Blouin said in the statement.
Before the university crash, less than 60 percent of residential homes were occupied and less than 30 percent of total classrooms were personally taught. The university’s student-athletes will attend online classes but continue with their fall sports seasons.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s decision to go the extra mile is a pattern many other universities are likely to follow, education and health experts say. Hundreds of colleges in recent weeks have already remarried reopened for instruction. The University of Notre Dame on Tuesday lifted staff classes to 146 students and one staff member tested positive for COVID-19, while Ithaca College announced that expanding learning expands and students are not welcome for the fall semester.
To make matters worse for UNC-Chapel Hill students, “announced Monday one hour and 15 minutes before the 5:00 pm deadline for cancellation cases,” said Lamar Richards, a student chair of the UNC Campus Validity and Student Funding Commission .
“It’s pretty clear it was never about the students,” said Sadie Tice, a sophomore. “Every decision they made was about money, and announcing it just a week after classes start and an hour before the course delivery comes is almost cruel.”
Richards said the commission, which surveyed more than 1,000 students on how the university should handle the transition to virtual classes, found that the majority wanted extensions over deadlines for tuition refunds and a school-wide pass-through -fail option for courses this fall.
A university spokesman said more information on tuition fees would be made in consultation with the UNC system and would be released in the coming days.
Students and the wider campus community have no time to rest, Rao said. “We’ve been here a little over a week, and now students have to wait until the weekend for their parents to send them home,” he said. ‘It’s absurd how chaotic this has been. There are so many questions about funding, about refunds, about what students need to do. ”
Tice hopes other universities will pay attention – and consider the UNC-Chapel Hill battle before reopening on the Heart Semester campuses.
“UNC leaders have been given the tools and information they need to make the right decision all the time and they did not opt for it,” Tice said. “The only thing that has changed in this last week is that we have proved the predictions of what would be true.”
