Let's say you work for NASA as a team sending astronauts into space. To launch safely, you need a "go" from all systems, not just one or two or 90% of the systems. Astronauts do not want to hear from mission control, "We got 9 out or 10 systems ready, so yea let's light this candle!" They don't want to hear, "We worked really hard on this plan building the rocket, and there are a lot of people who want to see a rocket launch, therefore we need to launch today, even if conditions are not right."
Reopening a campus during a pandemic means you have to get all the details right. In this sense, we are like NASA. The core problem I see is that we are not taking the same level of attention to detail needed commensurate to the challenges facing us. Many of the plans to reopen colleges ignore key issues. It's not enough to have a good idea in concept or have consensus in committee/task force. The reason is because nature doesn't give partial credit, and nature does not care what we think or believe in. So it is not my opinion or other people's opinions that matter at the end of the day. It's whether we have solved the coronavirus problems.
And the astronaut analogy goes further. Building a rocket is a complex problem. It requires big ideas, vision, and crucially nailing every single little detail, otherwise things go wrong. Likewise in this pandemic, the devil is in the coronavirus details.
I wrote a blog post (link) and published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education outlining the case for not reopening. I don't think reopening is the right choice, and you can read my thoughts in the linked post or article. In this post, I take a closer look at the issues of reopening. I also note that I care about human lives and believe that humanity should be placed at the center of our discussions. I am also for using campus space as refuge, for instance, for students who do not have a safe home to live in. We need to set aside space for those who truly need it.
A partial list of some key issues not yet addressed or adequately addressed is provided below. I could add more items, but left this post at the current length to get across enough reasons to clearly demonstrate that important details are being overlooked. A comprehensive list is beyond the scope of this post. The list starts with "nuts and bolts" items and moves towards areas that connect with culture and motivations.
Reopening a campus during a pandemic means you have to get all the details right. In this sense, we are like NASA. The core problem I see is that we are not taking the same level of attention to detail needed commensurate to the challenges facing us. Many of the plans to reopen colleges ignore key issues. It's not enough to have a good idea in concept or have consensus in committee/task force. The reason is because nature doesn't give partial credit, and nature does not care what we think or believe in. So it is not my opinion or other people's opinions that matter at the end of the day. It's whether we have solved the coronavirus problems.
And the astronaut analogy goes further. Building a rocket is a complex problem. It requires big ideas, vision, and crucially nailing every single little detail, otherwise things go wrong. Likewise in this pandemic, the devil is in the coronavirus details.
I wrote a blog post (link) and published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education outlining the case for not reopening. I don't think reopening is the right choice, and you can read my thoughts in the linked post or article. In this post, I take a closer look at the issues of reopening. I also note that I care about human lives and believe that humanity should be placed at the center of our discussions. I am also for using campus space as refuge, for instance, for students who do not have a safe home to live in. We need to set aside space for those who truly need it.
A partial list of some key issues not yet addressed or adequately addressed is provided below. I could add more items, but left this post at the current length to get across enough reasons to clearly demonstrate that important details are being overlooked. A comprehensive list is beyond the scope of this post. The list starts with "nuts and bolts" items and moves towards areas that connect with culture and motivations.
Bathrooms: Oddly, I see very little on bathrooms in plans regarding reopening campuses, yet it's something everyone I talk to is worried about. Many college buildings have one bathroom per floor, and are used frequently throughout the day. Ventilation is usually not good. Some have hand dryers, instead of paper towels, and toilets do not have seat covers (so when you flush droplets from the toilet could go into the air.) The bathroom in the building where my office is has poor ventilation and no windows. There is no easy way to improve ventilation in many cases.
Lack of Hand Washing Stations: This brings us to the next point. If the only place you can go to wash your hands in the bathroom, then you are sending all of the people on your campus into small spaces on a daily basis, multiple times a day, often with poor ventilation. One solution to this is to have available everywhere is hand sanitizer and hand washing stations. This means having stations in every class, near al offices, and so on. Not just a dispenser in a handful of places.
Door handles/knobs: Going to class requires me to open 5 doors each way. I need to grab the door handle/knob for the doors to the stairway leading in/out of my floor, the building door, the door to the building where my classroom is located, and then the classroom door itself. Each person has to use doors regularly. That's a lot of people touching the same door knob in just one period.
Hallways During Period Changes: I have yet to see anything written on this very basic thing that happens at schools. When the bell chimes, even if we reduce classes to 50% and have 6 feet distance, then everyone has to get up and go out into the hallway to get to their next class. Social distancing in hallways is nearly impossible in this situation. If a student goes to 4 classes, there will be perhaps 30 minutes of hallway time. That's a lot of exposure daily just in hallways. Hallways are also not the most well-ventilated spaces usually.
Hallways During Period Changes: I have yet to see anything written on this very basic thing that happens at schools. When the bell chimes, even if we reduce classes to 50% and have 6 feet distance, then everyone has to get up and go out into the hallway to get to their next class. Social distancing in hallways is nearly impossible in this situation. If a student goes to 4 classes, there will be perhaps 30 minutes of hallway time. That's a lot of exposure daily just in hallways. Hallways are also not the most well-ventilated spaces usually.
Desks/tables in classrooms: I suppose the only way to deal with this is for instructors and students to bring sanitizing supplies to class everyday. I doubt colleges with shrinking budgets will be able to hire people to clean each desk each period. Students and faculty will have to bring their own cleaning kit.
Time: Classes are one to two hours long. This is a long time for people to be in a room. Even if people are wearing masking and sitting far apart, we have a room with people talking and breathing the same air for a prolonged period of time.
HVAC: HVAC systems need to be able to move air into and out of rooms. Some classes do not have windows, and some offices in the interior are sometimes windowless or have small windows. Even determining if an HVAC system is "good enough" for the coronavirus situation would seem like an area that is not well-understood to the point where we could push this info out to all facilities departments across the nation, where they have the knowledge, skills, and materials to make it all work.
Asymptomatic spread and the high cost of testing: Asymptomatic spread is an issue that I am really concerned about. When people are feeling symptoms it's clear what to do and how to behave. But if you don't know and have it, then it's a dangerous situation. This means that testing needs to be broad, according to experts. So far, I have not seen good school plans on managing asymptomatic cases that is feasible. Temperature checks and testings students with symptoms only catch a subset of those who are spreading the disease. Some colleges have vast testing capacity, which is great for that campus, but not all campuses across the country.
With more testing comes high cost in money and moral standing. For the Cal State system, the WEEKLY cost for testing is estimated to be $25 million. We don't have a spare billion dollars in the system, when we are facing big budget cuts. More damaging is the moral cost. Unless testing is widespread and cheap, we are taking useful testing capacity away from the healthcare system and from those working in essential jobs. Perhaps there will be big breakthroughs with testing capacity. But even in that case, the cost of many millions or billions could be spent on reducing fees/tuition and providing students in need or at risk with the devices and support they need. There are better uses of the money than the testing.
Other key questions...
- How many positive tests will it take to close a campus?
- Are you testing all students?
- How transparent will this information be?
- If the institution is slow in responding, and where do students, faculty, staff go to report a developing situation?
- What do you do when some refuses to be tested and has symptoms?
- What is the contact tracing team and what is their capacity?
Masks and compliance: Masks and society are colliding right now in the US in ways they are not in east Asian countries. If we are to deal with asymptomatic spread, then we'll need masks for all students, faculty, and staff. Then the question arises of whether we are we going to require students to wear gloves and masks. If some don't, then the community is not as safe as it can be and risks go up. Wearing masks is a team sport, and at present the US is not united even on this basic issue. Hence, wearing masks is also a social problem, and this could lead to conflict in addition to increased health risk.
For example, suppose it is an exam day, and one student refuses to wear one. To keep people safe, you would cancel class. One way around this is to give online exams. But then that leads us back to virtual teaching. And faculty should not be passing out paper and collecting it from all students for safety reasons anyways. Hence, electronic testing is the best solution, which once again leads us back on the path to virtual.
Libraries and Study Spaces: Libraries are not easy places to manage, because unlike a classroom, people go in and out when they want and linger. Students and faculty literally spend hours and hours in the library. Like classrooms, each and every desk and chair needs to be cleaned after each use. This seems incredibly hard to manage and do well in a sustained and consistent way.
Compliance is an issue in libraries and other student spaces. If a person refuses to wear a mask, then what should the library or building manager do? Call campus police to remove the person or close the library/building? If this behavior is allowed, then risk will go over for everyone.
Staff who have to work the frontlines are especially at risk, and will also be tasked with making the call to campus PD or to close the building. It's not something people are trained to do, and they didn't take the job in the first place to be a bouncer.
Further, handling anything in the collections is also a concern. How does a library safely get materials to and from people?
For example, suppose it is an exam day, and one student refuses to wear one. To keep people safe, you would cancel class. One way around this is to give online exams. But then that leads us back to virtual teaching. And faculty should not be passing out paper and collecting it from all students for safety reasons anyways. Hence, electronic testing is the best solution, which once again leads us back on the path to virtual.
Libraries and Study Spaces: Libraries are not easy places to manage, because unlike a classroom, people go in and out when they want and linger. Students and faculty literally spend hours and hours in the library. Like classrooms, each and every desk and chair needs to be cleaned after each use. This seems incredibly hard to manage and do well in a sustained and consistent way.
Compliance is an issue in libraries and other student spaces. If a person refuses to wear a mask, then what should the library or building manager do? Call campus police to remove the person or close the library/building? If this behavior is allowed, then risk will go over for everyone.
Staff who have to work the frontlines are especially at risk, and will also be tasked with making the call to campus PD or to close the building. It's not something people are trained to do, and they didn't take the job in the first place to be a bouncer.
Further, handling anything in the collections is also a concern. How does a library safely get materials to and from people?
Parties, clubs, and social gatherings: Social gathering is not addressed or perhaps can't be legally. Some students are going to hangout and socialize. Some will party, and these large gatherings are one way that coronavirus spreads quickly. Colleges seem to be hiding behind the phrase, "We can't control what people do..." But this is incomplete, dishonest, and putting all the responsibility on the individual. Campuses control to a large degree whether students come to the area in the first place. Bringing people together in large numbers is giving tacit approval of convening and socializing. Colleges are cultural activities, and gathering people and then wondering why they are hanging out is abdication of responsibility or at the very least being complicit.
False comparisons: Comparing us to Sweden, France, or South Korea is inappropriate and wrong. These are countries with better healthcare systems, universal healthcare, and in the case of Sweden doing worse on a per capita basis. For countries like South Korea, yes they can try and reopen, because (a) they did their homework, (b) they hammered the curve to the x-axis, and (c) they are more coordinated and organized to do things like wear masks, testing, and prioritize community health. Cherry picking one small part of some other country's strategy is dishonest and bad science. I am all for learning from successful countries, but doing so in scientifically sound ways.
False comparisons: Comparing us to Sweden, France, or South Korea is inappropriate and wrong. These are countries with better healthcare systems, universal healthcare, and in the case of Sweden doing worse on a per capita basis. For countries like South Korea, yes they can try and reopen, because (a) they did their homework, (b) they hammered the curve to the x-axis, and (c) they are more coordinated and organized to do things like wear masks, testing, and prioritize community health. Cherry picking one small part of some other country's strategy is dishonest and bad science. I am all for learning from successful countries, but doing so in scientifically sound ways.
Travel: While some schools are ending the fall term by Thanksgiving to try and surf the second wave, the broader issue is travel. Students travel from their home to residential college and then back, sometimes multiple times a term. Some are daily commuters, and some go back home on the weekends. Increase in travel raises the risk for the communities involved at both endpoints of the travel. Closing campuses before Thanksgiving is only a partial solution. If thousands of students travel, it is going spread the virus somewhere.
Colleges planning to go in person and end instruction by Thanksgiving are making a major acknowledgement. It's easy to not notice, but actually sheds enough light to throw some shade. Ending early is an acknowledgement that travel and in-person college increases risk. While it is an improvement to end by Thanksgiving, institutional values are revealed in this decision. That is, institutional values represented by calculations of acceptable risk and acceptable number of casualties.
The devil, indeed, is in the details.
Colleges planning to go in person and end instruction by Thanksgiving are making a major acknowledgement. It's easy to not notice, but actually sheds enough light to throw some shade. Ending early is an acknowledgement that travel and in-person college increases risk. While it is an improvement to end by Thanksgiving, institutional values are revealed in this decision. That is, institutional values represented by calculations of acceptable risk and acceptable number of casualties.
The devil, indeed, is in the details.
A simple truth: Setting aside labs, arts, clinical classes, etc., if we are dressed in PPE, shielding instructors behind plexiglass, swabbing deep into our noses looking for viruses, and fearing for our safety, then the very thing we are convening for is dead on arrival. That is not a thriving educational environment. Students and faculty can't learn well when they don't feel safe. We're human. We want human experiences, not some twisted, dystopian experience.
Paraphrasing JFK, we go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard. For many institutions apparently, the moon shot is the journey to the moral high ground.
Paraphrasing JFK, we go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard. For many institutions apparently, the moon shot is the journey to the moral high ground.
