I am so angry and disgusted with what American colleges have been doing regarding Covid.
Well, I shouldn't lump all of them together. Some schools seem to be doing right by their students, staff, families, and the wider communities. But others have used Covid to put their greed and incompetency on full display.
Really. Universities SHOULD be being transparent in terms of their Covid response and case numbers. Instead they're being horribly transparent about how shitty they are.
Anyway...to help me deal with all this anger that's swirling around in me, I'm going to make a list of things I feel colleges should have done in the near past and should be doing now.
1. As many classes as possible should have been online.
2. Residence halls should have been open for students desperately needing a place to stay. They should have had to write to the schools to explain their situation. THEY should have been the special exception rather than making students, preferring to stay away from campus dorms during a pandemic, the exception.
3. The number of students needing housing should have been reduced to the point that all students could have a private room. And the price of these rooms should have been reduced to double/triple room prices for students struggling financially.
4. Schools should NOT have required Freshmen to live on campus. How greedy and desperate do you have to be to make students live in a crowded dorm with roommates? It's quite strange that schools are so strict on not letting students come to college if they're lacking a meningitis vaccine, but the same schools will require students to come to school even though these students lack a Covid 19 vaccine.
5. If schools wanted to be more welcoming than what I mentioned in #2, then they should have at most made it a choice. They could say, you may take in-person classes and live on campus or you can live off campus and take online classes.
And no. It does not count as a choice if your school requires you to write to administration for an exception that may or may not be granted.
Asking permission for an exception does not equal having a choice. Because almost everything in life has the possibility of exceptions...if you're willing to beg for it, and you have an excuse that those-in-power deem as sympathetic.
6. Schools should show some damn consistency. If you feel it's safe enough to require Freshman to live on campus, then it should be safe enough for students to be able to hold in-person club meetings. Administration can leave the safety of their homes or offices and police these meetings to ensure good mask-wearing and social distancing practices.
If a school feels it's safe enough to hold Football games, they certainly can find a way to hold a graduation ceremony. Have it outdoors. Masks. Immediate family only. Chairs spaced apart.
Onto Isolation and quarantine rooms....
I've heard dreadful stories about this from various colleges. They're so awful that they've inspired me to write a horror screenplay about college Covid isolation.
Before the school year even began, I started questioning things. For the most part, my questions were ignored.
But I was wondering...
How are students....who MIGHT be feeling like shit....
How are they going to pack up all that they need for two weeks?
Will they be supplied with towels, pillows, linen, etc? Or will they have to bring their own? If they have to bring their own, who is going to help them carry it all?
I was told that they'd have to bring their own stuff. I never got an answer on who would help them carry it all.
The other question I had is whether anyone will be checking up on these students? Will they get medical attention?
Yeah. I know. It's extremely rare for young adults to die of Covid. But there are times where a young adult might get horribly sick...and at the very least, they need some TLC. Or at least they need a medical professional to check up on them. And some of them do get sick enough that they might need hospitalization.
Anyway....so with all that in mind.
7. Isolation rooms should all be equipped with what one might find in a typical hotel room. Students should be provided with hand soap, towels, pillows, basic shower toiletries, Kleenex, and bed linen. This way they only need to pack up their clothes, medicines, school supplies, and electronics.
8. If possible, sick Covid-positive students should be placed together in a large room/ward rather than isolated in individual rooms. There should be nurses looking out for them. I personally prefer this image to a very sick student alone in their room.
Yes. Covid-possible students definitely need to be quarantined...alone. Because you don't want an yes-it's-Covid student hanging out with a no-it's-actually-not-Covid student.
But if a student is known to have Covid, why should they be isolated from other Covid students?
Heck, I'd be telling the students...Hey, this is your time to relax all the rules. Take off your masks! Hug each other! Kiss each other! Hold hands and play Ring-around-the-Rosie.
9. I want to return to the hand soap thing. It seems that schools were so unprepared for isolation and quarantine, they didn't stop to consider that students wouldn't have hand soap handy (ha) to take with them to isolation. Because you know....most students are sharing a bathroom. They don't have their own hand soap.
Now maybe there's something I don't know? Maybe students were asked to bring hand soap and have it handy in case they went into isolation?
I'm doubting it, though. I think it's much more likely that those-in-charge didn't think ahead.
And the students probably assumed that if you pay thousands of dollars in tuition plus room and board, the schools would care enough and be smart enough to consider issues like hand soap.
10. Since many/some schools require students to buy into expensive meal plans, these meal plans should include the delivery of delicious, healthy, and safe meals and snacks to isolation rooms. The food should also fit into all dietary needs whether those needs are dictated by medical needs, ethical decisions, or religious rules.
And now onto testing.
11. All testing should be free.
Or well....
I guess you could have hypochondriacs or students who LIKE things stuck up way high up in their nose. So to be fair....how about the first three tests are free. Then if a student wants testing after that, they pay a small fee of 10-15 dollars.
This is in contrast to schools who charge 30 dollars for sick students to be tested plus an office fee. When schools do things like this, it's hard not to imagine that they are trying to DISCOURAGE sick students from being tested.
12. There should be a lot of testing of asymptomatic students. If there aren't enough students interested in taking the test, incentives would probably help. How about any student who gets tested is entered into a daily raffle?
13. This is a hard thing to balance. But schools need to be strict about social distancing and at the same time not punitive.
If students are punished for breaking social distancing rules. And if these punishments are harsh shame-inducing, then it's less likely that students will want to cooperate with contact tracers.
My feeling, though, is that if students have more supervised social-distanced activities, then maybe there will be less secret parties and secret dorm room get-togethers.
14. Schools should be very transparent about their Covid cases. They should have a dashboard that's updated frequently. Once a week is fine, but daily is preferable.
The dashboards should include:
A) New cases.
B) Total cases since the school year began.
C) Number of tests given/positivity rate
D) Isolation and Quarantine room occupancy rates.
Oh! Let me just mention....
When I started asking questions about where students would be quarantined/isolated, how many rooms were available, whether there'd be medical assistance provided, etc....we were reminded that students could go home and isolate.
Okay. Even though it's better for community health NOT to allow students to go home if they have or might have Covid....I would feel very uneasy if there was a forced separation between students and family.
But for Fuck's sake. Schools should not act like they actually encourage or hope that students go home with Covid. And that is definitely the vibe I was getting.
These schools really care only about getting their checks and staying in business. They don't give a crap about their students or the community. Covid has made that abundantly clear to me.
There was something else I wanted to mention.
I wish there wasn't.
I wish I didn't have any more complaints.
But I feel there is another big thing. And I can't remember what it is.....
15. Okay. I remember.
In order to keep the dashboards honest, all sick, isolated students need to either be tested. Or the dashboard needs to have a separate section for assumed-positive students.
Colleges should not try to suppress their case numbers by discouraging testing of sick students.
How do you discourage sick students from getting tested?
Well, first, as I mention before, you charge students for getting a test. And you also require them to have and pay for an office visit.
Then you also make a rule that students with typical Covid symptoms and students who've had contact with Covid positive people will have to go into quarantine even if their test is negative. This will make it sound like you're being extra careful...you know false negatives and all that. And yeah. It's good to be extra careful about the false negatives. But this is also a really good way of discouraging students from getting tested. Who wants to pay all that money or endure an uncomfortable test if they're going to have to go into quarantine anyway?
If honest and decent schools are going to require students to quarantine no matter what their test result, these students should be added to the dashboard. The symptomatic-non-tested students should be added immediately to the dashboard. The contact-students should be watched, and if they develop symptoms, they should also be added.
16. Colleges should have a dedicated Covid staff. These staff members should be named and their email addresses and phone numbers should be available to the public, students, and family members. The staff should include a person in charge of testing, a person in charge of isolation and quarantine, and a person in charge of the dashboard and other transparency issues.
Anyway, that's it for now.
If I think of more things in the future, I shall add them.