As colleges make plans to bring students back to campus, one common strategy is emerging: Forgoing fall break and getting students home before Thanksgiving.
The University of Notre Dame, which on Monday announced a detailed plan for bringing back students, is among the colleges that have said they will find ways to shorten the fall semester, in an attempt to avoid a “second wave” of coronavirus infections expected to emerge in late fall.
Other campuses pursuing similar strategies include the University of South Carolina, Rice and Creighton. Built into their calculations, university officials say, are epidemiological assumptions that reducing travel will help students avoid contracting and spreading the virus, and that any easing of the pandemic this summer will end with the return of flu season.
“We don’t know if the second wave will be weaker or stronger, but there’s a significant risk that this will resurge in the winter,” Rice’s president, David W. Leebron, said.
Whenever students are back on campus, things will look different. A special committee at the University of Kentucky recently discussed their vision of a fall semester unlike any other: There may be fever checkpoints at the entrances to academic buildings, one-way paths across the grassy quad and face mask requirements in classrooms.
Reference: New York Times
