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YES. This is one of the most monumentally stupid things I've seen in response to COVID19, stupider than hoarding toilet paper and drinking colloidal silver. I

• smacktoward 7y ago
  Universities are in a difficult position here. You're probably right that someone will sue them for breaking their housing agreement. On the other hand, if they didn't break the housing agreement, and students in the dorms started sickening (or worse, dying), you had better believe the lawsuits would start flying pretty quickly as well. So, if it's not a question of whether you're going to be sued but on what grounds, you want to do whatever thing will leave you in the best position to defend yourself when the inevitable lawsuits start arriving. And given the medical consensus that social distancing is necessary to protect against coronavirus, if I were a university administrator, I'd much rather be defending myself against charges that I broke a contract than against charges that I recklessly endangered peoples' lives in order to not have to break it.
  • d4mi3n 7y ago
    This is a very good point that deserves discussion. That said, this isn't an either-or situation. Universities could easily arrange temporary off-campus housing for students displaced by the crisis.
    • smacktoward 7y ago
      They could, but would such housing be appreciably better at protecting from coronavirus transmission than the dorms? They'd likely be just as densely populated, if not moreso. If the university buys a couple of buildings and moves the residents of five dorms into those buildings, they haven't made things better, they've made them worse. The reason to close the dorms isn't because the dorms themselves are bad in this scenario, it's that packing people closely together is bad in this scenario. The virtue of closing the dorms is that it sends most of the students back home, spreading them out among the general population. Density is the enemy.
      • SamReidHughes 7y ago
        Dorms tend to have shared bathrooms and common areas.
      • d4mi3n 7y ago
        I agree that housing density is an issue. However, universities are likely to be subject to lawsuits in situations where they keep dorms open or shut them down. There must be something that can be done here that's better than those two extremes, event if it isn't perfect. We could: 1. Find alternative housing for some fraction of the students to lower the population density within the dorms--sending 1/3 of students elsewhere reduces population density to ~65% of what it would have been before 2. Retrofit current housing to help minimize spread of disease 3. Allow students to opt-in to remaining at the dorms with agreement to adhere to much stricter health and sanitation standards 4. Allow students to remain with the understanding that they will be quarantined until such a time that they can call be tested None of these are great ideas, I'm sure, but I can't imagine any of them being worse than the current situation we see these students in.
    • neltnerb 7y ago
      Easily? How? 8500 students finding alternative housing literally overnight?
      • d4mi3n 7y ago
        Took a stab at addressing this in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22548989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22548989
  • grawprog 7y ago
    >and students in the dorms started sickening (or worse, dying) Honestly, what percentage of staff and students do you think would be post retirement age? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... AGE DEATH RATE(c)DEATH RATE(a) 80+ 21.9% 14.8% 70-79 - 8.0% 60-69 - 3.6% 50-59 - 1.3% 40-49 - 0.4% 30-39 - 0.2% 20-29 - 0.2% 10-19 - 0.2% 0-9 no fatalities
    • SamReidHughes 7y ago
      So only 16 kids would die, hundreds more suffering permanent scarring to their lungs.
      • Miraste 7y ago
        > hundreds more suffering permanent scarring to their lungs Do you have a source for that?
  • stronglikedan 7y ago
    > if they didn't break the housing agreement, and students in the dorms started sickening (or worse, dying) IANAL, but I would think that would only apply if they were forcing students to stay, not leave.
• strictnein 7y ago
  Fast forward a month from now and imagine that there are 100+ kids at the college infected. Now what? Sending the rest of the kids home would be irresponsible, you're spreading the disease. Students in dorms can't isolate or quarantine.
• mcguire 7y ago
  Stupider than the other COVID 19 threads here, that are calling for a 10% death rate?