7 ms·

Stanford pulls plug on the return of freshmen and sophomores to campus

111 points by beefman 6y ago

sbinthree 6y ago
Kept dorms open during Spanish flu but alas covid is n=1
- whymauri 6y ago
  The flu (and news of the flu) spread much slower than COVID. The decision to keep dorms open was most likely made with limited information. To put this into perspective: many Harvard/MIT students didn't realize there was a deadly flu until they arrived on campus and were told to turn around. [0] Those students then had to alert any other students or travelers they met on their way home to also turn around. This propagation took a few weeks. But lets entertain whether or not this was a good decision(it wasn't): * Impromptu hospitals had to be arranged for at the A.T.O., Delt, Fiji and Theta Chi fraternities within weeks of the flu hitting Palo Alto. [1] * Administration banned social gathering and unwarranted travel. Students were quarantined on campus and could not leave. Masks were compulsory everywhere on campus. Anyone not complying with the masks guidelines received a fine (this is somewhat less harsh than the police beatings in Boston/Cambridge). * By October, it was considered a success that only around ten students died. Meanwhile, not a singular undergraduate from MIT died on campus, and they continued their studies with an accelerated semester the following year. [2][3] -- Notes: [0] I've edited this from "flu" to "deadly flu." Initially, a few colleges (MIT included) opted for delaying the semester a few weeks. This led students to believe the flu was not too serious, resulting in students being caught mid-travels before being told how deadly the flu really was. This led to a lot of confusion and the MIT President apologized sometime that Winter in a letter (and later in The Corporation's yearly report). -- Sources: [1] https://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2018/03/15/100-years-ago-the-spanish-flu-hit-the-stanford-campus/ https://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2018/03/15/100-years-ago-t... [2] https://news.mit.edu/2020/3-questions-archivist-nora-murphy-how-mit-experienced-1918-flu-pandemic-0505 https://news.mit.edu/2020/3-questions-archivist-nora-murphy-... [3] MIT Archives & Distinctive Collections
  - ajross 6y ago
    Wow, nice answer. I genuinely didn't know any of that. This is why I continue to read HN despite the somewhat horrifying partisan turn of a lot of these topics.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    Another notable thing about the Spanish flu vs. today. Back then, they had no alternative. They could not deliver their service -- not even a fraction of it -- without having the campus open. Today this is largely not the case. Remote learning sucks but it is doable for most competent young adults.
- p1necone 6y ago
  How are you covid conspiracy blatherers still active. What do you get out of this?
  - slumpt_ 6y ago
    That they show up on a site of otherwise reasonably intelligent readers (HN) baffles me most.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      I think some elements of the "I'm an engineer, this is numbers, I can do numbers, I can do this"-itis seems to flair up quite a lot on HN in particular because it self-selects a certain type of person. I do like it here but it really makes me laugh sometimes.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    They're just virtue signalling.
  - malchow 6y ago
    The CFR of COVID is less than 0.5%, and in the opinion of many wouldn't be worth the destructive shut-downs even if those shut-downs had the effect of preventing COVID deaths.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > The CFR of COVID is less than 0.5 The CFR of COVID—and everything else that might be require ICU care—goes way up when hospitals are overwhelmed because the infection rate isn't controlled. CFR isn't a constant.
      - covidthrow2 6y ago
        How is 300,000 new cases per day controlled? That seems very out of control and the CFR is still less than 0.5
epoch_100 6y ago
Stanford frosh (freshman) here. What's disappointing about this is not _that_ they cancelled — most of my friends agree that it's the prudent thing to do — but that they waited so long to cancel. For context, classes start tomorrow [0]. One of my friends literally got the news about the cancellation when he landed in SFO yesterday. Just a few weeks ago, they sent us an email reaffirming their plan to bring us back, yet COVID cases in California have remained relatively flat since then. It's unclear what specifically made them pull the plug. Maybe it was the 43 students testing positive. Maybe it was the rising cases in Santa Clara County. But nine months into the pandemic, it’s hard to see these as surprises. Personally, I wish they did it two or three weeks ago. Or even a week ago. Or even last week. Just not the Saturday night before classes start. (We got this news yesterday.) The writing was on the wall the entire time — they could have saved everyone (including themselves) a lot of time and effort by just being realistic. Oh well. Surely there are sides to this I'm not seeing. [0] Classes do start tomorrow (Jan 11), but most students would move in around Jan 22. A small subset of students (RAs, international students, etc.) have been moving in over the past few days, and they won't be asked to leave.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  One factor they might have been considering: it does seem like these covid spikes reach a point, and then calm down. They might have hoped the top of the peak would have come earlier, and they might have been able to announce that it were safe to return. For example, if Cali had peaked a week ago, by the time y'all were set to move in, it would have been relatively safe.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    It's all about the Benjamins. If they gave students enough forewarning they could pursue other options.
    - gnicholas 6y ago
      You're right that such short notice puts students in a tough spot. They can apparently still request pro-rated refunds, [1] but at this point they have signed up for classes and are (or were) excited to start. 1: https://registrar.stanford.edu/tuition-refund-schedule https://registrar.stanford.edu/tuition-refund-schedule
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
supernova87a 6y ago
I found this story pretty interesting -- on how it's largely the willingness and compliance of the students that sets whether you can keep classes going or not: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/world/asia/singapore-coronavirus-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/world/asia/singapore-coro...
setgree 6y ago
Semi on-topic: This site really wants to track me. It doesn't let me read with an AdBlocker, but also doesn't let me read incognito, which was my solution to the first problem. Creepy!
- buzzert 6y ago
  Works great with JavaScript disabled.
offtop5 6y ago
This is pretty sad, the four years of college easily will be the easiest years of socialization and dating a young person will ever have. To have at a minimum two of these years taken from you, is to lose something you'll never get back.
- asdff 6y ago
  If I were in undergrad right now I would have probably just taken a leave of absence until campus is back open rather than pay full tuition for zoom class.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    In a cohort with 1.25-1.5x the normal class size? They're both bad options; I'm not sure what I would have done.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    A lot of schools weren’t allowing deferred enrollment for freshmen or transfers this year. If you’re part of the group that has to pay full tuition, the math gets hard but what would you do for that year? Just play video games for a year at your parents home? That’s essentially what you’d be signing up for most students. I guess you have to ask how long are you willing to put your life on hold. My partner decided to do her schooling online even though she knew it would be one of the worst things ever for her.
- jxramos 6y ago
  A lot of my dating age friends looking for relationships to blossom into marriages are really frustrated right now with the state of affairs. I'm beyond those years but I can appreciate their frustrations with the halting of their searches.
  - gregoriol 6y ago
    There will likely be less kids born in the next 6-18 months.
toomanyrichies 6y ago
Out of curiosity and for the sake of comparison- to what extent did other campuses handle the situation similarly or differently? I'm especially curious about Berkeley since they're also a top-tier program in a similar region, but those with insight into any other California campus would also be interesting to hear from.
- zamfi 6y ago
  From https://registrar.berkeley.edu/service-adjustments/instruction-faq https://registrar.berkeley.edu/service-adjustments/instructi... — > Will students be required to take in-person classes or be present on campus? Students will NOT be required to take in-person classes or be present on campus for the spring semester. Almost all academic offerings, including those with in-person instructional activities, will also be delivered remotely. Courses that will be offered in-person if public health conditions allow will have remote alternatives so that students can continue to make academic progress.
- asdff 6y ago
  USC has been online since March and is online for spring 2021. There are a limited number of people living on campus and testing is required after arrival, and the USC hotel has been converted into a quarantine facility; where people in isolation would be delivered meals. Employees and students are told to take a covid test at least once a week, and since this test is processed by USC themselves turnaround is within 24hrs. USC has received doses of the vaccine already and is vaccinating groups in 1A within their medical community. 1B will include essential employees with on site business and those older than >75 within the university community, and this will begin as soon as the county health authority authorizes it.
tzs 6y ago
For some schools it might be possible to have full in-person classes safely. I think Caltech could do it, and maybe MIT. Maybe Harvey Mudd, too. Oh, and probably the US military academies. Here's how I imagine it could work at Caltech. 1. For undergraduates, give everyone a rapid response COVID test when they arrive. Anyone who fails is quarantined until they are no longer infectious. 2. Once an undergraduate is cleared to move in, they must not leave campus for the rest of the term. This should be fairly easy. When I was there, most people only had to leave on weekend, because food was only served as part of your room & board contract during weekdays. That could be extended to cover weekends during COVID. Most other things that we used to leave campus for back then are now readily obtain online for delivery. It is #2 that I think would be problematic at many schools. I recall that earlier in the pandemic some told students to not leave campus but they were not obeyed. At Caltech, every undergraduate could understand the science and the mathematical models behind the policy, and see that it is correct. Also, violating the policy after you agreed to it would probably be seen as an honor code violation, which the students take very seriously. Same for MIT and Harvey Mudd on the science aspect, although I'm not quite sure about MIT. MIT does offer undergraduate degrees in quite a few fields that aren't STEM, such as music, theater arts, global studies and languages, and several others, and I'm not sure how much STEM people in those majors have to take. (Caltech has non-STEM degrees too, such as English, but they still have to take the same calculus, physics, and chemistry that STEM majors have to take--when I was there that was two years of calculus and two years of physics and I think a year of chemistry, although I believe now it is just one year of calculus because nowadays almost everyone has had high school calculus). For the military academies I assume the students would stay in line because they could be ordered to, and obeying orders is a big deal at those places. 3. OK, we've got a COVID free collection of undergraduates. But to have in-person classes we need someone to teach them. Professors don't usually live on campus, so the "once verified as clean never leave" approach won't work for them. This could probably be handled by having professors on days they are teaching take a rapid response test in the morning, early enough to have results before their first class. 4. For graduate students that live on campus and are not married (or are married but their spouse is also a graduate student at the same school), a similar approach to that for undergraduates could work. These graduate students could also handle much of the teaching of undergraduate classes, reducing the need for professors to come in. 5. For researchers not involved in teaching, and other staff, you could probably arrange so that they and the students (undergraduates plus whatever graduate students are serving as teachers) do not come in contact. 6. Reorganize classes as far so they are done Hogwarts style. Have separate classes for students living in Ricketts House, Dabney House, Blacker House, and so on. Couple this with regular testing. The idea is that if someone in one house does get COVID, you find it with the rapid testing, and you can quarantine that house. Since they only have classes with members in their own house, there is a good chance this will catch it before they have spread it to the other houses. However, just because it might be doable doesn't necessarily mean it is worthwhile. It would take a lot of planning and a lot of schedule manipulation and choreographing movements around campus to make it so if someone does get it, it is found out before they had spread it beyond a well defined sub-population that is easily quarantined. That might require too much control, except maybe at the military academies.
meekmockmook 6y ago
I think every college student should be entitled to a year of free partying by endowment funds to make up for this.
jl2718 6y ago
My reading of the campus environment prior to March was that, aside from any pandemic concern, Stanford was not prepared for the heightened level of student and community activism on campus coming into 2020, and the transformation of the formerly bucolic evergreen village into a high-rise arcology, was probably making a lot of people nervous.
jxramos 6y ago
Would it be a really cost prohibitive thing to begin to mass produce PPE of the highest grade, like the stuff healthcare workers use who are treating covid cases in the ICU with? It'll look totally zany but going into class wearing a bunny/hazmat suit with positive pressure filtered air and the whole shebang could be worth it for those willing to go out on a limb? What about just forming local communes where everyone stays on the compound and mutually agrees to have some up front testing and quarantine and then when you pass the bar can move freely in the commune. Are either of those feasible?
StanislavPetrov 6y ago
Its highway robbery for universities to charge the same tuition for "remote learning" that they do for in-person schooling. The dozen or so hours of academic instruction is only a fraction of the college experience that one pays for. Socialization, library access, gym access, athletics, dining services, student clubs and a whole other host of services and facilities that are denied to students during "remote learning" represent substantial value that students are paying for but no longer receiving. This is even more egregious when many students are going deeply into debt in order to pay their tuition.

111 points by beefman 6y ago

sbinthree 6y ago

Kept dorms open during Spanish flu but alas covid is n=1

whymauri 6y ago
The flu (and news of the flu) spread much slower than COVID. The decision to keep dorms open was most likely made with limited information. To put this into perspective: many Harvard/MIT students didn't realize there was a deadly flu until they arrived on campus and were told to turn around. [0] Those students then had to alert any other students or travelers they met on their way home to also turn around. This propagation took a few weeks. But lets entertain whether or not this was a good decision(it wasn't): * Impromptu hospitals had to be arranged for at the A.T.O., Delt, Fiji and Theta Chi fraternities within weeks of the flu hitting Palo Alto. [1] * Administration banned social gathering and unwarranted travel. Students were quarantined on campus and could not leave. Masks were compulsory everywhere on campus. Anyone not complying with the masks guidelines received a fine (this is somewhat less harsh than the police beatings in Boston/Cambridge). * By October, it was considered a success that only around ten students died. Meanwhile, not a singular undergraduate from MIT died on campus, and they continued their studies with an accelerated semester the following year. [2][3] -- Notes: [0] I've edited this from "flu" to "deadly flu." Initially, a few colleges (MIT included) opted for delaying the semester a few weeks. This led students to believe the flu was not too serious, resulting in students being caught mid-travels before being told how deadly the flu really was. This led to a lot of confusion and the MIT President apologized sometime that Winter in a letter (and later in The Corporation's yearly report). -- Sources: [1] https://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2018/03/15/100-years-ago-the-spanish-flu-hit-the-stanford-campus/ https://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2018/03/15/100-years-ago-t... [2] https://news.mit.edu/2020/3-questions-archivist-nora-murphy-how-mit-experienced-1918-flu-pandemic-0505 https://news.mit.edu/2020/3-questions-archivist-nora-murphy-... [3] MIT Archives & Distinctive Collections
- ajross 6y ago
  Wow, nice answer. I genuinely didn't know any of that. This is why I continue to read HN despite the somewhat horrifying partisan turn of a lot of these topics.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  Another notable thing about the Spanish flu vs. today. Back then, they had no alternative. They could not deliver their service -- not even a fraction of it -- without having the campus open. Today this is largely not the case. Remote learning sucks but it is doable for most competent young adults.
p1necone 6y ago
How are you covid conspiracy blatherers still active. What do you get out of this?
- slumpt_ 6y ago
  That they show up on a site of otherwise reasonably intelligent readers (HN) baffles me most.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    I think some elements of the "I'm an engineer, this is numbers, I can do numbers, I can do this"-itis seems to flair up quite a lot on HN in particular because it self-selects a certain type of person. I do like it here but it really makes me laugh sometimes.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  They're just virtue signalling.
- malchow 6y ago
  The CFR of COVID is less than 0.5%, and in the opinion of many wouldn't be worth the destructive shut-downs even if those shut-downs had the effect of preventing COVID deaths.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The CFR of COVID is less than 0.5 The CFR of COVID—and everything else that might be require ICU care—goes way up when hospitals are overwhelmed because the infection rate isn't controlled. CFR isn't a constant.
    - covidthrow2 6y ago
      How is 300,000 new cases per day controlled? That seems very out of control and the CFR is still less than 0.5

epoch_100 6y ago

Stanford frosh (freshman) here. What's disappointing about this is not _that_ they cancelled — most of my friends agree that it's the prudent thing to do — but that they waited so long to cancel. For context, classes start tomorrow [0]. One of my friends literally got the news about the cancellation when he landed in SFO yesterday. Just a few weeks ago, they sent us an email reaffirming their plan to bring us back, yet COVID cases in California have remained relatively flat since then. It's unclear what specifically made them pull the plug. Maybe it was the 43 students testing positive. Maybe it was the rising cases in Santa Clara County. But nine months into the pandemic, it’s hard to see these as surprises. Personally, I wish they did it two or three weeks ago. Or even a week ago. Or even last week. Just not the Saturday night before classes start. (We got this news yesterday.) The writing was on the wall the entire time — they could have saved everyone (including themselves) a lot of time and effort by just being realistic. Oh well. Surely there are sides to this I'm not seeing. [0] Classes do start tomorrow (Jan 11), but most students would move in around Jan 22. A small subset of students (RAs, international students, etc.) have been moving in over the past few days, and they won't be asked to leave.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
One factor they might have been considering: it does seem like these covid spikes reach a point, and then calm down. They might have hoped the top of the peak would have come earlier, and they might have been able to announce that it were safe to return. For example, if Cali had peaked a week ago, by the time y'all were set to move in, it would have been relatively safe.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  It's all about the Benjamins. If they gave students enough forewarning they could pursue other options.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    You're right that such short notice puts students in a tough spot. They can apparently still request pro-rated refunds, [1] but at this point they have signed up for classes and are (or were) excited to start. 1: https://registrar.stanford.edu/tuition-refund-schedule https://registrar.stanford.edu/tuition-refund-schedule

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

supernova87a 6y ago

I found this story pretty interesting -- on how it's largely the willingness and compliance of the students that sets whether you can keep classes going or not: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/world/asia/singapore-coronavirus-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/world/asia/singapore-coro...

setgree 6y ago

Semi on-topic: This site really wants to track me. It doesn't let me read with an AdBlocker, but also doesn't let me read incognito, which was my solution to the first problem. Creepy!

buzzert 6y ago
Works great with JavaScript disabled.

offtop5 6y ago

This is pretty sad, the four years of college easily will be the easiest years of socialization and dating a young person will ever have. To have at a minimum two of these years taken from you, is to lose something you'll never get back.

asdff 6y ago
If I were in undergrad right now I would have probably just taken a leave of absence until campus is back open rather than pay full tuition for zoom class.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  In a cohort with 1.25-1.5x the normal class size? They're both bad options; I'm not sure what I would have done.
- bradlys 6y ago
  A lot of schools weren’t allowing deferred enrollment for freshmen or transfers this year. If you’re part of the group that has to pay full tuition, the math gets hard but what would you do for that year? Just play video games for a year at your parents home? That’s essentially what you’d be signing up for most students. I guess you have to ask how long are you willing to put your life on hold. My partner decided to do her schooling online even though she knew it would be one of the worst things ever for her.
jxramos 6y ago
A lot of my dating age friends looking for relationships to blossom into marriages are really frustrated right now with the state of affairs. I'm beyond those years but I can appreciate their frustrations with the halting of their searches.
- gregoriol 6y ago
  There will likely be less kids born in the next 6-18 months.

toomanyrichies 6y ago

Out of curiosity and for the sake of comparison- to what extent did other campuses handle the situation similarly or differently? I'm especially curious about Berkeley since they're also a top-tier program in a similar region, but those with insight into any other California campus would also be interesting to hear from.

zamfi 6y ago
From https://registrar.berkeley.edu/service-adjustments/instruction-faq https://registrar.berkeley.edu/service-adjustments/instructi... — > Will students be required to take in-person classes or be present on campus? Students will NOT be required to take in-person classes or be present on campus for the spring semester. Almost all academic offerings, including those with in-person instructional activities, will also be delivered remotely. Courses that will be offered in-person if public health conditions allow will have remote alternatives so that students can continue to make academic progress.
asdff 6y ago
USC has been online since March and is online for spring 2021. There are a limited number of people living on campus and testing is required after arrival, and the USC hotel has been converted into a quarantine facility; where people in isolation would be delivered meals. Employees and students are told to take a covid test at least once a week, and since this test is processed by USC themselves turnaround is within 24hrs. USC has received doses of the vaccine already and is vaccinating groups in 1A within their medical community. 1B will include essential employees with on site business and those older than >75 within the university community, and this will begin as soon as the county health authority authorizes it.

tzs 6y ago

For some schools it might be possible to have full in-person classes safely. I think Caltech could do it, and maybe MIT. Maybe Harvey Mudd, too. Oh, and probably the US military academies. Here's how I imagine it could work at Caltech. 1. For undergraduates, give everyone a rapid response COVID test when they arrive. Anyone who fails is quarantined until they are no longer infectious. 2. Once an undergraduate is cleared to move in, they must not leave campus for the rest of the term. This should be fairly easy. When I was there, most people only had to leave on weekend, because food was only served as part of your room & board contract during weekdays. That could be extended to cover weekends during COVID. Most other things that we used to leave campus for back then are now readily obtain online for delivery. It is #2 that I think would be problematic at many schools. I recall that earlier in the pandemic some told students to not leave campus but they were not obeyed. At Caltech, every undergraduate could understand the science and the mathematical models behind the policy, and see that it is correct. Also, violating the policy after you agreed to it would probably be seen as an honor code violation, which the students take very seriously. Same for MIT and Harvey Mudd on the science aspect, although I'm not quite sure about MIT. MIT does offer undergraduate degrees in quite a few fields that aren't STEM, such as music, theater arts, global studies and languages, and several others, and I'm not sure how much STEM people in those majors have to take. (Caltech has non-STEM degrees too, such as English, but they still have to take the same calculus, physics, and chemistry that STEM majors have to take--when I was there that was two years of calculus and two years of physics and I think a year of chemistry, although I believe now it is just one year of calculus because nowadays almost everyone has had high school calculus). For the military academies I assume the students would stay in line because they could be ordered to, and obeying orders is a big deal at those places. 3. OK, we've got a COVID free collection of undergraduates. But to have in-person classes we need someone to teach them. Professors don't usually live on campus, so the "once verified as clean never leave" approach won't work for them. This could probably be handled by having professors on days they are teaching take a rapid response test in the morning, early enough to have results before their first class. 4. For graduate students that live on campus and are not married (or are married but their spouse is also a graduate student at the same school), a similar approach to that for undergraduates could work. These graduate students could also handle much of the teaching of undergraduate classes, reducing the need for professors to come in. 5. For researchers not involved in teaching, and other staff, you could probably arrange so that they and the students (undergraduates plus whatever graduate students are serving as teachers) do not come in contact. 6. Reorganize classes as far so they are done Hogwarts style. Have separate classes for students living in Ricketts House, Dabney House, Blacker House, and so on. Couple this with regular testing. The idea is that if someone in one house does get COVID, you find it with the rapid testing, and you can quarantine that house. Since they only have classes with members in their own house, there is a good chance this will catch it before they have spread it to the other houses. However, just because it might be doable doesn't necessarily mean it is worthwhile. It would take a lot of planning and a lot of schedule manipulation and choreographing movements around campus to make it so if someone does get it, it is found out before they had spread it beyond a well defined sub-population that is easily quarantined. That might require too much control, except maybe at the military academies.

meekmockmook 6y ago

I think every college student should be entitled to a year of free partying by endowment funds to make up for this.

jl2718 6y ago

My reading of the campus environment prior to March was that, aside from any pandemic concern, Stanford was not prepared for the heightened level of student and community activism on campus coming into 2020, and the transformation of the formerly bucolic evergreen village into a high-rise arcology, was probably making a lot of people nervous.

jxramos 6y ago

Would it be a really cost prohibitive thing to begin to mass produce PPE of the highest grade, like the stuff healthcare workers use who are treating covid cases in the ICU with? It'll look totally zany but going into class wearing a bunny/hazmat suit with positive pressure filtered air and the whole shebang could be worth it for those willing to go out on a limb? What about just forming local communes where everyone stays on the compound and mutually agrees to have some up front testing and quarantine and then when you pass the bar can move freely in the commune. Are either of those feasible?

StanislavPetrov 6y ago

Its highway robbery for universities to charge the same tuition for "remote learning" that they do for in-person schooling. The dozen or so hours of academic instruction is only a fraction of the college experience that one pays for. Socialization, library access, gym access, athletics, dining services, student clubs and a whole other host of services and facilities that are denied to students during "remote learning" represent substantial value that students are paying for but no longer receiving. This is even more egregious when many students are going deeply into debt in order to pay their tuition.