Schools This Fall

As someone at an academic institution, I am really disappointed with the way schools are planning for the fall semester. Specifically colleges and universities, although I know that high schools aren't exactly doing super either. 

I thought that due to parental complaints schools would go online as much as possible and keep the students at home. Unfortunately I was incredibly wrong. Schools have decided to protect their own interests and let students back on campus and into crowded dorms, just so that they can make money. All of that room and board isn't cheap after all.

To top it off, schools have minimal plans for keeping the students safe. The most that I have seen is that masks are required and that students must self-quarantine for two weeks prior to returning to campus. Masks are good, rest is entirely suspect and definitely not enough to keep anyone from getting COVID. There is no way to make sure that students are actually self-quarantining before arriving on campus. And then once students are on campus, they can leave whenever they want and go to restaurants and bars and pick up COVID there. 

Not to mention that there is no way to prevent an outbreak in a dorm. Bathrooms are shared, bedrooms are shared, and there is a very high population density there. Anyone who has been in a dorm knows that colds and viruses spread around seasonally, there is no way to keep social distancing in that environment. All it takes is one person making a questionable decision and giving the coronavirus to the entire dorm population.

What this is doing is setting up the schools to blame the students when things inevitably go wrong and there's an outbreak on campus. Schools are demanding that students step up and ensure their own and everyone else's safety. It is not that they are immature and incapable of doing that, it is the lack of a safety net. Any group of individuals in that situation is bound to fail. We are seeing professional sports athletes fail at this in their bubbles, a group of young adults does not stand a chance.

This blatant protection of a school's own interests at the expense of its students' safety is honestly incredibly gross. It makes me ashamed to be a part of this school since, even though as a grad student I do not pay for tuition, just be being here is me lending them my support. And it isn't going to change unless there is an uproar from students or their parents, or the more likely situation, until there is the inevitable outbreak in a dorm that lands students and teachers in the hospital.