UPDATED: COVID-19 is Breaking 2020
This week’s A View Off a Ledge concentrates mostly on the biggest story in the world—perhaps the biggest story of the century: Coronavirus, aka COVID-19.
Updates:
Since this edition was published at 9am this morning lots of things have happened. In this section, we’ll be concentrating on Boston College updates that have emerged. The transition to the original newsletter is below, untouched, and will be noted with a new headline above it.
Around 7pm this evening, I reported that BC had cancelled all its study abroad programs. The university’s Office of International Programs (OIP) and its director Nick Gozik sent an email to all students still abroad today detailing the reasoning behind the school’s decision.
Those reasons included potential difficulties students face regarding returning to the United States in the wake of the travel ban U.S. President Donald Trump instituted last night. Though Gozik noted at the time the public was still waiting on certain clarifications, the both the immediate and potential issues facing students abroad meant that it wasn’t advisable to keep students overseas.
In addition, Gozik noted the CDC has issued a Global Level 3 Health Advisory, meaning that travel to any country was no longer advised and considered high risk. Throughout the last few months as the coronavirus outbreak has continued to evolve, universities across the nation, including BC, have cancelled abroad programs in any country that was categorized as a Level 3 health risk—until today, those countries were China, Italy, South Korea, and Iran. When that changed today, that factored into OIP’s ultimate decision.
OIP’s goal is to have all students abroad moved out of their international accommodations by Friday March 20—a week from tomorrow. Gozik closed the email by saying OIP understood some students would be disappointed with the decision, and that the entire office felt for those affected and joined in their disappointment that the health crisis abroad has deteriorated to the point that action needed to be taken.
Later this evening, I shared the highlights of the frequently asked questions that BC Executive Vice President Michael Lochhead released via email around 8:35pm. I’m not 100 percent sure about this, but I think this link will show the entire email.
They included that students will receive prorated refunds of room and board charges, with additional details due out in the immediate future. Students are also to receive refunds for unused meal plan money, but won’t receive any sort of tuition refund.
Students will receive full academic credit for classes conducted online, and Lochhead said that the university is prepared to offer online instruction.
Lochhead reiterated some things that have already been reported, such as that Commencement has not been cancelled yet, study abroad was cancelled, the new dining hall hours through Sunday night, and that the federal government has eased restrictions related to visas and federal financial aid regarding online instruction.
One notable detail is that BC has brought in 125 professional movers who will assist the move-out process free of charge. University garages are remaining open and free of charge until the Sunday move-out deadline has passed.
Lochhead also said that both short- and long-term exceptions to the move-out deadline will be considered by the university’s residential life office. Decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis. Short-term decisions are targeted for international students restricted by international flight schedules.
Housing selection decisions have been delayed by at least a week. Residential directors will remain on campus, while residential assistants have been given the option to remain on campus or depart past the deadline.
Book rentals can be done via mail at the end of the semester. Lab work alternatives will be communicated by professors to individual students and classes. Nursing students doing clinical work are receiving “accommodations,” according to Lochhead.
BC libraries will remain open with more limited hours through Sunday—they’ll close at 5pm. Hours beyond the move-out deadline have not yet been determined.
As more details emerge, this edition of the newsletter will be updated.
Original March 12 Edition of A View Off a Ledge
In today’s edition of A View Off a Ledge: How COVID-19 is rocking the foundations of higher education, particularly Massachusetts-based institutions, and how different colleges have handled the situation in completely varying ways in the last week.
We’ll also do some headlines/links on the reeling economy and the not-much-better-off sports world. I will make a note here: For coverage of the virus as a medical phenomenon, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ve been able to find insights on specific issues, but the ramifications of the virus and its properties are, frankly, best left to reporters who know more doctors than I do.
That absolutely does not mean there isn’t a lot of ground we’re going to cover today, so let’s get started*:
School’s Basically Out—So How’d We Get Here, And Where Are We Going?
If I had told people that almost every major university in Massachusetts (and there are a lot of them) would turn into an online institution by mid-March, 2020, I can almost guarantee people would have sent me to an insane asylum. Yet here we are, and various university administrators took many different roads to get here that require examination. More importantly, the road forward requires just as much consideration.
American colleges are fighting the battle against COVID-19 on a few notable fronts: crowds generated by classes, making a decision on students living in close quarters during what was an outbreak and is now a pandemic, whether to shut down study abroad programs, and whether to play sports events behind closed doors.
For the most part, Massachusetts colleges did not make any decisions regarding whether these aspects of college life were a threat to student, faculty, and staff health until this past Tuesday when Harvard kicked the morning off by shutting campus down, taking classes online, and telling students they had five days to move out.
The move was shocking on a number of levels, but to close observers what may have been most surprising is the severity of the move: Students needed approval to stay on campus despite a potential variety of reasons students may need to remain in dorms for the remainder of the semester. Boston University and Northeastern were two schools that were particularly transparent about their COVID-19 outbreak contingency plans, and both schools indicated that they intended to use remote classes as a solution if the virus’ hold on the country’s health continued to tighten. A notable aspect of their prospective plans was that they wouldn’t kick students off campus—when Harvard told students to pack it up and head home with little heads up to its student populace on Tuesday, it came as a mighty surprise to both close observers and those checking in from afar.
That’s not to criticize Harvard—the university was dealing with more info than the public, and The Crimson reported two Harvard affiliates were being tested for coronavirus just a day after they asked everyone to head home, making a full and immediate campus clear-out much more understandable. Yet, as a place finger to keyboard this morning, The Crimson’s website is currently headlined by stories regarding the move-out “scramble,” including a petition from “disgruntled parents” dissatisfied with the decision to send students home.
There’s also coverage of the difficulties low-income and first-generation students are facing due to the sudden decision—a common refrain at seemingly every university that’s made a similar decision over the last 48 hours. Even national organizations are covering how individual Harvard staffers are trying to help those disadvantaged by the decision.
Amherst College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, the UMass system, Brandeis University, and Boston College are among the list of Massachusetts schools that followed in Harvard’s footsteps on the issue of a required move-out date, with students given the option to request approval for remaining on campus.
Emerson College, BU, and Northeastern were the notables that are recommending students move out but noting that all operations—libraries, dining halls, etc.—are going to remain open for the foreseeable future.
It appears that such operations are going to remain ongoing at schools with a required move-out date as well, though hours will certainly be limited. BC has already released an updated dining hall schedule from today through Sunday—the university’s chosen move-out deadline.
But a mini-firestorm broke out last night when a BC student reporter said the BC administration wouldn’t guarantee exemptions to remain in dorms to LGBTQ+ students “barred from returning home” based on a comment from University Spokesman and Vice President of University Communications Jack Dunn. That’s not exactly what Dunn said—he said he couldn’t answer the question and noted that the amount of exemptions will be “extremely limited”—but the tweet created plenty of angst online among the local and wider LGBTQ+ community, as well as BC alums and Newton residents. Regardless of what you think of that particular situation, the thorniness of the required move-out featuring exemptions for certain students is being showcased both at BC and Harvard—without a doubt it’s playing out across the nation as well.
BC’s decision engenders slightly more scrutiny, for example, because the day before the administration decided to close campus within the week and move to remote instruction, the university put out a release denying that the campus would close—specifically pointing out at the time that there was only one confirmed case of COVID-19 compared to 91 presumptive cases. It’s not at the surface, but BC’s statement is the only one I’ve seen that differentiates between presumptive positives and outright positives outside of a strictly scientific context—I haven’t seen a case of a presumptive positive not ending up as an outright positive yet—sending the message that the coronavirus situation had not reached any sort of critical point. That forecast clashed with the fact that on the same day BC released that statement, Massachusetts coronavirus cases—based on the presumptive positives—had increased by over 120 percent over the course of the day.
In addition, the day that statement came out—Tuesday—began with BC Vice President of Student Affairs Joy Moore telling student petitioners asking for classes to be moved online that though the option would continue to be discussed, online classes were not considered a part of BC’s response plan as of Tuesday morning. That night, the Undergraduate Government of BC ripped the administration for cutting them out of every aspect of the decision making process, despite the fact that the organization said it believed the status quo—in-person instruction—was a “socially irresponsible decision.”
48 hours later, BC is closed, set to reopen in a week exclusively with online instruction. In those 48 hours, the coronavirus outbreak went from an outbreak to a pandemic and multiple other colleges in the state went online. The situation certainly changed, but the opaque nature of the deliberations left students unsure of what their future was until BC made the decision to go online, and students had nothing to go off of regarding whether they’d be allowed to stay on campus the same way Emerson, BU, and Northeastern students are or if they needed to book flights home. If anything, the university’s public facing statements indicated that BC was going to try to hunker down and wait the virus out altogether. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that BC’s strategy was going to change when the pandemic categorization came down or when other colleges started to pull the plug, but context clues aren’t the same as definitive statements or posting prospective plans days ahead of when the outbreak seriously worsened both in the state and nationwide.
By the time University President William P. Leahy, S.J., sent out the email moving classes online, the student petition asking for the move had reached 3,200 signatures—for context, that’s right around a third of the undergraduate student population.
Although the issue of going online is essentially decided for the vast majority of Massachusetts colleges at this point (Wellesley College is a notable exception, though the school has noted it will make a decision on the matter by the end of the week), study abroad decisions have been trickling down slowly, varying from college to college. The consensus, handed down by the CDC, is that study abroad programs in China, Italy, South Korea, and Iran are cancelled—they’re all categorized as a Level 3 health risk. BC made the decision to end its Madrid programs yesterday, per The Heights, before the CDC switched the entirety of Europe into Level 3 status last night.
That decision created a whole new set of complicating factors, as United States President Donald Trump gave a speech from the Oval Office last night peppered with inaccuracies, including leaving unclear whether that the travel ban he was instituting on European countries applied broadly to everyone or just to foreign nationals. For an hour yesterday, I actually thought students might be stuck in Europe until the ban expires. A clarification from Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli cleared up that the ban doesn’t apply to American citizens, permanent legal residents, or their families came down about an hour after the President went on the air. Later on, further clarifications cleared up that there’s actually a decent amount of Europe that isn’t even on the list of travel-banned countries.
None of this can be easy for colleges to understand. When I called BU yesterday, they said that they were sticking generally with the Level 3 guidelines, while keeping a close eye on every single individual program country by country in case, for instance, a program closed locally leading to a need to recall students to the States so they could finish their courses online from home.
Now, it’s relatively safe to presume study abroad will be cancelled throughout Europe at the vast majority of colleges with the new Level 3 guidelines, though the changes emerged late yesterday so colleges haven’t confirmed publicly that that’s the case yet. Still, the potential for American students to have been abandoned abroad temporarily due to a travel ban will hang over colleges that didn’t pull the plug on various programs in Europe—specifically Spain and Germany, where the virus outbreak came later than the Italian one that has decimated the country.
Not pulling the plug on programs earlier, if the virus outbreak had been even more quick than it has been in Europe, could more than conceivably have led to universities being unable to bring its abroad students home if the Trump administration had enacted the travel ban the President himself had left the door open to when he addressed the nation last night.
Additional Notes:
BC athletics said last night that events would be played behind closed doors for the foreseeable future due to the pandemic. The Ivy League notably suspended all of its athletics events yesterday, also due to the pandemic.
The NCAA has been under scrutiny all week for how it’s handling March Madness. At the moment, the tournament will go on, but behind closed doors—initially the NCAA said the event would go on as scheduled with crowds.
The Boston Globe has the full list of New England-area colleges that have moved to remote instruction at this point.
Quick Hitters: The NBA Season is Suspended and Some Notes on the Political World
Adrian Wojnarowski broke that the NBA season would be suspended last night after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 prior to a game between the Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City. Gobert and the Jazz played in Boston last Friday night, and Boston Celtics players have been told to enter self-quarantine. Last week’s game was played with a full crowd in attendance.
The NHL has, as of publishing, not followed suit.
I can’t believe it’s fallen this far down the newsletter after being the basis for the entire thing last week, but the presidential primary also happened on Tuesday, and former Vice President Joe Biden won big in Michigan, securing a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead on what some people called Mini-Tuesday for some reason. The New York Times and The Upshot’s Nate Cohn posted an interesting thread on the progressive left’s candidate losing.
That candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, is not exiting the race and has adopted a fascinating strategy. At a press conference on Wednesday, Sanders declared that he would remain in the primary despite the delegate deficit and pressure from the Democratic Party, partially in order to debate Biden on Sunday (the debate is Sunday night on CNN, without an audience due to the coronavirus). In an incredible move, Sanders said from the lectern exactly what he wants to ask Biden about this weekend—health care, climate change, income inequality, student debt, racial disparities in criminal justice, immigration, and housing affordability. It’s a somewhat unprecedented move that both builds a potential path to uniting the party behind Biden if he’s able to come up with answers that satisfy the progressive left—and specifically the young voters Sanders has continued to win over at the polls. It also would establish, if Biden isn’t able to satisfactorily answer those questions, a road—a really difficult, not at all guaranteed to succeed road, but a road nonetheless—to Sanders regaining a foothold in the primary race. If Biden is perceived as unable to lead, compromise, or be anything except old and past his prime at the Sunday debate, votes could swing back to Sanders. It’s not a likely outcome by any means and there’s risk that it could just splinter the party further, but if Sanders is able to navigate Sunday well, he could either ensure his platform has a place in Biden’s moving forward and cement widespread support among both the progressive left and establishment Democrats behind Biden, or breathe life back into his ailing campaign if Biden isn’t able to step up to the plate and answer questions on issues Sanders has already publicly announced to the former Vice President are going to come up on Sunday. It seems to me like an extremely high upside and relatively low downside play by Sanders, who is in an extremely difficult electoral situation at this point. For details on the math behind Sanders’ more-than-uphill battle to win the nomination at this point, check out The Boston Globe’s coverage or just look at the FiveThirtyEight forecast, which shows Biden at having a 99 percent chance at winning the nomination.
CommonWealth Magazine found that Biden spent zero advertising dollars in Massachusetts in the runup to Super Tuesday. He ultimately carried the state by six percentage points.
U.S. House Representative Joe Kennedy, who is currently running for senate against incumbent Ed Markey, told the Globe the Democrat senate campaign arm is blocking him from helping Democrats running in other races against incumbent Republicans.
Markey and Kennedy’s next debate is on March 18, but Politico’s Stephanie Murray wrote in her newsletter this morning that there will be no audience at that event due to the coronavirus pandemic. “Outside media will be barred from the debate,” according to Murray.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “acknowledged” that the United States/Canada border “is a real potential vector of transmission” of the coronavirus, according to the Toronto Star.
The economy is in a bear market for the first time in 11 years, and the federal government is considering various stimulus options to stem the tide. An $8.3 billion measure was already passed last week, but the House of Representatives is introducing what’s being described as another “multi-billion dollar bill” to the floor dealing with paid sick leave, free coronavirus testing, and unemployment insurance, according to Politico. The Trump administration thus far has spoken out in favor of a payroll tax, which is not included in the early version of the new House bill.
Massachusetts has a $15 million bill hitting its House floor today for a vote that is intended to fight economic and health issues related to the coronavirus. Baker told the State House News Service the money will probably go toward supporting first responders and local health boards. The bill does not include a specified instruction for how the money should be spent.
The MBTA crime rate is at a four-year-continuous low, according to the transit police.
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*I also want to note that this week, I basically tried reporting in real-time on Twitter (@the_manofgold) for the first time because I had info and analysis I thought should be out there, and last I checked the number of tweet impressions were well over the 25 thousand mark so...if you checked out what I was sending out, thank you, I’m kind of in awe. I hope you got some interesting tidbits from what I was able to report and the reporting of others I shared out—there’ll be a lot more of all that moving forward. This newsletter has been more successful through the first month than I really thought it ever would be, but the online engagement this week really blew my mind. This is a difficult, emotional, and draining time for the entire country, so I really hope I was able to provide some clarity—that’s what I was certainly shooting for and it’s what I’ll be shooting for moving forward. Thanks for your support, try to stay healthy out there. We’ll get back to Judge Judy content soon, I’m sure.
Jack Goldman is the publisher of this here newsletter and an independent reporter who in his spare time goes to Boston College. You shouldn’t follow him on Twitter @the_manofgold and you definitely shouldn’t hit that button down there and subscribe to A View Off a Ledge.