High-Risk Students To Colleges: Why Aren’t All Classes Available Online?
Also in higher-ed news: college towns worry about the COVID risk that returning students bring to campus; UNC-Chapel Hill launches in-person classes; and campus workers across the UNC system file suit saying conditions are unsafe.
USA Today:
COVID: As Colleges Reopen, High-Risk Students Fear Being Forgotten
College sophomore Cameron Lynch has lived the past five months in a single square mile, only venturing outside her home a couple times a week for early-morning or late-night walks. "It’s already a stressful time to be immunocompromised," said Lynch, who has Type 1 diabetes, celiac disease and a form of muscular dystrophy. "Now, a good portion of able-bodied people are going back to the way life was, leaving us behind." (Hauck, 8/12)
PBS NewsHour:
College Towns Weigh Benefits Of Students’ Return With Virus Risks
As the new academic year gets underway, college students, parents, administrators and faculty are deliberating over whether it will be safe to hold in-person classes and resume dorm life. And residents of the surrounding towns and cities worry about the risk that returning students could bring coronavirus back to campus with them. (Yang, 8/11)
In news from North Carolina —
The Washington Post:
UNC-Chapel Hill Launches Fall In Person Despite Coronavirus
Six masked students joined a masked professor here this week in a small seminar room at Carroll Hall for the debut of a course on interactive media. Rolling chairs were set several feet apart in a floor plan specially marked to deter anyone who might feel the rule-breaking impulse to scoot around and sit next to a classmate. Thirteen more students, unmasked, were linked in simultaneously through cameras from elsewhere in the United States and as far away as Singapore and China. Their faces hovered in an array of Zoom boxes projected onto video screens. (Anderson, 8/11)
Raleigh News & Observer:
Campus Workers Sue UNC System, Claiming Unsafe Working Conditions During Pandemic
North Carolina university employees are suing the UNC System, saying working conditions are unsafe as tens of thousands of students return to campuses during the coronavirus pandemic. ... Some university employees, including housekeepers and other campus workers, are provided one or two masks per week and many don’t have access to face shields or gowns, according to the union. And the universities’ safety measures have proved to be “inadequate” as multiple workers have tested positive for COVID-19, the union said. (Murphy, 8/11)
