Its Local Health Department Urged a Virtual Fall. UNC Is Reopening Anyway

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PUBLIC HEALTH Its Local Health Department Urged a Virtual Fall. UNC Is Reopening Anyway. By Francie Diep

AUGUST 5, 2020

https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-local-health-department-urged-a-virtual-fall-unc-is-reopening-anyway[8/6/20, 10:02:10 AM] Its Local Health Department Urged a Virtual Fall. UNC Is Reopening Anyway.

JON GARDINER

The Orange County, N.C., health department asked the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last week to move the campus online for the fall semester, but the university has declined to take the health department’s recommendations, moving forward with in-person operations.

“If students begin to move back on campus next week, we could quickly become a hot spot for new cases, as thousands of students from all https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-local-health-department-urged-a-virtual-fall-unc-is-reopening-anyway[8/6/20, 10:02:10 AM] Its Local Health Department Urged a Virtual Fall. UNC Is Reopening Anyway. across the country/world merge onto the UNC campus,” wrote Quintana Stewart, Orange County’s health director, in a memo to UNC’s chancellor, provost, and vice chancellor, dated July 29.

Stewart’s major recommendations were for the university to restrict on-campus housing only to those students who need it most, so that everyone can have a single room, and for the university to hold all classes online for the fall. Barring a move to a virtual fall, Stewart recommended the university teach online-only for the first five weeks of the semester to give the department and university additional time to monitor the coronavirus’s spread after students’ return.

The university did not respond to The Chronicle’s questions about the letter on Wednesday. Late in the afternoon, the chancellor, Kevin M. Guskiewicz, posted a public statement. “While the OCHD letter was not an order or a mandate for the university to take any specific action, as always, I took their recommendations very seriously,” he wrote. “We believe we have made significant progress towards aligning with the OCHD’s general recommendations and considerations.” The statement then listed actions UNC has taken, including reducing classroom- and dorm-occupancy levels, but it didn’t say whether the new occupancy level means students will have single rooms, as Stewart recommended.

The health department’s memo pointed to clusters of Covid-19 cases among UNC’s athletes, who returned for voluntary workouts, and cleaning staff. “We’ve seen the off-campus parties and gatherings at Greek houses,” Stewart wrote. And when health officials tried to do contact tracing, some students wouldn’t cooperate.

“All of that has added to the concern of bringing basically 30,000 people back into one very small community,” Todd McGee, a spokesperson for the health department, said. Orange County has a population of about 146,000. “That’s just going to multiply the potential for problems, so that’s why she felt the need to go ahead and get it on the record what the recommendations would be.”

Community opposition also played a role in Stewart’s call for closing. “I have received a massive amount of emails from community members, UNC staff, faculty, and students,” she wrote, “sharing their concern for fully reopening campus for the fall semester.”

The UNC system has said it would move as one regarding whether campuses are open for in-person instruction; across the system, campuses are welcoming students back. Generally, individual campuses’s chancellors would need to consult with the system president and Board of Governors if they wished to go all virtual, Josh Ellis, a system spokesperson, told The Chronicle last month. However, the chancellors are also “being directed to follow what the county health director is saying,” Ellis said at the time.

Ellis didn’t return a Wednesday request from The Chronicle seeking more detail on the system’s guidance to campuses. https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-local-health-department-urged-a-virtual-fall-unc-is-reopening-anyway[8/6/20, 10:02:10 AM] Its Local Health Department Urged a Virtual Fall. UNC Is Reopening Anyway.

The county has the legal authority to close a property by declaring it an “imminent hazard to public safety,” McGee said. “That’s a very high bar to leap over. That’s not an option at this point.”

North Carolina law defines “imminent hazard” as “a situation that is likely to cause an immediate threat to human life.” One part of the law makes the county potentially liable for any financial losses UNC incurs, as a result of being called an imminent hazard, according to McGee.

The health department’s letter prompted Guskiewicz and the provost, Robert A. Blouin, to appear at an emergency meeting of the faculty executive committee, late Wednesday afternoon. During the meeting, committee members seemed to assume the health department made the memo public; McGee later emailed to say it had not. Guskiewicz and Blouin said at the meeting that they received no warning that the health- department letter would be made public and did not know the department’s motivation for doing so. When a committee member asked if it was a sign that the health department felt that university leaders were not listening to them, Blouin demurred. “I have really enjoyed our conversations. They have all been positive, collaborative, and collegial,” he said. “Even in our conversations since we received the letter, it’s been the same. Nothing really has changed.”

Clarification (Aug. 6, 2020, 9:25 a.m.): This story has been updated to clarify that, at a Wednesday meeting of the faculty executive committee, committee members appeared to assume the health department had made the memo public. A spokesperson for the health department said it had not.

If you have questions or concerns about this article, please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

STUDENT LIFE ADMINISTRATION POLITICS

Francie Diep Francie Diep is a staff reporter covering money in higher education.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/its-local-health-department-urged-a-virtual-fall-unc-is-reopening-anyway[8/6/20, 10:02:10 AM] Orange County Health Director to UNC-Chapel Hill: Go online as default for Fall semester, restrict on-campus housing | The Progressive Pulse

COVID-19, EDUCATION, HIGHER ED, NEWS

Orange County Health Director to UNC-Chapel Hill: Go online as default

for Fall semester, restrict on-campus housing

By Joe Killian  13 days ago  1 Comment  In COVID-19, Education, Higher Ed, News

The Orange County Health Director has urged the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to move to online education as the default for the Fall semester and to restrict on-campus housing as the COVID-19 pandemic in the county worsens.

Health Director Quintana Stewart made the recommendations in a July 29 letter to UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz.

As of this week, UNC-Chapel Hill is moving forward with in-person classes. Thousands of students began moving into residence halls this week in a full-capacity dorm plan that the Centers for Disease Control considers to be “highest risk.”

In the letter, Stewart expressed concern over signs that student returns have already contributed to spikes and clusters of infections.

From the letter:

To date, Orange County has been home of approximately 1,241 lab confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and 45 deaths. Over the past month we’ve watched our daily case count nearly double with record highs in early July of 38 new cases per day. We’ve also seen an increase in cases for those in the 18-24 age group (22%) and the 24-49 age group (37%). While the data reports that our local cases appear to be stabilizing the last couple of weeks, we at public health know this is not a totally accurate picture of what is happening in our community. As the State moved into Phase 2 and things began to open up, we saw an increase in our cases. As students have begun to return to campus prior to the

http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/...e-county-health-director-to-unc-chapel-hill-go-online-as-default-for-fall-semester-restrict-on-campus-housing/[8/18/20, 8:36:31 AM] Orange County Health Director to UNC-Chapel Hill: Go online as default for Fall semester, restrict on-campus housing | The Progressive Pulse

official start of the Fall Semester we’ve experienced a small fraction of what we will see if the campus fully reopens and all the students return for in-person class. In the last 4 weeks we’ve seen positive COVID clusters among UNC staff and athletic teams. We’ve experienced the increased activity and gathering on  Franklin Street that resulted in clusters that visited a couple of local restaurant/bar establishments. We’ve seen the off campus parties and gatherings at Greek Houses. We’ve also experienced the lack of cooperation from students with the communicable disease investigation and control measures mandated by NC General Statute §130A-144. For multiple cases staff had to spend several hours trying to gather information and cooperation from students. As a last resort, legal remedies were suggested to gain cooperation. This is absolutely not the desired outcome for our campus students. Due to the reporting structure for positive cases, our data does not necessarily capture each of these cases as they are attributed to the home county of residence, however the reality is Orange County Health Department Staff and UNC Campus Health Staff have been tasked with the monitoring and investigation of these cases here in Orange County.

UNC-Chapel Hill students are already reporting invitations to large house parties organized by student athletes and in-person fraternity and sorority rush events that do not include masks or social distancing.

On Monday a UNC-Chapel Hill student posted a video to Twitter depicting what he said was a large group of young women engaging in a sorority rush event. None were wearing masks or practicing distancing.

While fraternity and sorority recruitment is officially entirely virtual this year, sources in Greek organizations at UNC-Chapel Hill confirmed to Policy Watch last week and again this week that a number of unofficial “dirty rush” events are being held off campus. The events are promoted via word of mouth, closed social media groups and text messages, several of which have been examined by Policy Watch.

UNC Faculty have also noticed the lack of distancing and mask compliance to exhibited by students returning to campus and around town in Chapel Hill.

“I hope all will go well,” said Deb Aikat, associate professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s school of

Journalism and Media. “But there is already some evidence that students and employees and faculty are being affected by COVID.”

It is not difficult for those on and around campus to see that some students and community members aren’t taking the pandemic seriously enough.

“If you take a walk on Franklin Street nobody is wearing a mask nobody is social distancing” Aikat said. “I was there yesterday on Franklin Street. I was appalled.”

While the school is not requiring tests for all students, the new COVID-19 campus dashboard shows 175 total infections among those tested on campus — 139 of them students. That’s a cumulative positive rate of 10.6 percent.

The dashboard shows 13 student infections the week of 7/20 and a positive rate of 11.1 percent. It shows 13 student infections for the week of 7/27, the last week before most students began to move onto campus, for a positive rate of 8.6 percent. The current statewide infection rate is 8 percent.

In her letter, Stewart advised going to online instruction for the entire Fall semester but at a minimum for at least the first five weeks of classes. She also calls for restricting on campus housing to “at-risk students with no access to equitable educational resources and those with true housing needs (i.e. International students, Carolina Covenant & marginalized students) in order to provide single-occupancy rooms, which should significantly slow community spread.

Possibly related posts:

1. UNC-Chapel Hill considering timing of graduation, return for fall semester 2. UNC-Chapel Hill begins sharing “Roadmap for Fall 2020,” details about return to campus 3. New UNC student survey gives insight into concerns, safety measures for return to campus 4. New COVID outbreaks at UNC system schools lead to growing concern about return to campuses 5. UNC-Chapel Hill launches COVID-19 dashboard, shows 173 infections as students return to dorms this week

CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 ORANGE COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT

ORANGE COUNTY HEALTH DIRECTOR QUINTANA STEWART UNC UNC CHAPEL HILL

UNC-CHAPEL HILL CHANCELLOR KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ

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ONE COMMENT

NERYS LEVY August 5, 2020 at 7:09 pm

I would like to know how much interaction there was between Orange County Health Department and UNC Amin in planning this return of the students to UNC Chapel Hill. Over 100,000 tax payers live within reach of the UNC CH campus/ surely their health and safety should have been a factor in determining the feasibility of returning to campus during a raging pandemic ? . If only we could count on the students to practice social distancing and to wear masks. We who live here need to be consulted and considered – UNC admin needs to now be responsible for monitoring its students closely in order to safeguard our community’s well being and safety.

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http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2020/08/11/unc-chapel-hill-provost-defends-withholding-county-health-department-pandemic-recommendations/[8/17/20, 3:00:47 PM] UNC-Chapel Hill leaders come under fire at emergency faculty meeting | NC Policy Watch

AUGUST 7, 2020        

Home / COVID-19 / UNC-Chapel Hill leaders come under fre at emergency faculty meeting

UNC-Chapel Hill leaders come under fre at emergency faculty meeting

By Joe Killian - 8/6/2020 - in COVID-19, Higher Ed, Policy Watch Investigates, Top Story Print This Article

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Chancellor’s failure to share health department’s reopening recommendations called a “breach of trust”

The Orange County Health Director has urged the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to move to online education for the fall semester and keep on-campus housing to an absolute minimum as the COVID-19 pandemic The campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. (Photo: Mx Granger/Creative Commons CC0) in the county worsens.

The campus will be doing neither of those things, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said Wednesday.

Health Director Quintana Stewart made the recommendations in a July 29 memo to Guskiewicz. Faculty, staff, students and members of the community only became aware of the memo Wednesday, when it was reported by media outlets including Policy Watch. https://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2020/08/06/unc-chapel-hill-leaders-come-under-fire-at-emergency-faculty-meeting/[8/7/20, 10:18:52 AM] UNC-Chapel Hill leaders come under fire at emergency faculty meeting | NC Policy Watch

In the memo, Stewart expressed concern over signs returning students have already contributed to spikes and clusters of infections. She recommended an all-online fall semester or, at a minimum, holding the frst fve weeks of the semester online-only. She also recommended the school restrict on-campus housing to those who would otherwise have nowhere to live, in order to slow community spread of the disease.

Confronted with the letter and questions about why his offce did not disclose the health department’s concerns, Guskiewicz told an emergency Faculty Executive Committee meeting the school is taking several lesser steps to address them. These will include reducing classroom capacity to 30 percent and dorm capacity to 64 percent — an announcement that students, staff and faculty said they learned of for the frst time at Wednesday’s meeting.

Guskiewicz emphasized the school has been meeting with the Orange County Health Department throughout the summer and met with it again Friday after Stewart’s letter. But these were recommendations, Guskiewicz said — not an order. The UNC System has said schools would have to follow an order by the health department, but not recommendations.

The chancellor described the Orange County Health Department’s recommendations as “another piece of information we have received.” But after consulting with UNC health experts and the UNC System — which will make the fnal decision on closures — the university decided not to follow the health department recommendations.

“We believe, based on the advice of our public health and infectious disease experts who weighed in on this last week, that we still have a roadmap that can bring people back safely in this environment who have chosen to do so,” Guskiewicz said.

Guskiewicz said he spoke to UNC System President Peter Hans and former Interim UNC President Bill Roper last week to discuss the health department recommendations.

“We were advised to stay the course,” Guskiewicz said. Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz

Orange County Health Department offcials disagree with the decision, he said, and have made that clear.

“They still had concerns, no question,” Guskeiwicz said, “But who doesn’t have concerns?”

Faculty ‘dismay’

Guskiewicz’s statements were not well received by faculty.

The emergency faculty meeting came together quickly Wednesday after a letter was sent to the chancellor by Dr. Mimi Chapman, chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, regarding the health department recommendations.

“It feels like a serious breach of trust to have kept such recommendations from

https://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2020/08/06/unc-chapel-hill-leaders-come-under-fire-at-emergency-faculty-meeting/[8/7/20, 10:18:52 AM] UNC-Chapel Hill leaders come under fire at emergency faculty meeting | NC Policy Watch

the campus community of faculty, staff and students,” Chapman said.

In the email, for which the subject line was “Dismay,” Chapman went on to say she has personally changed her plans to hold an in-person orientation for doctoral students this week. The class she planned to teach in person this semester will change to remote, she wrote.

“I could not possibly do otherwise in the face of such a letter from our local health department,” Chapman wrote.

Such a move by the faculty’s chair could lead many UNC-Chapel Hill faculty already uncomfortable with teaching in-person this semester to follow suit, citing the health department recommendations.

Chapman pointed to already rampant fouting of mask and distancing rules on campus, in student stores and at off campus gatherings.

“These look like off-ramps to me,” referring to the term UNC-Chapel Hill has Dr. Mimi Chapman, chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill used to indicate things that would lead the school to detour from its “roadmap to faculty return” and back to the online-only instruction of last semester.

Chapman reiterated her disappointment that the administration kept the recommendations from faculty, who have been working for months to make the university’s return plan a success despite their reservations.

“However, with outside guidance from public health authorities such as is included in this letter, to proceed without completely candid discussion with your faculty, as well as other interested parties, feels like a betrayal,” Chapman wrote.

Deb Aikat, a member of the Faculty Executive Committee, said it is at least “a disconnect” in communication between the administration, faculty and the students.

“Today the chancellor and the provost have shown almost a willing suspension of disbelief,” Aikat said. “Like, ‘Oh my God…the community, Orange County Health Department and campus community are not with us?’”

That should have been obvious well before now, Aikat said, after months of repeated concerns, protests and petitions over the return plan. All of that seems to have had little impact on the administration’s determination to open for in-person instruction in the fall, Aikat said.

“It feels like they are struggling to say that everybody is wrong, and they feel like they are doing the right thing,” Aikat said. “‘We think we’re doing the right thing,’ they say, “So this is the way we’re going to go.’”

If even objections from the Orange County Health Department don’t make a dent, Aikat said, it seems obvious that the administration does not have the power to change course.

“This is all going to be decided at the UNC System level, the Board of Governors,” Aikat said. “The chancellor is in a position where he does not have the power to make this decision.”

Chapman seemed to agree during the faculty meeting.

“As I understand it, the system said ‘stay the course,’ Chapman said. “So that’s what’s happening. We might not all be fne with that, but it sounds like that’s what’s happening.”

Policy Watch reached out to the UNC System offce and UNC Board of Governors Wednesday. Emails and phone messages were not returned.

Eric Muller, another Faculty Executive Committee member, also expressed frustration such strong public health recommendations from Orange County could be dismissed because they were not in the form of an order.

“Does that mean that someone or some group of people on our team affrmatively disagreed with the advice we received from the Orange County Health Department?” Muller asked Guskeiwicz during the faculty meeting.

Guskiewicz did not answer. Eric Muller, Faculty Executive Committee member,

“There are a lot of opinions about what to do and the rationale for doing it,” Provost Bob Blouin said in answer to the question. “And there is sometimes unanimity around the experts and sometimes there is less than unanimity around the experts.”

Blouin also said the university had to consider that most students have either begun moving onto campus or had signed leases off- campus. They had to consider the impact on them of dramatically reversing course.

Health department employees dispute UNC leaders’ characterization of county-campus communications

Both Blouin and Guskiewicz framed the Orange County Health Department recommendations as having come suddenly and at the last moment. Guskiewicz said he did not know the motivation of the health director in writing the letter rather than communicating the recommendations to the school in the course of their frequent meetings on the return plan.

Two employees of the Orange County Health Department with knowledge of the discussions, however, told Policy Watch Wednesday that that is a mischaracterization.

The employees, who Policy Watch agreed not to identify because they expressed concern about being fred for discussing health department discussions with the university, said the department has frequently expressed its concerns with the university’s move-in plan. Those concerns have become more urgent in the last month, they said, as infection and hospitalization numbers have not improved and infection clusters among returning student athletes have made it clear students were not following masking or distancing rules.

“The department’s recommendations were not having any effect on the university, which just wanted to continue with the plan it had,” one of the employees said. “So now there is a letter the public can read with those concerns spelled out and the chancellor announces, on the same day that it becomes public instead of a private conversation, that they are making changes to the housing and classroom plans. It’s curious how that works.”

The employee pointed to the university’s own COVID-19 dashboard, which shows 175 infections on campus as of Tuesday, when it was last updated. Of those, 139 are students. While the university is not requiring tests of students moving back to campus, the infection rate among students who have been tested is 10.6%. The statewide infection rate is 8%. As most students have not yet moved onto campus, the health department source said, that elevated rate likely represents just the beginning.

“Looking at that data, of course the health department has a problem with this plan,” the employee said.

The lack of a public record of the county health department’s position was a problem, the other employee said, because it allowed the university to say publicly that it was working in collaboration with the department without actually taking any of their recommendations.

“You can’t say that you are working with public health experts, public health authorities, on your plan and then overrule those experts and authorities in your actual plan,” the employee said.

“If they are going to say that they think they know better than the Orange County Health Department, then they need to say that publicly,” the source said. “They need to say publicly that they’ve seen the recommendations but they’re not going to follow it. People should know that.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Killian 

Joe Killian, Investigative Reporter, joined N.C. Policy Watch in August of 2016. His work takes a closer look at government, politics and policy in North Carolina and their impact on the lives of everyday people. Before joining Policy Watch, Joe spent a decade at the News & Record in Greensboro, reporting on everything from cops and courts to higher education. He covered the city councils of High Point and Greensboro and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners before becoming the paper’s full-time government and politics reporter. His work has also appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal, Go Triad, the Bristol Press in Bristol, Conn., and the Cape Cod Times in Hyannis, Mass. [email protected] 919-863-2402

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https://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2020/08/06/unc-chapel-hill-leaders-come-under-fire-at-emergency-faculty-meeting/[8/7/20, 10:18:52 AM] UNC Chapel Hill making changes in time for Monday reopening - ABC11 Raleigh-Durham

BREAKING NEWS NC has first reported case of coronavirus in a dog

EDUCATION UNC Chapel Hill making changes in time for Monday reopening

By Gloria Rodriguez

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) -- UNC Chapel Hill Executive Vice Chancellor, Provost Robert Blouin and Housing Director Allan Blattner responded Thursday to the Orange County Health Department's recommendation that the school reopen with exclusively virtual classes for the beginning of the semester.

Blouin said they've been working on a reopening plan since May to:

"Make sure that we can pursue the mission of this university-the mission of research, education and public service at this university. And it is our general

https://abc11.com/unc-chapel-hill-orange-county-reopening-college/6358161/[8/11/20, 2:49:24 PM] UNC Chapel Hill making changes in time for Monday reopening - ABC11 Raleigh-Durham

belief that we can do that best when we come to campus and work together."

TOMORROW-Orange County, N.C. leaders will talk about options for education and enforcement around gatherings, mask wearing and other safety requirements. This comes after video went viral of @UNC students at a packed house party, not wearing masks or social distancing. #abc11

— Gloria Rodriguez (@GloriaABC11) August 6, 2020

The letter from the Orange County Health Department to university administrators also recommended restricting on-campus housing to at-risk students such as international and marginalized students.

LIST: North Carolina university, college COVID-19 plans for the 2020-2021 school year

In an email sent to the campus community, including students, Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz said the Orange County Health Department's letter was not a mandate but that they take their recommendations very seriously.

WATCH THE MEETING

https://abc11.com/unc-chapel-hill-orange-county-reopening-college/6358161/[8/11/20, 2:49:24 PM] UNC Chapel Hill making changes in time for Monday reopening - ABC11 Raleigh-Durham

They've decided to make some changes including: Limiting on-campus in-person classroom occupancy to 30 percent Reducing on-campus residential capacity to 64 percent Increasing their testing capacity Increasing the frequency of bus routes with the town and transit partners Increasing on-campus parking options

FULL BACK-TO-SCHOOL COVERAGE

In the letter, the Chancellor said they believe they are well-prepared to start the fall semester and will stick with their plan to reopen. He said they believe they made significant progress to align with the recommendations of the Orange County Health Department.

Students must agree to the COVID-19 Student Acknowledgment and all on campus will get a kit including two reusable face masks, hand sanitizer and a thermometer.

When students return to classes Monday, they won't be able to take the traditional "first sip" from the old well due to safety concerns. Students believe it brings good luck and good grades.

If a student tests positive for COVID-19, Blattner said they'll be assigned an isolation dorm and receive

https://abc11.com/unc-chapel-hill-orange-county-reopening-college/6358161/[8/11/20, 2:49:24 PM] UNC Chapel Hill making changes in time for Monday reopening - ABC11 Raleigh-Durham

"wraparound care." If an off-campus student does not have space for safe isolation or quarantine, on-campus isolation or quarantine space is available to them, university officials said.

"We will deliver meals to them," Blattner said. "They will have health monitoring from our health center. Our Dean of Students' office will reach out to them. Obviously if they have a face-to-face class, they're going to need to not be present in that class for a period of time."

University administrators say they've taken two buildings offline for isolation and quarantine.

The bed count capacity for housing is 7,877 and they only have 4,990 contracts now. Blattner said that is because of the university taking the direction to reduce housing capacity.

Some classes are going virtual and students may not need on-campus housing anymore. All residential students may cancel their housing contract for any reason and without penalty before 5 p.m. Friday, August 7, 2020, according to university officials.

More information here.

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 Buy Photos Signs promoting social distancing and safety at the Die-In Protest on Close Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020 as Jennifer Standish, a UNC graduate student in the Department of History, speaks outside of South Building on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. The protest called for UNC to transition to fully remote classes for the Fall 2020 semester after a letter of caution sent to Chancellor Guskiewicz by the Orange County Health Director Quintana Stewart. ANGELINA KATSANIS

BY EDITORIAL BOARD

We’re only a week into the semester and four COVID-19 clusters have already surfaced on and around campus.

Two COVID-19 clusters — one at Granville Towers and one at Ehringhaus Residence Hall — were

https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2020/08/covid-clusters-edit-0816[8/17/20, 2:53:05 PM] Editorial: We all saw this coming - The Daily Tar Heel

reported Friday. On Saturday, UNC confirmed reports of a third cluster at the Sigma Nu fraternity house, and a fourth, at Hinton James Residence Hall, was reported Sunday.

In the messages, UNC clarified that a “cluster” is five or more cases deemed "close proximity in location," as defined by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

We all saw this coming. In his fall semester welcome message, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz wrote, “As always, remember that it is our shared responsibility to keep each other safe. Every person you walk by on campus will be counting on you to diligently work to prevent the spread of the virus.”

But University leadership should have expected students, many of whom are now living on their own for the first time, to be reckless. Reports of parties throughout the weekend come as no surprise. Though these students are not faultless, it was the University’s responsibility to disincentivize such gatherings by reconsidering its plans to operate in-person earlier on. EDITORS PICKS

Carrboro High School Heel Talk episode 17: New UNC community members students created a podcast campus technology raises write letters asking for to amplify minority data privacy concerns accountability, protection students' voices

The administration continues to prove they have no shame, and the bar for basic decency keeps getting lower.

They chose to ignore the Orange County Health Department, which recommended that the University restrict on-campus housing to at-risk students and implement online-only instruction for the first five weeks of the semester. They chose to ignore the guidance of the CDC, which placed the University’s housing plan in the "highest-risk" category.

Even faculty — though many of them continued to teach classes in-person — saw it coming.

Now, as we prepare for a second week of classes, many questions remain unanswered. What factors will trigger the so-called off-ramps, and what will they look like? How many positive cases will it take for the University to realize the danger they’ve put us in?

https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2020/08/covid-clusters-edit-0816[8/17/20, 2:53:05 PM] UNC-Chapel Hill Classes To Move Online After 130 Students Test Positive In First Week : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR

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UNC-Chapel Hill Classes To Move Online After 130 Students Test Positive In First Week

August 16, 2020 · 10:18 PM ET

RACHEL TREISMAN

Starting Wednesday, all undergraduate in-person instruction will be remote at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, pictured in 2015. https://www.npr.org/...irus-live-updates/2020/08/16/903071127/less-than-a-week-after-starting-classes-unc-chapel-hill-reports-4-covid-19-clust[8/18/20, 8:30:30 AM] UNC-Chapel Hill Classes To Move Online After 130 Students Test Positive In First Week : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR

Gerry Broome/AP

Updated at 7:01 p.m. ET Monday

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is shifting undergraduate instruction entirely online after 130 students tested positive for the coronavirus during its first week of classes.

Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Robert Blouin announced the reversal Monday, one week after classes started and two weeks after residence halls opened at limited capacity. They noted that less than 30% of "total classroom seats" were being taught in person.

Even with guidelines and precautions in place, case counts soared in a matter of days.

According to a campus dashboard, 130 students and five employees tested positive last week.

Officials wrote that between Aug. 10 and Aug. 16, the positivity rate on campus rose from 2.8% to 13.6%.

As of Monday morning, they said 177 students are in isolation, and 349 are in quarantine, and most have demonstrated only "mild symptoms."

"As much as we believe we have worked diligently to help create a healthy and safe campus living and learning environment, the current data presents an untenable situation," officials wrote.

Starting Wednesday, all undergraduate in-person instruction will be remote.

Officials acknowledged that this change, and the "reduction of campus activities," means the majority of current undergraduate students living on campus will change their plans for the fall.

"We are working with the UNC System office to identify the most effective way to

https://www.npr.org/...irus-live-updates/2020/08/16/903071127/less-than-a-week-after-starting-classes-unc-chapel-hill-reports-4-covid-19-clust[8/18/20, 8:30:30 AM] UNC-Chapel Hill Classes To Move Online After 130 Students Test Positive In First Week : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR

further achieve de-densification of our residential halls and our campus facilities," Guskiewicz and Blouin wrote.

They added that residents who "have hardships" such as lacking Internet access as well as international students and student athletes can choose to remain on campus.

According to UNC System President Peter Hans, there are no current plans to modify operations at any of its other universities.

Calls to reconsider in-person learning intensified over the weekend as the school reported four clusters of coronavirus cases in three days.

On Saturday, Faculty Chair Mimi Chapman sent a letter to the UNC System board of governors advocating for more campus-based authority to respond to the pandemic.

"We knew there would be positive cases on our campus," she wrote. "But clusters, five or more people that are connected in one place, are a different story. The presence of clusters should be triggering reconsideration of residential, in-person learning."

Barbara Rimer, dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC, called for taking an "off-ramp" in a blog post Monday in which she wrote that "we have tried to make this work but it is not working."

Rimer said it seemed that students on campus were practicing social distancing and wearing masks, but "reports of off-campus behavior showed a different pattern."

She tweeted later Monday that she was pleased with the administration's decision to move undergraduate classes online and accept residence hall cancellation requests with no penalty, calling it "the right path forward."

The decision comes one day after the school announced it had identified its fourth cluster, which health officials define as five or more cases in a single residential

hall or dwelling.

The latest cluster is at Hinton James Residence Hall, the university said in an alert. According to the university's website, the living space typically houses more than 900 students, many of whom are in their first year.

The individuals in the cluster are isolating and receiving medical monitoring, the university said, and all dormitory residents have been given "additional information about this cluster and next steps."

Contact tracing is underway, the university said.

Reports of clusters have streamed in since fall classes started on Aug. 10.

On Friday, the university announced it had identified SHOTS - two separate sets of clusters: one at a residence hall HEALTH NEWS heavily populated by first-year students and one at a To Keep Campuses privately managed apartment complex that houses Safe, Some UNC students. The following day, it announced an Colleges To Test Students additional cluster at an off-campus fraternity house. For Coronavirus Twice A Week UNC-Chapel Hill kicked off the school year with about 5,800 students in dorms, which accounted for more than half of the available beds, The Washington Post reported. Other students are living nearby off-campus.

Classes have been offered through a handful of models, including face-to-face, remote only and a mix of both.

The university said that it had been preparing for five months to identify, trace and isolate potential positive cases on and off-campus as part of its fall reopening plan.

The plan included guidelines for face coverings, physical distancing and on- campus gatherings, which are limited to 25 people both indoors and outdoors. (State public health orders limit gatherings to a maximum of 10 people indoors

and 25 outdoors.)

The Daily Tar Heel reported on Thursday that police in Chapel Hill will ramp up patrols downtown and in student neighborhoods after receiving reports of people violating social distancing guidelines.

As of Friday, 1,049 North Carolinians were THE hospitalized with the virus. CORONAVIRUS CRISIS Can Military Institutions of higher education across the country Academies Serve As A are starting their fall semesters as the global Road Map For pandemic stretches on. Some have already grappled Reopening Colleges? with a jump in infections, particularly in fraternity houses: Earlier this summer, both the University of Washington and the University of Mississippi dealt with outbreaks linked to Greek life.

The New York Times reported at the end of July that more than 6,600 cases had been linked to about 270 colleges since the start of the pandemic.

school reopening coronavirus in the u.s. university of north carolina chapel hill

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https://www.npr.org/...irus-live-updates/2020/08/16/903071127/less-than-a-week-after-starting-classes-unc-chapel-hill-reports-4-covid-19-clust[8/18/20, 8:30:30 AM]