In response to reports of large gathering of students in off-campus apartment complexes in State College during this past weekends Penn State football game, the University announced joint planning, enforcement, and outreach measures designed to help prevent similar gatherings in the future. Large gatherings of mostly unmasked individuals not practicing social distancing are in violation of the State College Borough ordinance, which limits gatherings to no more than 10 people.
The State College Police Department is asking for help identifying 60 individuals who attended large-scale apartment parties last weekend. The individuals in question, compiled in this online document, allegedly attended parties at State College apartment complexes during Penn State footballs season opener against Indiana on Saturday, October 24. The document includes dozens of pictures that appear to have been taken from social media clips.
Anyone with information is encouraged to reach out to the department by phone (814-234-7150), by email, or through an anonymous tip line. Police ask that you note the location, case number, and image number when identifying an individual.
The dean proceeds to quote Emerson: “In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.” Coronavirus is part of “nature”, isn’t it? Are the 99.93 percent of us who have yet to be killed by COVID-19 experiencing “wild delight” in the presence of coronavirus?
We write to tell you that Penn State University and the Borough of State College share a deep and growing concern about activities and allegations centered around a rental property located at 329 East Prospect Avenue in State College. This rental property served as a chapter house for Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, which was suspended by the University in April 2017 for multiple alcohol, health, and safety violations. The fraternity’s national organization subsequently revoked the chapter’s charter, and Sigma Alpha Mu no longer operates as a recognized student organization at Penn State.
Despite the fraternity’s suspension, the privately-owned house at 329 East Prospect continues to serve as a rental residence, and men living there represent themselves as a fraternity. Yet from April 2017 until this semester, residents in this facility have been accused of or found responsible for various additional violations, including hazing and sexual misconduct. In the weeks since the current semester began at Penn State, residents of this property have repeatedly hosted large gatherings in violation of the Borough’s Covid-19 ordinance. The State College Police Department has visited this property at least ten times in that period for various offenses, taking enforcement action on numerous occasions. The Borough is considering additional legal action, and the University has already suspended two students living there.
It now has been alleged that residents of this property hosted another large gathering last Halloween weekend. An underaged female Penn State student who attended this gathering was found intoxicated and unconscious on a nearby sidewalk. Residents responsible for the gathering at 329 East Prospect are accused of placing her there in the early morning hours last Saturday. Fortunately, after transport to the Mount Nittany Medical Center, where she was treated for alcohol poisoning, the student fully recovered. Most recently, there has been an allegation of a sexual assault occurring at this property over the Halloween weekend.
Neither of us has ever issued a warning of this nature, which should indicate the seriousness of the behaviors allegedly occurring at this property. We share this information out of conviction that the best protection for public safety includes individual efforts to self-guard against such threats.
In short, residents at 329 East Prospect have demonstrated a pattern of behavior that is troubling and has not stopped despite the continuing efforts of local police and University authorities. For that reason, we strongly discourage any student from affiliating with the unrecognized group living in this facility, and we urge you not to attend activities there. Anyone who has additional insight about these concerns may notify either the State College Police Department at 814-234-7150 or the Penn State Office of Student Conduct at 814-863-0342.
Sincerely,
Damon Sims Vice President for Student Affairs The Pennsylvania State University
Thomas Fountaine Borough Manager State College Borough
One of my MIT undergraduate moles shared with me a September email from the Administration:
We are writing to you regarding the important topics of sexual assault prevention and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Two Required Trainings: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Sexual Assault Prevention Ongoing: Healthy Relationships (see instructions below)
The trainings will be available starting October 1, 2020 and must be completed by November 2, 2020. Instructions to access the courses are below. You will have a registration hold placed on your account and will be unable to register for IAP and/or Spring 2021 classes if you do not complete both trainings by the November 2 deadline.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion starts with a survey that contains unanswerable questions:
How is Student X supposed to know what Students Y and Z are trying to do in forming friendships? (especially given that everyone is dispersed and interacting only via Zoom) The student is also supposed to know what 1,000+ classmates value:
The survey is at least 40 gender IDs short of a complete list:
(If Cian is a student at an engineering university, why do his friends expect him to be sexually active?)
Any time is a good time for a gender transition? No!
Whoever designed this survey does not seem very familiar with the American public housing, Medicaid, SNAP, and Obamaphone programs!
Oppression
After the baseline quiz, it is time for the welcome video, which features seven students, none of them apparently identifying as “white male,” and with no apparent age diversity.
The next video introduces José, a double-victim: Afro-Latino. He says that both of his parents are doctors and that’s why he’s pre-med: “it’s in my DNA”. Is the learner supposed to consider the possibility that academic ability, conscientiousness, and other aspects of intelligence and personality are also in students’ DNA?
“Living our Intersectionality” features the following folks:
“I identify foremost as a very, like, spiritual queer person of color.” (a microaggressive person would say that this person appears to be an Asian female)
“I identify as ABC: African Black Caribbean. Female. I also have ties with the indigenous.” (She’s big enough that a chandler would likely recommend that any “ties” be at least 1/2″ in diameter, double braid, and secured with a cleat hitch.)
(nobody identifies at the intersection of “white” and “male”!)
Next slide:
“Many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice.” … We can’t just look at a person’s race or gender (or any of their individual identities) as separate categories. It’s the intersections that truly shape a person’s experience and influence both their opportunities and their challenges. This concept is especially helpful when thinking about issues of fairness and how people are treated in the world.
Let’s hope that President Harris deports anyone who answers “I agree”!
Heading out to exercise can be just as dangerous as sitting next to the fridge in governor-ordered shutdown for 8 months:
For example, student athletes who identify as women may face conflicts between their identities as women, athletes, and students. They may face pressures to be more aggressive and practice-focused, based on their athletic identity, more feminine and nurturing, related to gender expectations, and more studious and intellectual, based on their student identity.
Student POV: A student who identifies as black says that being black is “incredibly challenging” and “I am constantly in fear for my life”.
We find José again being victimized by his white roommates and their friends. The LGBTQIA+ guy with a stereotypical lisp is fine, but the white girl pressures Jose to go to the BLM rally. The white guy says he expected Jose to look different (i.e., more Latinx and less Black) and that “No offense, but it seems that All Lives Matter would be a better way to bring people together. You’re saying that your [Latinx] dad’s family matters less than your [Nigerian] mom’s?”
What to do about the near-Deplorable?
You can’t proceed until you select the last one.
White people, even those who appear to identify as “women”, make a lot of stupid assumptions:
Will this section be about charging $53,000+ for a few months of streaming video?
“Sometimes equality isn’t actually fair.”
Perceptions can be misleading…
Even the lowliest worm may have power:
Even if you think you personally don’t have power, you may still be participating in structural systems of power where you receive advantages or are considered the norm, while others are disadvantaged or considered outside the norm.
White males reappear in order to define privilege:
(Looks as though he is loving the phone that was developed for him by white and Asian engineers, but white male privilege won’t entitle him to a mobile data signal if he’s in the Boston suburbs!)
Did 9 out of 100 students go into the “wrong” bathroom by mistake or because it was actually the “right” bathroom?
But maybe the ASPCA should be called when a dog is forced to walk on three paws (the fourth being held by the human companion):
Not everyone is unhappy about our new all-virtual world:
There will be a lot of worries when students come out of Shutdown Joe’s multi-year shutdown, having raided the fridge every 15 minutes and never having exercised!
If God exists and is powerful and benevolent, why is it ever unsafe to pray?
Everyone can breathe easier starting January 20, 2021:
Who is oppressed? Someone who has made the mistake of not identifying as a white male…
If you’re morbidly obese and have sex with a different partner every night, you’re at risk of becoming a victim of “internalized oppression”:
One example from the Isms, Phobias, and Microaggressions section:
Some definitions on the topic that has consistently enriched this blog:
Transphobia is prejudice against transsexual or transgender people. Transantagonism includes hostility, aggression and violence towards trans people. Bathroom harassment is a form of discrimination that is experienced by many trans people, gender nonconforming people, and cisgender people who don’t fit stereotypical ideas related to their gender presentation.
There is no “I” in “Team” and there is no “I” (or “T”) in “LGBTQIA+”:
Know that LGBQA+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and asexual (plus many other associated identities).
Understand that asexuality is a sexual orientation. Asexual people generally do not feel a sexual attraction to others, though they may feel romantic attractions.
Be sensitive when talking with people about coming out stories. Remember that for some people these are traumatic experiences.
Language can create exclusion. Using identity-related words like “gay” to indicate that something is negative reinforces stereotypes.
If you have religious, political, or cultural objections to certain sexual orientations, remember that our community values include treating everyone with dignity and respect.
If a virtuous immigrant student follows a religion that condemns particular sexual acts, how can the community be said to be respecting this religion and the virtuous immigrant by covering hallways with posters celebrating those particular sexual acts?
The longest video is “How do you think about anti-blackness?” Maybe the problem wouldn’t exist if white people kept to themselves?
There is great diversity of experience among people of color. The term BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) is used to highlight some of these differences in history and experience. Respect spaces that are reserved for BIPOC people to discuss issues privately and safely.
Usually marked by a sense of disrespect or superficiality, classic examples of appropriation include wearing the traditional clothing of a racially marginalized group as a Halloween costume, or using a group’s symbols of religious or spiritual significance as decorative accessories. Inclusive spaces reject cultural appropriation.
José returns to be victimized for 1:04 by a white professor who says, on the first day of class, “we don’t get many people like you in pre-med” (certainly a true statement at MIT, since there is no pre-med major!).
Now it is time for Communications and the Stupid White Man reappears to offer an opinion regarding Navajo jewelry:
The software won’t allow the learner to proceed until this answer is corrected. (American universities own vast amounts of land, all of it stolen from Native Americans. If they care about Native Americans, why not pay rent on the stolen land?)
The software reminds students at private universities that they don’t have a right to free speech:
Speech has a special role in higher education and in the United States. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects a person’s freedom of speech and expression from government interference (so it typically applies only to state institutions, though some states create additional legal protections that apply to private institutions).
Most colleges and universities consider freedom of speech and expression to be a critical part of the pursuit of higher education, and are also committed to creating a learning community where students from all backgrounds feel welcome and can concentrate on their studies without facing hostility and discrimination.
This is followed with a bunch of links explaining the difference between “free speech” and “hate speech”.
The next screen has some great drawings:
White men do bad things even before the party starts:
The learner cannot proceed without calling off the “Salsa and Sombreros” party (were Goya-brand products going to be served?). Correct answer:
By thanking Luca for calling out his behavior and dedicating himself to learning more about cultural appropriation, Tanner is respecting Luca’s perspective and behaving as an ally. Everybody makes mistakes — part of being an ally means being open to acknowledging when you’re wrong, and taking the necessary steps to continually check your privilege and your behavior in the future, even when it’s uncomfortable.
There is a video tutorial on how to apologize after using the wrong pronouns. This is followed up with some text:
Be sensitive to the situation and any histories of inequality. A great apology focuses on the harm that was done and not on the person who is apologizing.
The key to apologizing well? Remember, it’s about acknowledging your actions, not focusing on the other person’s interpretation.
Here’s the 2-minute Self-Care video:
José returns to be abused during a pickup basketball game by a white man who claims to have been fouled: “maybe that’s okay where you come from.” Bad White Man calls José a “thug.”
José considers leaving school, but he is rescued by brave student services staff and other administrators. He decides to stay and says “I’m going to make a difference.” (Like the med students that I teach! None say that they want to go into lucrative specialties and treat patients who have money and/or private insurance. It is a mystery to me where plastic surgeons and dermatologists come from.)
There is a final exam, with pretty much the same questions as the pre-exam:
#NotFunny
With 16 wrong answers out of 16, the undergraduate is qualified to join the Delta Tau Chi fraternity:
More than 20 student organizations were found to have violated GW’s gender, race and religion nondiscrimination policy, according to an email officials sent to those organizations last month.
“The University does allow organizations to choose between open and selective criteria for membership – however, selective criteria for general membership into the organization must abide by University policy, including its nondiscrimination policies,” the email states.
Graham said officials contacted 23 student organizations like Girls Who Code College Loop, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Albanian American Student Association.
“Queens Movement is focused on women’s empowerment – how can we be more open and inclusive within our organization if our organization is meant to support women?” Morrisey said in an email.
“Despite these concerns, we remain committed to remaining a safe and empowering place for all of our sisters, regardless of their gender identity, and are confident that these new measures will not infringe upon our ability to do so,” Ades said.
“Title IX tried to protect students from discrimination, and sometimes the best way to do that is to create a space specifically for minority voices,” Mobarhan said in an email. “Orgs like DPE sorority, Women in Finance, GW Women of Color, Women in Computer Science and so much more are necessary for equal opportunity.”
So much great stuff here! GWU is 62 percent female (US News), but those who identify as “women” are examples of a “minority”. It is possible to be a “sister” even if one identifies as a “man”, for example. One will soon be able to identify as a “girl who codes” without identifying as a “girl”. Most confusing: How exactly does a person identify as an Albanian American?
(Readers who thought that I was merely an MIT nerd: I attended GWU as a 14-year-old growing up in Washington, D.C, then transferred to MIT as a 15-year-old sophomore. In other words, I transferred from a school that is now 62 percent female to one that was 17 percent female and called myself intelligent. Also fun: during my attendance there, a dispute arose among the trustees regarding how to make the school more “selective”. One trustee was quoted as responding, “There is a place for a mediocre university in this country and GW is it”. I personally had a great experience there. The professors were passionate about teaching and weren’t consumed with their labs, postdocs, graduate students, etc.)
Twenty-four years ago, California was consumed by debate over affirmative action. A charismatic Black businessman named Ward Connerly led support for Proposition 209, a ballot initiative to ban racial preferences in admission to the state’s world-renowned public universities. The measure passed with 55 percent of the vote and inspired similar changes in nearly a dozen other states.
This November, with an initiative to repeal Proposition 209 on the ballot, California voters will have the opportunity to change their minds.
How are the polls on this one? The New York Times says we need to go back to state-run racism and it will actually be the best thing for the Asian kids who don’t get into the colleges of their choice:
Ending racial preferences in a state university system harmed Black and Hispanic students while doing little to lift whites and Asian-Americans, a study asserts.
Buried in the middle:
Of course, selective university admissions is a zero-sum game. For every Black and Hispanic student excluded by Proposition 209, another student, probably white or Asian-American, took their place. But in focusing on those who got into the most selective U.C. campus at Berkeley, the study found that white and Asian-American students received little concrete benefit from the policy. Mr. Bleemer’s study suggests they would have otherwise enrolled in an equally selective college elsewhere, and had the same chances to graduate and begin successful careers.
The Asian kids weren’t harmed because they earn a lot of money anyway even if they don’t get to attend UC Berkeley at a low cost. But maybe this is just a restatement of what economists have found, i.e., that being smart enough to get into an elite college is a great predictor of income, but attending an elite college isn’t that relevant (summary: what is taught in college is of minimal economic value).
Readers: What’s your prediction about how the California righteous will vote on this one? Will there be a rush to hire Victimhood Studies graduates to restart the sort-by-skin-color system for college applications?
My prediction: Census data show that California is 39.4 percent Hispanic. There’s another roughly 6.5 percent who are Black (and whose lives therefore matter!). Ignoring that these categories may overlap to some extent, my prediction is that 45 percent of Californians vote for to bring back race-based admissions out of self interest (since it is designed to help Black and Hispanic applicants; this number might be off if a lot of the folks in the designated victimhood categories are ineligible to vote due to not being citizens). Then add 15 percent of the remainder. These could be white people who aren’t going to have children, for example. Voting to restore race-based admissions can make them feel good without any personal sacrifice or sacrifice for anyone they care about. That’s 8 percent. So the ballot Proposition passes by 53-47.
Related:
“Kamala’s America?”: California today boasts a fabulously rich technology elite; it’s also home to the highest poverty rate among the states, adjusted for costs, according to the U.S. Census. Under its largely one-party regime, notes liberal economist James Galbraith, California has seen inequality grow at among the fastest rates in the country. The state endures the widest gap between middle and upper incomes in the country—72 percent, compared with a national average of 57 percent.
“Prop 16 confusion: Affirmative action ballot measure struggling in polls” (NBC): … despite the recent political wave in favor of social justice, the ballot measure isn’t polling particularly well. Why? It may have something to do with the measure’s confusing wording. … “Watching a focus group with Black voters from Los Angeles, they all said no we won’t vote for this as it was read to them,” said Eva Patterson, who co-chairs the Yes on 16 campaign. “Then we explained that it was in favor of affirmative action and equal opportunity, and they all said, ‘Of course we’ll vote for this.'” … The latest polling on Proposition 16 shows 31% of Californians in favor, 47% opposed and 22% unsure. In the Bay Area, the numbers are a bit more in favor of the measure: 40% for, 41% against and 19% not sure. [It is “equal opportunity” because opportunity is based on skin color and anyone who wants to can follow Justin Trudeau’s lead in adjusting skin color?]
American Great Awakenings have tended to require public confessions of sin. Stand up in front of the congregation, admit that you’re a sinner, and let the healing and forgiveness begin. This was extended to Alcoholics Anonymous. Stand up and admit that you’re an alcoholic. More recently, this has been adapted for the Great Awokening: stand up and admit that you’re a racist.
The English department at the University of Chicago believes that Black Lives Matter, and that the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks matter, as do thousands of others named and unnamed who have been subject to police violence. As literary scholars, we attend to the histories, atmospheres, and scenes of anti-Black racism and racial violence in the United States and across the world. We are committed to the struggle of Black and Indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality.
For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies. We understand Black Studies to be a capacious intellectual project that spans a variety of methodological approaches, fields, geographical areas, languages, and time periods. For more information on faculty and current graduate students in this area, please visit our Black Studies page.
I’m wondering how this can be enforced. Suppose that an accepted student, a few months after enrolling (which means turning on Zoom from his/her/zir/their mom’s house?), decides “In demography and in the workforce, Blacks in the U.S. are being replaced by Hispanic and Asian immigrants, so in looking toward the future I would rather do a thesis in Hispanic Studies.” Can the university then expel the student? The department says:
all scholars have a responsibility to know the literatures of African American, African diasporic, and colonized peoples, regardless of area of specialization, as a core competence of the profession.
What if, after a year of reading these literatures, a student says “these authors are terrible compared to what Japanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans have written in English; I want to do my thesis on the lyrics of K-pop”? Does that student similarly get expelled?
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, more than 40,000 students take tests twice a week for the coronavirus. They cannot enter campus buildings unless an app vouches that their test has come back negative. Everyone has to wear masks.
Enough students continued to go to parties even after testing positive, showing how even the best thought-out plans to keep college education moving can fail when humans do not heed common sense or the commands from public health officials.
What the scientists had not taken into account was that some students would continue partying after they received a positive test result. “It was willful noncompliance by a small group of people,” Dr. Goldenfeld said.
Some of the students who tested positive even tried to circumvent the app so that they could enter buildings instead of staying isolated in their rooms, university administrators said in a letter to students.
Attending university is a privilege, not a right. Why not an RFID chip in the neck of everyone who chooses to attend a school? With sensors over each door, each student can be tracked, even if he/she/ze/they fail to carry his/her/zir/their phone. It works well for dogs. Mindy the Crippler has never complained about her chip. The universities can buy kits on Amazon for $14 each, which includes a one-time-use syringe. From a consumer:
Chances are, you are planning to use this kit to microchip your animal yourself and skip the vet visit. If so, you are going to be very pleased. It is super easy to use – implanting the chip takes just a few seconds and registration takes about 5 minutes online (the chip also comes with a snail-mail paper registration form if you prefer). You may feel a little squeamish about the process but as long as you implant the chip quickly and confidently, your animal will probably barely notice. I just chipped my 7 week old Lab puppy and she barely even flinched. It would be a good idea to have somebody hold the animal still so you have both hands free – the needle is EXTREMELY sharp and you don’t want to risk jabbing too deep or potential jabbing yourself.
So the chipping of undergrads could be done by the graduate students who live in their dorms and whose job is keeping them out of trouble. If a student who is marked COVID-19-positive in the database tries to go through a door with a reader, Campus Police is summoned automatically to shepherd the errant soul back to quarantine. (Or, to cut down on policing encounters and costs in the Age of BLM, doors on campus could be covered in plywood and replaced with PetSafe dog doors that open only in response to a recognized RFID chip. The 11×16″ standard size opening would give students an incentive not to load up at the dining hall.)
Mindy the Crippler proudly displays her chipped neck:
Despite publicly living as a black woman for years, George Washington University associate professor Jessica Krug admitted Thursday that she is actually a “culture leech” — who is white.
The self-proclaimed “historian of politics, ideas, and cultural practices in Africa and the African Diaspora” goes on to detail a lengthy trail of public deception.
Krug has a Ph.D. and is the author of the book “Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom,” which “interrogates the political practices and discourses through which those who fled from slavery and the violence of the slave trade in Angola forged coherent political communities outside of, and in opposition to, state politics,” according to her GW faculty profile.
Can the university, which I attended as a 14-year-old back in the Jimmy Carter malaise years, fire her? If so, on what grounds? Can they say “We hired you because of your skin color and we would never have hired such a weak thinker and scholar with white skin”?
(The Medium essay is pretty awesome. I think she deserves her job:
I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness. … my continued appropriation of a Black Caribbean identity is not only, in the starkest terms, wrong — unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial — but it means that every step I’ve taken has gaslighted those whom I love.
as the story unfolds, I think we will learn that she is primarily a victim:
When I was a teenager fleeing trauma, I could just run away to a new place and become a new person.
A friend who is a professor at NYU told me that so far they’ve found only five students who test positive for coronavirus. He says that this is a population of 24,000 undergraduates who converge from all corners of the U.S. (there are additional foreign students, ordinarily, but presumably they are being barred from entry to the U.S. due to the Trumpenfuhrer’s cruel entry bans that were imposed in February and March).
7,772 COVID-19 PCR diagnostic tests were performed on students (including those who arrived early for quarantining) at the two NYU testing centers — Gould Plaza and 6 MetroTech — established for testing students. Five tested positive; all are in isolation, are being monitored by the COVID-19 Prevention & Response Team, and will not be permitted to enter NYU facilities until cleared.
and regarding the prison camp that they’re running…
Last week, some 2,700 students moved into residence halls to begin a two-week quarantine period, which the University sought to support by opening the residence halls early and delivering meals (both at no cost to students).
The move-in went well; the meal service less so. The food service was an unprecedentedly complex undertaking for the University and its food vendor, Chartwells, involving delivery of three meals per day to the door of each of the 2,700 students’ rooms, a substantial percentage of which were individualized, specialized meals. We fell short of the plans we had in place. Chartwells has taken a number of measures to correct the initial missteps — including doubling the food preparation and delivery staff — that have helped, and we are continuing to make efforts to improve meal service for the quarantining students in the residence halls.
So the $80,000/year “hybrid” education starts with two weeks of incarceration!
American Pravda says that the U.S. has roughly 40,000 new cases per day. That’s nearly 300,0000 per week (reasonable length of infection for a 20-year-old?). Assume that there are two people who would have tested positive, but didn’t get a test, for every actual positive test? That’s close to 1 million. Based on a U.S. population of 330 million, we should have at least 1 in 400 people currently infected with coronaplague, right? But NYU had at least 7,772 tests and only 5 positives, only 1/4 the expected rate. What can we infer from this? The U.S. actually is testing everyone who might conceivably be positive? Asymptomatic infection is less common that we thought? Families that are rich enough to pay $80,000/year for an education that is no better than what is available at the local State U are not infected? What?
(How does the $80,000/year education actually work? Roughly one third of the students show up in person to any given lecture. The teacher tries to manage a forest of newly installed Zoom monitors so as to be able to interact with the two thirds of the students who are present via Zoom. There is a tech support hotline number in case the teacher is not a desktop computer system administration wizard. Classes start today.)
I have been asking Harvard undergraduates how their online learning experience was. “Terrible,” was a typical response. “I stopped watching after a month or so.” I asked a math major if she had been able to get help with proofs from teaching assistants during the purported virtual learning portion of last semester. “Only if I knew someone and arranged it privately,” she answered. “There was no structured tutoring provided.”
Asking around the rest of the U.S., the consensus seems to be that the bricks and mortar universities are nowhere near as good at delivering online education as the schools that have been doing it for decades, e.g., Western Governors University. Occasionally a student will praise an individual professor for being good at delivering an online experience, but that was never due to any institutional commitment.
How about for the fall? What have the brilliant administrative minds backed up by multi-$billion endowments managed to arrange? An Oberlin professor told me that the school was switching to trimesters and telling students to show up for only two out of three. He complained that it was a lot of work to redesign the curriculum, but said it was necessary due to a lack of dorm space. “We want every student to have a single room,” he explained.
Now that I’ve been defriended for heresy by everyone on Facebook I need to offend people before we are even friends. So, on this group video chat I said “The Chinese built a hospital for 5,000 patients in 10 days. Oberlin is sitting in the middle of farms and can’t set up a few extra dorm rooms in six months?” This was, I learned, a completely unfair comparison.
How about other schools? Most of them seem unable to come up with the idea of renting out blocks of hotel rooms to serve as dormitories (has there ever been a better time to get a long-term lease on a 400-room hotel?). Harvard, for example, is telling most undergraduates that they can’t return to campus (but the ones with a compelling victimhood narrative are welcome!). So the undergrads will meekly isolate in mom and dad’s house (well, actually mom’s house under most U.S. states’ family law systems, even if dad may not realize it yet)? No! Boston-area landlords are now besieged by groups of 6 Harvard undergraduates seeking to crowd into 2BR apartments. So they’ll be in Boston and they’ll get infected with coronaplague, but Harvard can argue that their infections occurred off campus. (See “12 People in a 3-Bedroom House, Then the Virus Entered the Equation”: “Overcrowding, not density, has defined many coronavirus hot spots. Service workers’ quarters skirting Silicon Valley are no exception.”)
From Harvard Yard in March:
Answer: 4 of them are in a 1BR apartment in Porter Square.
