March 12, 2020
My university, like many others, has extended spring break for one week because of the coronavirus outbreak. While I have serious concerns about how they are handling things, they are at least trying to attend to the needs of students. Our students are more socially and economically vulnerable than the average student who attends the more privileged universities in the region. We have homeless students who have nowhere to go if they shut down the dorms. We have students whose homes are not safe places for them. We have students who cannot afford to pack up on a few days notice and leave for the rest of the semester. We have students who may not be let back into the country if they were forced to return right now. For all of the shortcomings in the response from my university, and there are many, they actually do take seriously how vulnerable our students are and are trying to take care of them.
When these issues are brought up in conversations with friends from other, more privileged institutions, the most frequent response is: “It’s a public health crisis and extraordinary measures are needed for the good of the community.”
Let’s be real: COVID-19 may have required more protective measures than SARS or H1N1 did. At the same time, the massive failure on the part of the federal government in preparing for and responding to this outbreak is, in my view, the primary reason why universities are in the position they are in. That failure, however, does not absolve the universities from acting in ways that are more self-interested than protective.
Universities whose revenue (not to mention endowments) are in the billions are giving students maybe a week to leave for the rest of the semester, which will mean until September for most of them. They are forcing students to evacuate not because the zombie hordes are arriving. Not because we are being bombed by extraterrestrial martians. Not because the case fatality rate among students is greater than 2% (which would be high). But because they do not want to take responsibility for students who get sick. Universities with medical schools do not have the capacity, apparently, to tend to or quarantine sick students.
It is true that student dorms and dining halls are a hotbed of flu viruses, cold viruses, norovirus, the variety of bacteria that cause strep throat, etc. It is also true that young people can be asymptomatic (meaning they appear healthy) carriers of COVID-19. It is also true that the average age of faculty and administrators in many of these universities is right in the sweet spot where case fatality rates are highest. Sending students home makes sense if your primary concern is preventing your older faculty, staff, and administrators from being exposed.
To me, the question is not whether universities do nothing. The question is: what do you do to minimize transmission as much as possible WITHOUT putting unnecessary burdens on your most vulnerable community members and their communities. Of particular concern for me are students (including international students) and the employees of the contractors who work the low wage and important jobs like cooking, cleaning, and serving students, faculty, staff, and administrators.
The hard truth is: kicking students off campus will not contain the spread of COVID-19. Given the shortcomings in the federal response from before the start of the outbreak, containing the spread was probably never going to happen. “Evacuating students” may even contribute to it insofar as exposed and asymptomatic young people are sent home to places where there previously was no exposure. Evacuating young people to homes or communities with more vulnerable people and lower access to health care (this is the US, after all) sounds like some of us are paying a higher cost so that the more privileged can be safe from contagion.
From my perspective, it does appear that sending students home does nothing more than displace the problem and absolve the wealthiest universities from any responsibility toward the larger goal of public health: healthy communities regardless of economic or social condition. When the needs of the most vulnerable are simply a collateral cost paid by some for the benefit of the considerably more privileged, then you can spare me your concerns about public health.