All weekend I've been thinking about whether our college campus will reopen this Fall. Across the country, college Presidents, Regents, etc are trying to figure out what the Fall will look like--will it be online or in person? Some schools are asking faculty to plan for both 1/9

Today's article from the President of Brown really captures the perspective of the campuses and Universities ( https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/opinion/coronavirus-colleges-universities.html). It captures the devastating effect being closed will have on campus budgets. I'm in no way downplaying that--it's truly tragic. But... 2/9

Their perspective is rooted in a general public policy approach which assumes (incorrectly) that we can't stay home and have to return, and is based on (in my opinion) extremely implausible assumptions about a college's ability to do contact tracing, testing, etc. 3/9

It also assumes, wrongly, that young people are not at risk. Just yesterday, the Washington Post reports that young people, showing no symptoms, are dying of strokes and organ damage at sky-high rates due to COVID-19 ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/). 4/9

We do our students, staff, and faculty a disservice by focusing only on mortality. There is just so much we do not know about this disease, such as its long-term effects on those who show mild or even no symptoms. 5/9

Until we deepen our understanding of this virus, how can we ensure that our colleges are safe? 6/9

While the Brown op-ed says that maybe large lectures classes would remain online, what about office hours? I routinely have 20+ students in my modest-sized office. "Small" classes of only 40ish students would be sitting shoulder to shoulder in classrooms 7/9

The idea that we just monitor everyone and isolate students who get sick will result in a number of students dying unnecessarily, and potentially many more being sick or having organ damage for the rest of their lives. Completely unacceptable in my opinion. 8/9

I get that campuses want to open--I really want to go back to campus too! But until (1) a vaccine is developed, (2) mass-scale effective testing and contact tracing is deployed community-wide, or (3) effective antibody testing is available, It doesn't seem possible 9/9