First, a measure of sympathy to the parents and guardians of Towson University first-year students, who just took a roller coaster ride. On Aug. 22, they were told all classes would be conducted by computer for the first week, but their students could show up anyway. So many packed up their kids, along with bed linens, towels, and Velcro tape (if you have to ask why, you’ve never decorated a dorm room) for the trip to college. Classes started Aug. 24, but then on Aug. 26, they were informed their sons or daughters or wards would be coming home by Sept. 4.
Certainly, it’s not difficult, in hindsight, to second guess the school’s initial decision to bring so many of its approximately 23,000 students back on campus with a mix of 15 percent in-person and 85 percent online classes, given how that proved untenable so quickly. The ground shifted when free on-campus testing uncovered a spike in cases.
As of last Thursday, at least 124 students, faculty, and staff had tested positive. A lot of colleges and universities across the country are doing their own backpedaling, some blaming super-spreader student parties; others, less obvious targets to explain the positive tests.
In the case of Towson, no single event was established by contact tracing, so it’s been attributed to a more general off-campus community spread. Whatever the cause, the concerns were the same – a heightened health risk that the university president believed outweighed the benefits of in-person instruction and on-campus housing.
The lesson here is not that Towson’s initial call was the correct one. It turned out not to be. It’s not even that Towson adjusted to changing circumstances exactly right. Time will tell on that front. But rather, it’s more like there are no absolutely 100 percent perfect answers, at least none guaranteed to address changing circumstances.
Had the school kept students away (especially with Maryland’s overall coronavirus positivity rates in decline), a lot of folks would have been second guessing that call, too. Towson’s president had to balance competing interests. And then had to reassess and do it again.
That’s inconvenient. It’s aggravating. And it’s messy in a way that one doesn’t expect from a bunch of scholarly folks with advanced degrees. And that, fellow travelers in a once in a 100-year pandemic that none of us is likely to see again, is exactly the point.
The discomfit we all feel these days is not just cabin fever, it’s the anxiety induced by all the uncertainty that accompanies the COVID-19 spread. In the coming weeks, a lot of institutions are going to face tough choices, not just colleges. Those private K-12 schools that believed they could conduct in-person classes safely? How about retailers? Restaurants? Even government services from postal delivery to trash collection.
Schools may refund certain fees and billing associated with room and board, but the essential transaction of higher ed – we give them money, they provide knowledge – will seem imperfect, the education lesser, the cost perhaps too high. But imperfection is all we have right now.
So the lesson is to be nimble, be ready to change, to roll with the punches and, as we’ve stressed before, to be kind. Goodwill can be tough to muster in a political season that is expected to be especially bare-knuckled (and truth-challenged), but it’s the best advice we have. For now. Check in again tomorrow.
– The Baltimore Sun
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September 01, 2020 at 05:00AM
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Editorial: When no answer is 100 percent correct - The Daily Camera
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