Some colleges insist on holding in-person classes for fall semester

Classes will look pretty traditional for at least one U.S. college this fall.

“The academic semester will begin with no modifications to the academic schedule, and courses will be delivered in the format indicated on student schedules, i.e., live, hybrid, digital, online,” officials at Casper College in Wyoming wrote to 4,600 students recently, with students expected to return to dormitories, desks and lecture halls on Monday.

The failed resumption of in-class learning at the University of Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University and elsewhere has sent shock waves across higher education as the fall semester gets underway. Still, for all the peer pressure to shut down, roughly one-third of the nation’s colleges insist they will go on largely as planned — in-person and indoors.

“Through our strong relationships with students, campus size, and rural location, Dordt is able to better monitor the well-being and safety of our students and the broader campus community in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Sarah Moss, spokeswoman for Dordt University, a small Christian liberal arts college in Sioux Center, Iowa.

Campus officials purchased infrared thermometers, banned overnight visitors for the fall, and are asking students to sign a “Community Covenant for COVID-19” to wear masks and take other health precautions in classrooms and hallways.

“We have a motto for the fall semester,” Ms. Moss said, “which is ’love God, love your neighbor, love yourself, love Dordt,’ with an emphasis on ’love your neighbor’ — we believe we are all responsible for helping one another as we face this pandemic.”

Dordt is bucking the tide. Two-thirds of U.S. colleges said this spring they planned to reopen physically this fall, a number that dropped below 50% by late July. It’s dwindling, seemingly, by the day.

On Tuesday, Michigan State University announced it was reversing course and asking students to stay home.

“It has become evident to me that despite our best efforts and strong planning, it is unlikely we can prevent widespread transmission of COVID-19 between students if our undergraduates return to campus,” MSU President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley, Jr., wrote in a letter to the East Lansing school’s 50,000 students.

But a mixture of schools — private and public, 4-year and 2-year, traditional, tribal and Bible post-secondary institutions — are still asking students to come back.

On Monday, the 2,300 students at South Georgia State College Ga., took seats in class. Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, will also require masks for its faculty and 5,300 students — though not in classrooms during instruction. And Dodge City Community College in western Kansas is asking students to self-monitor and get tested if COVID-19 symptoms emerge.

A study from Yale University and Harvard University researchers earlier this month said a vigorous testing regimen — twice a week even for those who aren’t showing symptoms — combined with strict behavioral regulations could dent — if not fully prevent — an outbreak of the novel coronavirus among a typical college campus.

Summer testing of thousands of employees and students at Cornell University produced only five confirmed cases of COVID-19, and President Martha E. Pollack announced a return to residential instruction earlier this month. Like others, she pointed to the benefits — not the threat — to public health from resuming studies.

“We made the choice to reopen based on our finding — counterintuitive though it may be — that an in-person semester is the best possible way for Cornell to limit the spread of the coronavirus, on our campus and across the Ithaca region,” she wrote.

Some schools argue COVID-19 is a threat here to stay, and the world might as well learn to deal with it now.

In an editorial on Wednesday in The Washington Post, Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun said the pandemic is “an ongoing threat to manage, not a brief blip in history,” in defending his decision to bring back the campus’s 13,000 undergraduate students.

Yale will similarly implement twice-a-week testing and contact tracing for faculty, staff, and students, with in-person and virtual classes beginning later this month.

Some critics say the universities’ bottom line is driving their decisions to stay open. Last spring, over 100 lawsuits were filed by students calling for refunds of tuition after the shift to online learning.

But school administrators deny that, and say critics understate the drawbacks of online learning and other alternatives.

“As an institution serving more West Virginians per capita than any other institution in the state, we have an obligation to provide students with the face-to-face education that they rely on,” Fairmont State University President Mirta Martin told The Washington Times, in an email on Wednesday.

“Our priorities have always been to protect the entire Falcon Family and to ensure that we can safely resume operations and classes this fall,” said Ms. Martin.