Verbatim

*Hopefully for the next 3 months, anyhow!

What a spring and summer it was, with the house full of kids with pretty much nothing to do at all. Our electricity and water bills, our grocery bills, everything went up. But it was soooo nice to have everyone around (despite, obviously, the circumstances). 

Then Steph moved back into her apartment in Boston in July; she starts her new teaching job in a couple of weeks, and is already hard at work getting ready. She still comes by once in a while for various reasons (e.g., when the laundry room in her building is out of service!).

As for Pete and Julie, they both left for school this week. Both Colby (where Pete is a senior) and Wesleyan (where Julie is a freshman) have been working all summer to get ready for this, and their plans and protocols are nearly identical. Both schools decided to open at the end of August, go straight through with no October break, and then send the kids home for Thanksgiving. They'll then have study week and finals online so they don't have to go back to campus until January. Both schools have contracted with the Broad Institute (MIT/Harvard research nonprofit) to handle their Covid testing. Every student (and employee) will be tested twice a week, with results in 24–36 hours. Anyone who tests positive, and any close contacts, will be isolated (both schools rented out hotels in their respective towns in case there's a lot of them!).

Masks and social distancing will of course be mandatory, and every building will be cleaned every day. At the beginning there will be only grab-and-go meals available, and all classes will start off online. After a couple of weeks, or however long they feel it takes, each professor can choose to switch their classes to in-person or a hybrid model, or not. There are currently no sports. Both schools have an online "dashboard" just like the ones you see for each state/country. Everyone moved in to Colby last week and there were a total of 4 positive students, who were immediately isolated. This is move-in week for Wes, and so far they've had 0 positive tests.

I feel like Colby is especially safe, given that it's way up in Maine and has only about 1800 students. There are currently only 8 people in the whole state of Maine who are hospitalized with Covid! Even Wesleyan is pretty small—about 3000 students—but it's halfway between Hartford and New Haven, so I worry a little more about it. Even so, Connecticut has only 57 people hospitalized with Covid right now. (I get my statistics from this site, which lists each state and gives the number of new cases that day, the number of new deaths, the number of people currently hospitalized with Covid, and the positive percent rate. I tend to focus on the hospitalization rate, because that seems to me the one that reveals just how many people are getting really sick in any given area, despite how many people are getting tested or are positive but asymptomatic.) Both schools are relying on the campus community to look out for one another; obviously all you need is one carload of idiots to go on a weekend road trip and then come back and infect everyone around them. 

So on Sunday Pete went up. He has a car this semester, and we were going to go along in another car just to see his apartment, but once they said that no parents would be allowed in the student residences, we decided to forgo 7 hours in the car! So we packed the car within an inch of its life, and off he went. The apartment building was built by Colby a few years ago and is just gorgeous. Even some faculty live there! Every student has to commit to a certain number of hours of community service each week to live there. He and his five best buddies have a 6-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment with a beautiful kitchen and living room too. He sent us a FaceTime tour, but I hope we get to see it in person next semester!

Wesleyan offered that any local-ish families who wanted to drop off most of their stuff (but not their kid) could do so last weekend, so we drove down (90 minutes) on Saturday. It was really helpful for Julie to get to see where she'd be living before actually moving in, and it allowed her to rethink whether everything would fit and/or whether she'd need to buy anything else. She has a single room adjoining another single, which to me is the best of both worlds because you get the benefit of having a roommate but can close your door at night! (I never shared a bedroom in 4 years at Wes, and Pete never shared a bedroom in 4 years at Colby! So lucky.) She has a little balcony too, just big enough for a couple of chairs, which is a huge bonus because Julie does love her outdoor time. As at Colby, no parents are allowed in the residences, so she took photos and videos to show us. I also got to show her around a little bit and point out places she might be going eventually when campus opens up. A lot has changed there, but I still know my way around pretty well! Then we drove her back down today with her clothes and a cooler full of food for her mini-fridge, and left her there for good.

So, as I said, I feel quite confident after a summer filled with emails and Zoom meetings with both schools that they have done everything possible to design a safe campus strategy that works for their size and location. It will not be a normal semester by any means, but here's hoping they can make the most of it. 

And now Andy and I are home with the three cats and wondering why it's so quiet…