Reversing a previously announced plan to bring back the student population at half the traditional size, Smith College in Northampton will hold classes entirely by remote this fall.
The decision to keep dormitories empty is not in itself a shocker. Even colleges planning to reopen campuses are approaching the fall with trepidation.
But Smith is the first college in the region to radically alter a previously announced strategy, something many colleges have warned could occur if they’re forced to “pivot” back to remote learning at some point.
Those references have normally referred to potential decisions once school was underway. Smith College isn’t waiting.
“Last weekend, our nation’s leading infectious disease specialists warned that the COVID-19 pandemic has entered a ‘troubling new phase’ in which the virus is ‘extraordinarily widespread,’ " Smith president Kathleen McCartney said in a message to the college community that explained the decision.
“As I write this, the United States has reached nearly 5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, and just last week, 18 states set new daily case records. Massachusetts, which had successfully reduced coronavirus transmission to one of the lowest rates in the country, is now seeing an increase in community spread,’' McCartney said.
She also cited studies showing that 40% of infected individuals never manifest symptoms but can still spread the virus, thus undermining the rigorous, frequent COVID-19 screening the college had planned.
McCartney also said reopening efforts elsewhere have failed. A secondary school opening in Israel led to the largest school outbreak in the country and possibly the world, and is being used as a prime example of the risk.
Most directly affected by Smith College’s reversal are first-year and sophomore students, and those scheduled to graduate in January. They were allowed back on campus under the initial plan, which was announced July 6.
Student government leaders and students with what were termed “extraordinary circumstances” were also in line for campus living in the fall. Juniors and seniors were to get their chance in the spring, if they so chose.
In remarks about reopening colleges in general, and not meant specifically for Smith, Baystate Health president and CEO Mark Keroack spoke to the problem of monitoring student behavior.
Keroack stopped short of recommending how schools should handle campus openings or closings. But he said an asymptomatic carrier, mixing with a crowd at a college party, could be enough to trigger a surge of the virus.
“I think we need to be watching this like a hawk. You have a half-dozen students at a kegger, and then the cat’s out of the bag,” Keroack said.
For Smith’s international students, travel to the United States might have posed a difficulty, anyway. Whether any students had made airplane reservations or secured off-campus housing for the fall, based on the initial plan, is unclear.
The first sentence of McCartney’s message Wednesday, though, was a reminder that she’d said from the outset that change was always possible.
“In my communications to you about the COVID-19 pandemic, I shared that if public health circumstances changed, Smith’s plans could change as well,’' she wrote.
In her July 6 message, McCartney’s next-to-last sentence read, “Rest assured that if circumstances change, we are committed to being flexible, responsive and willing to adjust our course of action to further support the health and safety of all.”
Until the all-remote decision was made, the college was allowing professors to individually determine if they felt comfortable returning to the classroom, or preferred a remote form of course delivery. McCartney said on Wednesday that, regardless of personal choices, staff and faculty had been working all summer to ensure a high-quality, remote learning contingency if that became necessary.
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