SATURDAy, MARCH 14 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A
The coronavirus outbreak
would decide what to do by April
15.
“I cannot pretend, obviously,
that this is how I hoped this
semester would unfold,” ryan
wrote to the U-Va. campus. “No
one can.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]of michigan canceled its com-
mencement.
James E. ryan, president of
the University of Virginia, ac-
knowledged that the dispersal of
students will hit graduating se-
niors especially hard.
U-Va.’s graduation weekend is
scheduled to start may 15. on
Thursday, the university said itSizing it all up, Berea College
in Kentucky canceled the rest of
the school year and decided to
scrap or postpone commence-
ment in t he interest of protecting
the community. Graduates will
get their diplomas in the mail,
but the college said it hopes to
“find a way t o celebrate” a t a later
point. on friday, the Universityshocking for young people “be-
ing evicted from their college
campus,” s he said. Harvard made
exceptions for some students to
stay.
The Harvard Undergraduate
Council held an emergency
meeting to brainstorm ways to
push the administration to help
students. The council is steering
some surplus funds to help low-
income students cover the unex-
pected cost of storing their
th ings. Harvard had helped with
much of the cost, and the council
decided to make up the rest.
White-Thorpe said a friend
from Burundi does not h ave Wifi
at home, so she was trying to
decide whether to go to another
country or try to rent an apart-
ment in the United States.
Students were not the only
ones scrambling. faculty every-
where were moving into over-
drive to brush up on their online
teaching techniques — or, in the
case of some stuck-in-their-ways
veterans, learn those skills for
the first time.
In the past decade, digital
tools have seeped into higher
education in many ways. It’s not
unusual for a college student to
take an online class or to watch
lectures stored on a video ar-
chive. But what faculty are now
attempting — to change methods
midstream on a mass scale,
ditching face-to-face teaching
within a week or two — has few
precedents.
Te rry Johnson, a bioengineer-
ing professor at the University of
California at Berkeley, will be
lecturing from his laptop to 150
students in three classes.
“for me, the goal is for the
campus to get through a very
difficult semester, consistently
having patience and empathy for
students and colleagues and the
people all around them,” John-
son s aid. “If we can d o that, that’s
all we can expect from our-
selves.”
At Georgetown University,
Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor
of Jewish civilization, team-
te aches a course on black-Jewish
relations. He fears digital barri-
ers thrown up between profes-
sors and students will hinder
efforts to draw students out in
discussions — a hallmark of the
education universities prize.
“Can the technology accom-
modate the rather dramatic shift
in pedagogical style that some of
us have adopted over the past
decade — the move from passive
learning to active learning?” Ber-
linerblau asked. “I’m going to
guess that the answer is no.”
for college administrators, the
challenges are enormous. They
must protect their communities,
keep the academic calendar on
track, ensure that a new class of
students is recruited, watch out
for fiscal perils (including the
possible cratering of internation-
al enrollment) and decide
whether and how t o hold gradua-
tion exercises.parents complained their chil-
dren were being essentially
evicted even though they had
paid for housing and meals.
Colleges sought to assuage those
concerns, offering help for stu-
dents in financial need. But frus-tration boiled over.
frances Gleeson, 57, an interi-
or designer from Bethesda, md.,
said she had to take Thursday off
to retrieve her children. one is a
freshman at U-md. and the other
a junior at American University
in the District.
“They should have been able
to manage the kids here,”
Gleeson said as she loaded her
car outside a dorm in College
Park with bags and boxes of
ginger ale. “That would have
been a wiser choice than mass
hysteria.”
Gleeson is self-employed.
“If I don’t work, we don’t eat,”
she said. “I’ll be feeding the kids
for months that I did not antici-
pate having to pay for.”
At Princeton, the volatile situ-
ation jolted students. An online
petition urged school officials to
reevaluate the weight of mid-
term exams.
As exams took place, some
students wrote in the petition
that the burden of unexpectedly
packing to leave campus for at
least a few weeks, making travel
plans and worrying about the
virus was hurting their ability to
study. one wrote that she was so
paranoid about catching the vi-
rus and unknowingly bringing it
home to a brother with a chronic
illness that she was avoiding
friends and the dining hall and
was scared to go to a classroom
to take an exam.
At Harvard, where students
were told to clear out by the
weekend, the pace was frantic.
“People are very confused,
they’re very frustrated,” said If-
eoma White-Thorpe, a j unior
from New Jersey. The news was“It is difficult for me to write
this because the person who
tested positive is my wife Car-
mel,” UT President Gregory L.
fenves wrote in a message to
campus. “A nd a second member
of my f amily (who works at U T) i s
presumed to have CoVID-19 as
well. I have now been tested for
the virus, and the three of us are
in self-isolation.” UT added an
extra week to spring break and is
shifting many lectures online.
That dramatic announcement
followed days of drama that have
convulsed campuses from coast
to coast and even threatened
commencements.
“It is an earthquake,” said
William E. “Brit” Kirwan, a for-
mer university president and
retired chancellor of the Univer-
sity System of maryland.
Schools faced upheaval after
the September 2001 terrorist at-
tacks and Hurricane Katrina in
- But this crisis feels differ-
ent because its full dimensions
are still unknown.
“It’s developing so fast that
what we t hought w as t rue y ester-
day or last week is no longer
true,” said mary Sue Coleman,
president of the Association of
American Universities.
At U-md., students said their
goodbyes Thursday and hauled
gear out of dormitories to get
ready for the unexpected online
phase of their year when classes
resume march 30. for at least
two weeks, there will be effec-
tively no in-person teaching at
the 41,000-student university.
Some suspect the separation
will last much longer.
“I don’t think it’s hit me that
we probably won’t see each other
for the rest of the semester,” said
muhannad Alsenan, gesturing to
fellow freshman Chase Wilson as
they met outside Elkton Hall.
Alsenan, 18, a computer sci-
ence major, said he’ll take a train
or a bus home to Hershey, Pa.
Wilson, 18, of Annapolis, md.,
who is studying aerospace engi-
neering, said he expects the out-
break to get worse before it gets
better. “I’m packing everything,”
he said.
Among the first to feel the
effects: those studying in China,
South Korea, Italy and other
hard-hit countries. Thousands
have been forced to fly home
early since the outbreak originat-
ing in China gathered momen-
tum in January and began to
spread around the globe.
Some European airports were
a madhouse this week after Pres-
ident Trump called a halt to most
travel from Europe in a bid to
slow the spread of the virus.
Europe is the most popular
study-abroad destination for U. S.
students.
This week, as the outbreak
intensified in the United States,
growing numbers of colleges and
universities took unheard-of
measures to reduce the risk of
transmission through public
gatherings. Administrators said
they wanted to get ahead of the
problem before it became too
late. They saw dormitories, din-
ing halls, classrooms and other
campus meeting points as obvi-
ous places where the virus could
spread, endangering not just the
campus but neighboring com-
munities.
Princeton University, in New
Jersey, a nnounced monday i t will
switch to online teaching, and it
encouraged students to stay
home after spring break. T hat set
off a torrent of similar announce-
ments as many schools moved to
suspend in-person teaching for
at least two weeks or even the
duration of the school year.
Among them were major public
universities and systems in New
York, florida, maryland, North
Carolina and California.
By friday, the rush to online
teaching affected more than
1 million college students.
Questions and criticism in-
stantly arose. many parents pay
more than $60,000 a year for
tuition, room and board at pri-
vate colleges to help their chil-
dren obtain a top-notch residen-
tial education. other students
receive significant financial aid
and rely on meal plans and
university housing.
Stanford University, i n Califor-
nia, published frequently asked
questions after it switched to
remote teaching. one touched on
money: “Will tuition be reduced
since classes are online only?”
The answer: “No, we are not
going to reduce tuition.”
But Stanford said it would
reduce room and board bills for
the spring quarter in proportion
to the number of days students
are not living on campus.
Throughout the country, some
colleges from A
All facets of university life face an uncharted future
gregory BuLL/AssoCIAted Press
A student walks on the san Diego state University campus on Thursday, a day before the last day of in-person classes. As universities across the country mobilize against the
novel coronavirus, faculty are forced to brush up on their online teaching techniques — or, in the case of some stuck-in-their-ways veterans, learn those skills for the first time.“I just know that
being in class and
being able to ask
questions and being
able to physically
see the professor
writing down every
step is important.”
Rebecca Gibbons, u-Md.
freshman studying chemical
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