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Education Dive Brief
Reopening campuses is vital, college presidents tell lawmakers
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
June 4, 2020
Dive Brief:
In testimony before the Senate's health and education committee
Thursday, three college presidents outlined their plans to reopen
campuses for the fall term, detailing the potentially costly
precautions they would take to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
The trio of executives highlighted the need for robust testing for the
virus, contact-tracing measures and social-distancing tactics.
One of them, the president of an HBCU in Tennessee, said Congress
should invest at least $1 billion in minority-serving institutions
(MSIs) and double the maximum federal Pell Grant award to ensure
disadvantaged students can return to college.
Dive Insight:
College presidents have a vast array of considerations as they work
through how to safely restart campus operations for the coming academic
year. A majority of institutions that have announced their plans have
said they want to offer in-person classes if public health conditions
allow.
Two of the three presidents on Thursday's panel, Purdue University's
Mitch Daniels and Brown University's Christina Paxson, have been vocal
about their desire to reopen campuses. The latter wrote an essay on the
topic for The New York Times in April, calling it a "national priority."
Both described intensive safeguards they will implement to ensure the health of students and employees.
Daniels said Purdue will reduce the occupancy of its classrooms by
half, require at least 10 feet of space between students and faculty in
classes, and provide a mobile plexiglass barrier for added protection.
The university has purchased "a mile" of plexiglass to date, he said
during the hearing.
It will also rearrange campus living quarters, with most rooms housing
only one student, Daniels said. Officials have removed at least 1,000
beds, "leaving nothing to chance," he said, adding that the cost to
carry out these protections is in the "tens of millions of dollars."
Paxson said Brown is exploring the best way to test a wide contingent
of students for the coronavirus. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention has not recommended colleges screen every student for
coronavirus, but in her op-ed, Paxson wrote that institutions must be
able to test all students when they arrive on campus and throughout the
year. She told lawmakers the college will consider "batch testing," in
which a sample of students is tested. They might also test wastewater
in a residence hall as a lower-cost way to determine if students living
there have contracted the virus.
However, the measures the presidents detailed could prove expensive,
and therefore improbable for lesser-resourced institutions. And
coronavirus testing is not yet widely available.
It's noteworthy then, that the third president on the panel stressed
that Congress needs to bolster MSIs to prepare them for a financially
challenging year. Many private HBCUs, in particular, have been
historically underfunded.
Logan Hampton, the president of Lane College in Tennessee, said his
institution needs millions of dollars to start the academic year with a
mix of face-to-face and online classes. He said he would use federal
aid to set up an online infrastructure and purchase devices.
Doubling the maximum Pell Grant award — which is $6,345 for the 2020-21
academic year — is also important to help students impacted by the
coronavirus, he said. Several lawmakers noted that the virus
disproportionately affects people of color, as well as low-income
students.
The higher ed sector has been struggling. The latest round of federal
relief provided $14 billion, about half of which was set aside for
student emergency grants. However, distribution of that money has been
complicated by unclear and conflicting guidance from the U.S.
Department of Education, industry officials say.
The American Council on Education (ACE) has requested at least $47
billion in federal aid in the next relief bill. ACE reiterated
colleges' tough financial position in a letter Wednesday to Sen. Lamar
Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the chair and
ranking member of the Senate health and education committee,
respectively.
"Institutions are not asking for the federal government to make them
whole, but they need support if they are to have any chance at
returning to something resembling normal operations," ACE President Ted
Mitchell wrote.
Mitchell also repeated ACE's earlier request that Congress pass
short-term liability protections for colleges shielding them from
lawsuits associated with the spread of the coronavirus. Alexander
indicated his support for such protections during the hearing. Sen.
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also has sought to include liability
protections for businesses in the next aid bill.
But Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), attacked the concept during the
hearing, saying that colleges are trying to shed their responsibility
to secure campuses.
Paxson disagreed, saying she does not want "protection from being careless."
"If we are careless, if we don't follow guidelines, that's not
something that should be protected in any way, shape or form," Paxson
said.
Liability protections could ease stress for college officials, experts
say, given that the coronavirus is unprecedented and the legal system
hasn't established clear measures colleges should take to mitigate it.
Still, "bad actors" who flout health guidance should be held
accountable, ACE wrote in an earlier letter to lawmakers.
During the hearing, a couple of legislators asked about safeguarding
student-athletes from the virus, as well as the feasibility of hosting
sporting events on campus. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he was
worried that Daniels planned to allow fans back to its football
stadium, which seats around 57,000, even though the university would
not permit it to exceed one-fourth of its capacity, he said.
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