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By Owen Sizemore
On Thursday afternoon, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Chancellor Sharon L. Gaber sent an email to the Forty-Niner community outlining the university's plans for on-campus operations for the fall.
The short message began with Chancellor Gaber outlining the success of the UNC Charlotte community on keeping COVID-19 cases low on campus throughout the spring semester, as well as noting that vaccine distribution across the state of North Carolina is happening quicker than anticipated. Gaber articulated that "This is very good news, and it means UNC Charlotte is in a position to plan for a return to full operations in fall 2021". Gaber outlined several goals and expectations for what campus life will look like at the start of the Fall 2021 semester. These expectations include:
UNC Charlotte's expectations for the fall are a swift turnaround from current university operations, where just a small fraction of students live on campus with even fewer in-person courses. Dining halls, sporting events, and many facilities are also at a highly limited capacity. UNC Charlotte administrators are optimistic that the fall 2021 semester will see a return to pre-COVID-19 standards of living and learning, betting on the ability of students, faculty and staff to become vaccinated well before the start of the term. In a similar spirit of transitioning back to full-capacity campus life, the university also recently released a statement committing to an in-person commencement ceremony for the Class of 2021 from May 13-15. Exact details regarding the number of ceremonies and their times are to be announced on April 7. In-person academic courses are also planned to be offered for UNC Charlotte's Summer term, albeit at a limited capacity similar to current spring operations. NC College Beat has not found any guidance released by the university regarding their goals for Summer term courses or campus living. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Featuring Thomas Gessner, Lucas Thomae, and Owen Sizemore
NC College Beat has revamped the weekly roundup from the fall, providing regular updates on happenings within the universities and colleges of North Carolina through our new podcast hosted by Staff Writer Thomas Gessner. Listen to our episode using the audio player above or check out the episode notes below.
1. Duke University Students enter COVID-19 lockdown. Students have been instructed to shelter in place in their residence halls until at least March 21. This decision by university leadership comes after cumulative case numbers at Duke increased by more than 200 over the past week. (Further reading from Forbes) 2. North Carolina basketball programs kick off March postseason tournaments this week. UNC Chapel Hill will be appearing in the NCAA Men's Tournament as a No. 8 seed and NC State is a top contender for the women's tournament as a No. 1 seed. (Further reading from NC College Beat) 3. UNC Charlotte's Student Government Association Elections are in full swing. Voting will begin next Tuesday for Student Body President and Vice President, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior Class Presidents, and all college-based Senators. Student Body President candidates Dick Beekman and Jeremiah Williams took part in a livestreamed debate in McKnight Hall yesterday afternoon. (Further reading from NC College Beat) 4. The state of North Carolina enters a new phase for COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines. While masking and social distancing mandates still remain in place, capacity limits have been increased for concerts, sporting events, movie theaters, salons and more. Additionally, the 10:00pm-5:00am curfew has now been lifted, and restaurants may now stay open as well as serve alcohol later into the night. (Further reading from WRAL) 5. The Snyder cut and the impact of streaming services on college students. Streaming Services such as Disney+ and HBO Max are continuing to make new ground with a greater influence on college students and the filmmaking market, most notably seen in the rise in new platforms and the introduction of major studios releasing their films through these services. 6. COVID-19 Dashboard updates. As discussed earlier, Duke is leading North Carolina in terms of week-by-week cumulative COVID-19 case growth, a trend that has also been spotted at other private institutions such as Wake Forest and Elon. Alternatively, the rate at which new cases are identified at public universities like UNC Chapel Hill and NC State has been steadying in recent weeks. (Further reading from NC College Beat) ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Thomas Gessner
I don’t have to explain what a midterm is to college students. Or do I? Personally, I find the term and usage quite confusing. Now, it shouldn’t be confusing; it’s the middle of the term, and that is when an exam of some sort is given on the material learned up until that point. All of this makes perfect sense, and if college professors and universities followed this definition, I wouldn’t be writing a blog about midterms, but here we are.
Let’s break my schedule down to show why I am confused about all of this. My semester began in mid-January and I had my first midterm towards the end of February, so already there is a problem. The semester ends in mid-May, but my first midterm wasn’t even close to two months into classes, so what’s the deal? I thought, “Well, maybe there are more classes in the first two months of the semester, so everything evens out and the exam truly is in the middle.” I wasn’t even mad at this point. In fact, I was willing to believe that I had made a mistake and that the midterm was near the middle of the semester, but boy was I wrong. After my first midterm, I moseyed on over to my syllabi for my other classes to find my other midterm dates, assuming I would have to ramp up my studying to prepare for the slew of exams in the coming week. So imagine my surprise when I looked at my other midterm dates and saw they were all almost a month later! Okay, so my first class with the February midterm must have just been weird and out of pocket. Maybe there was some scheduling issue or something else that caused this midterm to not be in the middle of the semester. Then, I looked just a little bit closer at what was already in front of me, and I discovered the perpetrator in all of this. This class had two damn midterms. Two. Listen, I’m not upset at this fact because there are two exams instead of one, I’m upset because they are both called midterms. Based on the definition of the word, along with common sense, there can only be one midterm, because there can only be one middle of something, like a semester for example. To really hammer my point home, imagine you are running in a race on a trail and you reach a marker labeled as the halfway point, then after a while you reach another marker that also claims itself as the halfway point. Despite there being two halfway markers, that does not mean there are two middles of the race. When I am watching a two hour movie and stop it at an hour in, that is the middle; when I stop the movie 40 minutes then at 80 minutes, the movie doesn’t have two middles. I realize that these examples are just me bashing the concept of two midterms based solely on the simplistic, broken down definition of the word “middle”, but my God there are so many words in the human language that can be used, like “test”, “exam”, “quiz”, to name the obvious ones. And you the reader are probably asking, “Well, what if your professor has to have a midterm but wants two big exams before the final?” It’s actually not that complicated. If you have to give a midterm, then give a midterm, a singular midterm, not two, and if for some reason you don’t have to give a midterm, then give two tests and call them major tests or exams or whatever, just not midterms. As silly as this all sounds, and it is beyond silly that I am complaining like this, I will say that words and definitions matter a lot to me, especially pertaining to their usage in everyday life. At the risk of sounding even more pretentious, a quote from George Orwell’s 1984 that remains relevant (not just to midterms, but still) states: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” People need words and vocabulary to better think; without a wide range of words, it becomes more challenging to differentiate between ideas, concepts, and physical things. Let’s imagine that the only word to describe something good was “good”. If there is no other word or variation of “good” that can be used, then the human brain will have trouble classifying things that it finds to be well, good. Because of that, everything called good is placed on the same level. There is no nuance whatsoever between each “good” thing since the exact same word is used every single time. Okay, so I made my point about why myself and George Orwell care about words and language, but I swear it all ties back to the idea of a midterm and how professors and teachers are hopelessly twisting the definition to mean any exam that is not the final for the course. I pray our society does not reach a point where every examination is called a midterm, like if athletes took drug midterms, or someone gets "midtermed" for chlamydia. I like midterm as a word, in fact I like it so much I’ve used it an inordinate number of times, which could very well be detrimental to my whole argument here, but nevertheless, my point stands that the word midterm should be protected, and not used to describe tests that don’t occur in the middle of something. At the end of the day, there aren’t two middles, so we should stop acting like it. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Thomas Gessner
I once went on a religious retreat through my High School, and like most retreats we had this enigmatic speaker; he played guitar, wore flat-billed hats, and kept trying to hide the fact that he was a smoker. Mr. Smoker had one throughline over this two-day retreat, and it remains terrible advice in my eyes. As I sat in the rec center of a summer camp that was hemorrhaging money, he said to myself and the other unlucky fellows, “If you aren’t going to do something 100 percent, it’s better to do it zero percent.” I do a poor job of hiding my emotions, and my mouth was wide open in a state of complete disbelief. The logic of Mr. Smoker had no place in my brain, and my mouth was acting as a door, letting it leave to return to where it came from. I left the retreat thinking that this guy was a complete jackass, and I still think that. I mean, 99 percent is better than zero percent, even 60-70 percent. Just imagine not turning in an assignment and telling your professor, “I knew I wasn’t going to put in 100 percent effort, so instead of attempting to do it at all, I decided that not doing it at all was the right thing to do.” You’d probably leave the professor’s office with a wad of spit on your face and a scarlet letter stitched on your ass.
While I just spent a fair amount of time ripping this concept apart, as well as this perfectly nice man who happened to say an idiotic thing, there is exactly one instance where this statement is not wrong. Just one. College. And when I say college, I’m not talking about students or even the teachers, I’m talking about choosing to even have college happen during the pandemic. If students can’t be in person, learning in the classroom, getting the opportunities to meet other students to talk and share ideas with, why are we doing this? There’s a lot you can only do once, and being a freshman in college is near the top of the list in terms of importance. All I ever heard in high school was about how college is this unbeatable experience, just pure ecstasy, where not only you have fun, but you grow as a person too. People talk about college the same way they talk about losing their virginity, and for some those events are probably related. I had teachers that acted as though college was the reason that they could become who they are today (which, for me, was a little off-putting because they were mediocre at their jobs which they often criticized and did not get paid well to do). Regardless, college is apparently the best thing ever, and that starts with freshman year. And in my case, I was dying to get to college since my senior year of high school, where I was tired of the lack of control in my life, not having classmates who shared my same motivations, and living with my parents at home, listening to them complain about my presence and asking why I go out so much. Needless to say, I had some pretty big expectations for my first year in college. I was excited about the whole process: I enjoyed filling out the Common App, I had fun answering essay questions and doing research and going on campus tours, and I hadn’t even gotten to the actual college part yet. But, as one could probably figure out, those expectations I had created were forced to adapt to the coronavirus. I think I did a pretty good job mentally preparing for some online classes, wearing a mask, giving up the handshake for the much less germy elbow bump. When I got to campus in August, I felt happy to be in a dorm, have a new bed, a new desk, new dreams, and even one in-person class. I was sure that by next semester I would be in an uncomfortable lecture hall seat, and, mask or not, I’d have an infectious smile from ear to ear. Well, here we are, and I could not have been more wrong. I cannot name a single academic building on campus, and I have no idea what the insides of these buildings look like. The walls could be covered with pictures of me naked and I wouldn’t know. It’s not only that most students at Chapel Hill, including myself, don’t have in-person classes, it’s that people think this is okay. Zoom is the worst way to learn, and the students are being affected by it in a way that society is yet to see. No one learns better online, no one. It is not an effective substitute for in-person instruction, no matter what way you slice it. I have been academically neutered, and I know, in my heart of hearts, that I'm not alone in that feeling. Everyone is becoming progressively dumber from all of this, and this is where my point about only doing things once becomes relevant. Society has decided to push through and educate everyone well below 100 percent of their potential. At this point, if school boards and deans continue to prevent actual learning, why don’t we just call the 2020-21 academic year a wash? No one is going to take this year seriously looking back. It won’t be measurable to the rest of college, or even life, and if we are going to have that attitude, we shouldn’t bother trying to force our way through an inadequate college year. I can’t be a freshman in college twice. Looking back, I think it would have been the right move for whoever is in power to tell all the 18-year-olds to just sit this year out and relax. Let’s wait until we can do this right, instead of having this hobbled school year where no student is happy or given a real opportunity to succeed, academically or socially. Maybe this is a defeatist view, and too much time has already passed for any of this to matter, but in retrospect it might have been better to just coast at zero percent rather than go through with this 45 percent crap that has taken up my freshman year. When everyone inevitably goes back to school for real, it’s going to be a massacre for us. When I’m bored in class, I can’t just pull out my phone because I don’t particularly care about the size of Rasputin’s penis, or mute myself so I can have a conversation with my roommate about the Charlotte Hornets, or cook myself brunch while the professor drones on and on. Instead, I’ll have to sit there and feel absolute pain. Things could be a lot worse for me though, and I especially pity the students who cheat. Life will not be so easy for them when they no longer have the internet and group chats to give them the answers to exam questions. When in-person instruction returns I won't know any of the buildings on campus, so as a sophomore I will have to deal with the soul-crushing embarrassment of walking into the wrong classroom and asking someone where I’m supposed to be. Because of online school, I do not have the strength to do that anymore. It would be far too taxing on me, and I enjoy talking to people! The adjustment period is going to painful, and while an argument can be made that this year has given us Gen Z losers “character”, I can only continue to think of the utopia we’d have if I didn’t have to have a debate with myself every morning about whether or not I will leave my Zoom video on. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Thomas Gessner
Dating apps have quickly become a staple of phone lock screens around the world, and they are being used by all types of people, different genders, sexes, and age groups more than ever. But how are these apps being used amid a pandemic? The antithesis of romance that is the COVID-19 virus, a disease that spreads through close contact and touch, stifled many lovers' options to meet potential partners in conventional manners. But, apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble are providing new opportunities for individuals to participate in dating and relationships. In particular, one large demographic taking advantage of these services has been, none other than, college students.
Robert Kelchen, a blogger, professor and researcher who discusses higher education, has said that “campus life will be a combination of a monastery and a minimum-security prison”, and while there is plenty of evidence to support the latter comparison, college life for many is not celibate. Perhaps Kelchen underestimates both the lack of control and oversight a college has on its students, as well as the determination of students who may be away from any parents or guardians for the first time in their lives. This series of anonymous interviews with college students (all North Carolina residents who attend four-year institutions) asserts the idea that college-aged youth are continuing, or attempting, a proactive lifestyle.
The students were asked questions about their usage of dating apps in college during the pandemic, and from among that group there were a range of reasons for downloading these apps (Tinder being the most popular), but still, plenty of commonality remained. Hookups while being in an open relationship, friends with benefits, friends with no benefits, new relationships, long term sexual relationships; all were goals given in regard to dating app usage.
“The pandemic has made it hard to meet people so I’ve met some guys through there who I’m just friends with,” one interviewee said. Every student interviewed said that they intended to physically meet people they met on dating apps, despite the potential dangers involved with such an act. This is something not supported by most major dating services, who have been advocating for socially-distanced meetups or online dates, but college students are not on these apps to keep their distance from people. Every interviewee had already met someone they found on the app in person with the intention of a relationship and/or sexual activity. They also clarified that using these apps was “not necessarily because of the pandemic,” however. Maybe these excursions aren’t something that’s premeditated or particularly thought out, as one student seemed to infer. “I don’t really think about why I’m using dating sites, I just kinda use them,” he said. This statement suggests that this new crop of Tinder and Bumble users might not have a plan, especially in a more spontaneous period of their lives.
Every student interviewed cited COVID-19 as a reason why they began using dating apps, or started using them more frequently, but that’s not to say that students wouldn’t be on these apps if the pandemic never happened. In general, the college lifestyle has an undeniably large influence on the usage of dating apps. The middle section of Generation Z is entering a time in their lives without the same levels of supervision, and with a continued desire to connect with people on a romantic, platonic, and sexual level.
That being said, college-aged students are having less and less sex, per a 2018 study by the National College Health Assessment, which showed a five percent drop in sexual activtity among college students since 2000. For the fall of 2020 survey, only 6.7 percent of surveyed undergraduate students said they participated in vaginal intercourse in the past year, but this is higher than the percentage for the spring of 2019, which was 5.5 percent. Now, it seems counterintuitive, but maybe people like Robert Kelchen are looking at the impacts of the pandemic incorrectly. An age group that has been participating in sexual intercourse less and less every year could be motivated by a greater lack of human interaction to become sexually and romantically active. In this respect, the pandemic almost serves as a catalyst for college-aged kids using dating apps. Maybe the pandemic has reinvigorated college students, students who grew up with iPods and cell phones, students with a more intimate understanding of technology and apps than anyone else on the planet, and because of that have turned to something they can understand: Tinder, Bumble, etc. Of course, what is being seen here is a lot of correlation and circumstantial conclusions made using rational thought in the absence of hard facts. But the small group of students interviewed is helpful on an anecdotal level for comprehending this movement to dating apps. My hope is that these ideas presented will allow for greater thought and contemplation of how students have found connection in a world lacking just that. So don’t brush off these students’ mid-pandemic dating lives, because maybe they’re just ahead of the curve. Pretty soon, your own phone screen may be filled with some more yellow and red. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Lucas Thomae
UNC Chapel Hill will be moving to Condition 2 starting at midnight tonight, ahead of expected adverse weather conditions. Condition 2 will remain in effect until at least 12 a.m. Friday.
Condition 2 means that no in-person or remote classes will be held tomorrow. Mandatory employees must report to work while all others should remain off campus, the alert message said. In addition, the on-campus testing centers will be closed tomorrow. Orange County is under a Winter Storm Warning which will be in effect until 7 a.m. Friday. Significant ice is expected overnight, making travel conditions dangerous and opening up the possibility for power outages across the state. Duke Energy projected nearly one million power outages across North Carolina and South Carolina in a statement earlier today. Orange County Schools have canceled in-person and remote classes, while Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools will hold remote classes. The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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"It's not rocket science": College Students Share their Experiences Trading GameStop, AMC, Dogecoin2/5/2021 By Lucas Thomae and Owen Sizemore
On Jan. 26, Jackson Dempsey, a first-year student at UNC Wilmington, purchased $5,000 worth of Dogecoin, a relatively obscure cryptocurrency named after an online meme that was essentially worthless.
But this silly, albeit risky, investment may have paid off. At 6 a.m. on Jan. 28, Dogecoin’s value was just over one cent a piece. By 11 p.m. that night, it was skyrocketing towards eight cents. In less than 24 hours, Dogecoin’s value had jumped a whopping 600 percent. At the time of the writing of this publication, Dempsey’s Dogecoin holdings are worth around $14,000. “I got in when it was at a cent,” Dempsey said. “It definitely exploded after that.”
The rise of Dogecoin and other unorthodox investment options, like the floundering GameStop (GME), AMC (AMC) and Nokia (NOK), were part of a massively coordinated effort by amateur stock traders across internet platforms like Reddit and Discord to undercut Wall Street.
Professional traders had made a plan to short these under-performing stocks. This strategy involves borrowing shares of stock from a broker and selling them on the market. If the prices fall, the traders could then buy the stock back at the new lower price and return it to the broker, netting themselves a profit in the process. Simply put, if the prices of GameStop and other shorted stocks fell, the professional traders would make more money. However, retail traders in online groups like the subreddit r/WallStreetBets had a different plan. If they could mobilize a group from among their millions of community members to buy up these failing stocks and cause prices to rise, it could net them massive gains while also showing up Wall Street’s billionaires - and that’s exactly what happened. Dempsey first caught wind of this plan in a group chat where he and his friends discussed investing. “They were like, ‘alright, there’s going to be a run on it, we don’t know what's going to happen because big time people are shorting it, all these guys from Reddit are going to buy it’,’ he said. “So we didn’t know if there was enough volume going into GameStop and AMC to match that coming out from the shorts.” Dempsey eventually decided not to invest in GME or AMC, opting instead to watch it unfold from the sidelines. However, other college students from around the state jumped at the opportunity. Zach Hodges, a first-year culinary student at Guilford Technical Community College, bought a share of GameStop on Jan. 26 when its value was just over $100, selling it hours later for $380 a share. He did the same thing two days later when the stock price had dipped and then rose again. “Riding the aftermath of the GameStop thing actually made me money,” Hodges said. Eddy Velasquez, a first-year student at UNC Chapel Hill, took a similar approach, not just with GameStop, but other “meme” stocks like AMC and Nokia. He purchased them using money that he had received from a refunded scholarship last semester. “I gained a little bit of money, it wasn’t much,” he said. “I only bought, like, one share each and I made about in total, probably about $50.”
To manage their investments, Hodges and Velasquez both used the Robinhood mobile app, a stock and cryptocurrency brokerage whose stated goal is to “democratize finance for all.” The app has soared in popularity among young people for its ability to quickly turn anyone into an amateur stock trader with no upfront costs.
Dempsey, the student who put $5,000 into Dogecoin, also used Robinhood to make his purchase. He had been on the platform since his junior year of high school, and said he got more involved over the pandemic. “I tried WeBull a little bit and I almost set up a trading account with E-Trade, but Robinhood has just been the easiest,” he said. However, the platform’s egalitarian mission was called into question when Robinhood restricted the buying of GME, AMC, Dogecoin, and dozens of other shares on Jan. 28 in response to their unprecedented growth. The company denied that it had acted in the interests of the hedge funds, but rather in response to “surging market volatility.” Unsurprisingly, this move enraged the online community of retail investors, among them the college students that NC College Beat interviewed. “I think that’s just very unclassy of them,” Velasquez said. “Robinhood was supposed to be a way for lower-class, middle-class, anyone to invest, right?” Hodges didn’t buy Robinhood’s claims either, suggesting potential collusion between the platform and Wall Street. “The whole point is that the hedge funds got mad that we did what they’ve always done to us,” he said. Despite these students leaving the short squeeze with large gains, it was certainly a risky venture. Robinhood’s buying limits went to show that at the end of the day, the power structure of the finance world is still top-heavy. “Now with what’s happened and what’s going on, oh yeah, definitely eat the rich now,” Velasquez said. “If you’re really so scared of losing billions of dollars, yet you have billions of dollars left, why the hell are you so worried?” Not all college-age traders took such aggressive approaches. Kevin Aiken, a first-year Chemistry student at UNC Chapel Hill, had invested in AMC through Robinhood months before its explosion in value. He was, however, active on several online stock trading communities. “I didn’t buy it [AMC] because of WallStreetBets necessarily, but yeah, I was part of the WallStreetBets Discord server, a few of those stock servers and I had been looking on the live feed for Wall Street Bets at the time.” Aiken detailed that his interest in exploring the world of stock trading grew while connecting with groups at school and online. “It was something I had just been wanting to do and I think it’s very popular among people my age...a lot of my close friends do it as well,” said Aiken. Now that the dust has settled, Aiken is looking for more long-term options toward pursuing greater financial literacy and growth. He plans to move away from Robinhood and develop a more traditional investment portfolio. “I don’t want to do anything risky,” he said. “I’m not trying to play the market or anything like that, but I do want to learn and I think it’s neat to poke my head in.” With a greater motivation among young people to start investing, Aiken expressed that increasing financial literacy will be key for college students like him. “Maybe some of these investing companies should require people to take an investment course [prior to trading]”, suggested Aiken. Dempsey echoed this sentiment and called for schools to offer more personal finance courses. “You know, to be more financially literate would help us right now, because there are people losing a lot of money,” he said. Still, students like Hodges, who are riding high on their profits, are eager to take on the world of investing on their own. “I think it’s teaching people, because I did it myself,” he said. “So if I can teach myself and I’m not a f*cking genius then anyone can. That’s just the truth to it. It's not hard, it’s not rocket science.” ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By ShanaRose Johnson
Charlotte, N.C. -- On Jan. 11, UNC Charlotte Chancellor Sharon Gaber released a statement to the Niner Nation with some upsetting news. Not only had spring semester move-ins been moved back to February, but spring break had also been moved a month forward from its original date.
Instead of starting on March 18, Charlotte’s spring break will now begin Feb. 18. Not many students were happy to hear this news, among them Sophomore Nick Stone, who took his concerns to the next level by starting a petition on Change.org to move the break back to a later date. “I think it’s inconsiderate to all the plans that people have already made that cannot be refunded,” he said. “Given its placement beforehand, it gives a break for students after midterms. But [moving it up] two and a half weeks past the syllabus week seems pointless.” So far, over 1,900 students have signed to Stone’s petition. UNCC freshmen Olivia Fey and Lance Bumgardner both signed the petition after discovering it on Instagram and Facebook. “I signed it because people have travel plans that can’t be cancelled last minute or rescheduled,” Fey said. “And we aren't going to need a break in February after being off for a month, we’ll need one in spring as originally intended.” Bumgardner echoed similar sentiments about the change. “I think the break is too early and more kids will get burnt out later in the semester,” he said. Both students agree that the change won’t necessarily affect COVID-19 case numbers at Charlotte. “Most students won’t travel anyways [due to the pandemic],” Bumgardner said. “Honestly, I don't see how the decision is going to affect covid cases,” Fey added. On the other hand, Freshman Lily Boaz disagrees. “I didn't sign it because I think it's more complaining and that I think signing it won’t do anything anyways,” she said. “I think the faculty and decision-makers here at UNCC are doing the best they can with how uncertain things are going right now.” While students take their sides on the matter, the real question is what will UNCC’s response be? In the original announcement to Niner Nation on the 11th, Chancellor Gaber stated that the school's Student Government Association overwhelmingly advocated having a break, especially after the fall semester’s end on Dec. 23. Schools such as NC State, UNC-Chapel Hill, and East Carolina University have already announced that they have canceled spring break. “We understand that this revised schedule will require many of you to make changes to existing plans, and I can assure you these adjustments were not made lightly,” Gaber said. “However, they were made with the health and well-being of our community as our priority.” ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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By Lucas Thomae and Owen Sizemore
With the Fall 2020 semester finally out of the way, and many universities soon to begin classes for Spring 2021, students and staff alike are holding their breath that this semester is less chaotic than the last. Though many institutions were eager to bring a large number of students back on campus to start the academic year in August, this goal proved to be difficult, and in some cases unattainable. In the spirit of college academics, we created a COVID-19 report card for the many schools of North Carolina, highlighting their methods of instruction, housing, and overall ability to minimize coronavirus case numbers and outbreaks.
Appalachian State University App State began their year on Aug. 17, 2020 with a mix of face-to-face, hybrid and online courses. Notably, they chose to keep students on campus for the full duration of the semester, despite an extremely large university population and mounting case numbers and clusters leading into early October. The Good: The university boasted a relatively low positivity rate of roughly 3.1 percent throughout the Fall. This metric is comparable to other, smaller UNC system institutions despite App State being one of the largest schools in the system. The Bad: Overall COVID-19 case numbers saw a dramatic rise from mid-August to the beginning of October. Oct. 3 saw the highest number of active cases of the semester with 225. Further, the university saw cumulative case numbers increase from 99 on Aug. 17 to 1,126 on Nov. 25 when residence halls closed. The Ugly: App State identified an extremely high number of COVID-19 clusters throughout the semester. Of the 24 total clusters, 15 were identified in residence halls, six in Greek Life organizations, and two in sports teams. Final Grade: C- Although their effort to keep students on campus was ambitious, App State’s total number of cases and clusters was too high to warrant a better grade. NC State University NC State opened its doors to students for the Fall notably early, beginning classes on Aug. 10, 2020. However, high case numbers resulted in a mandatory campus move-out at the end of August, forcing the majority of students back home for the remainder of the semester. The Good: NC State’s decision to shift to virtual learning following high COVID-19 spikes severely de-densified their campus, dramatically slowing the increase of new cases among the university community. The Bad: Despite a largely virtual semester, the university still managed to rack up a high number of cumulative COVID-19 cases, with 752 total positive cases and a roughly 2.8 percent positivity rate. Their highest number of daily positive cases occurred on Aug. 22, with 88 total cases. The Ugly: Cases skyrocketed following the Fall 2020 move-in, with total positive cases spiking from a meager 36 to a massive 428 between Aug. 19 and 26. This prompted university leaders to send all on-campus students back home unless granted an exemption. Final Grade: D- NC State’s choice to allow students on campus in August despite high state and national COVID-19 case numbers proved to be a recipe for disaster, saved from failure only by their quick transition to virtual learning. UNC Chapel Hill Chapel Hill was the first UNC System school to bring students back on campus starting Aug. 3. Unfortunately, they were also the first school to bring students back home, asking on-campus residents to cancel their housing contracts after clusters of COVID-19 began to pop up. The Good: Chapel Hill’s quick turn around in shifting to all virtual learning and, ultimately, moving most of the on-campus population off campus saved their case numbers from getting even worse. On Aug. 17 there were 4,765 students living on campus, but by Sep. 18 that number dropped to 1,020. They set the precedent for other schools like NC State and ECU, who were also dealing with rising case numbers, to make similar decisions. The Bad: Over the course of the Fall, UNC reported 12 clusters of COVID-19 linked to residence halls, Greek Life, and student apartments. Of those clusters, eight were in residence halls, three were associated with Greek Life, and one was connected to apartment housing. The Ugly: Chapel Hill prepared only 73 beds in their quarantine dorms, a number so small that it seems ludicrous in retrospect. After the school saw their positivity rate rise to 13.6 percent by Aug. 17, those beds began to fill and capacity in the quarantine dorms very nearly reached zero. Final Grade: D- UNC was brave to be one of the first schools in the nation to bring students back to campus, but sending those students back home just three weeks later was certainly a major disappointment.
UNC Charlotte
Charlotte employed a unique strategy to combat the risk of COVID-19, delaying the move-in of most undergraduate students until the end of September. The university also limited the implementation of in-person classes to first-year courses, engineering, visual arts, and other subjects with a higher need for in-person learning. The Good: UNC Charlotte leadership took careful note of the COVID-19 situation both in the greater Charlotte area and on other college campuses, electing to delay the start of in-person instruction until later in the Fall. The number of students living on UNC Charlotte’s campus as a whole was also significantly reduced. The Bad: Charlotte still recorded its fair share of COVID-19 cases throughout the semester, with a total of 486 positive cases from July 1 to Dec. 13, 2020 and a 2.4 percent positivity rate. This number, however, also includes students and community members who did not live on campus this Fall. The Ugly: Despite a small on-campus population, UNC Charlotte routinely detected COVID-19 through their wastewater detection system and tested residence halls frequently as a result, albeit with relatively low positivity rates. Additionally, on-campus sports teams were a frequent target for case clusters, with a cluster being identified on the baseball team, football team, and basketball team, respectively. Final Grade: B UNC Charlotte was very cautious toward starting off the semester with in-person living and instruction. However, cases and clusters within the Charlotte community were still common. Duke University Duke’s position as a private university allowed it to gain a unique edge against other schools when it came to testing and contact tracing. Their extremely high testing statistics, combined with strict on-campus living and learning policies, allowed for a large number of Freshman and Sophomore students to live safely in Durham. The Good: Duke had by far the most comprehensive testing strategy of any school in North Carolina. They completed over 150,000 tests throughout the Fall, which included entry testing for incoming students, testing for symptomatic students and contact tracing, and routine survey testing for students with no symptoms. The school’s overall positivity rate was less than 0.1%. The Bad: To achieve such a high volume of testing and low positivity rates, Duke only allowed Freshman and Sophomore students to live on campus, with Upperclassmen learning entirely online. Duke specified that there were 8,873 students, both undergraduate and graduate, living in the Durham area in the Fall. The Ugly: Not much to say here - Duke’s ability to keep roughly half of their student population while maintaining an incredibly low COVID-19 test positivity rate was very impressive. Final Grade: A- Though leaving out upperclassmen, Duke was successful in maintaining a very safe in-person learning environment for Freshman and Sophomores for the full duration of their semester. East Carolina University ECU boasted one of the highest numbers of student cases of any institution in the country. After an explosion of positive cases, the school shifted to virtual learning and asked students living on campus to move out by the end of August. The Good: Almost no part of ECU’s response was good, other than the fact that moving students off campus was undoubtedly the right decision. The Bad: ECU has had over 1,700 total positive case numbers since they first started reporting prior to the Fall semester. The week of Aug. 23 to Aug. 29 saw 570 new cases, compared to 276 new cases the previous week, and 31 the week before that. The positive test rate from Aug. 23-29 was a staggering 26.8 percent. The Ugly: ECU reported a whopping total of 26 clusters of COVID-19 over the course of the Fall semester, more than any other school in the state. Fifteen of those 26 clusters were associated with Greek Life organizations. Final Grade: F What else is there to say? ECU’s return was a colossal failure on all accounts. UNC Wilmington Wilmington began its semester early, with on-campus housing opening on Aug. 15 and the first day of classes on Aug. 19. Throughout the Fall, the university struggled to find a balance between keeping students on campus and lowering the risk of new clusters and cases. The Good: Wilmington was relatively quick to respond to rising case numbers on campus, announcing on September 8 that on-campus students must shift to single-occupancy living. They also put forth considerable effort to implement various types of surveillance testing throughout the semester. The Bad: Despite a small initial on-campus population of roughly 3,600 students, cases climbed fast at Wilmington, with a peak of 38 new daily cases on Sept. 3. Smaller spikes were also observed in late September and mid-October. The Ugly: By early September, UNCW was running the risk of reaching its maximum capacity of quarantine and isolation beds. On Sept. 8, 47 percent of the 150 beds were in use, dropping back down to roughly 8 percent use by Sept. 20. Final Grade: C Wilmington’s case numbers peaked early and created an uneasy living situation on campus, but their decision to switch to single-occupancy housing helped prevent further major outbreaks. Other Schools UNC Asheville: The Citizen Times reported that the university had recorded just 25 total positive cases from July 1 to Nov. 11, likely a result of the tiny on-campus population. UNC Greensboro: Though allowing students to return to campus for in-person instruction, the school’s large commuter population likely played a role in keeping cases low, recording 313 total positive student cases since July 1, 2020. NC A&T State University: It is reported that A&T’s cumulative case numbers sit at less than 600 since the start of the academic year. The school reported 6 clusters throughout the Fall. Western Carolina University: WCU saw significant rises in COVID-19 case numbers in late August and late October, with weekly positivity rates of 13.2 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively. Final Word Looking back at their strategies for the Fall semester, many universities are taking a more cautious approach in the Spring. For example, UNC Chapel Hill has delayed the start of in-person instruction by two weeks until February 8, and UNC Charlotte modified its Spring academic calendar to push back move-in until February 18. Single-occupancy housing and limited in-person instruction are two key staples of many schools’ Spring plans. With the national outlook on COVID-19 cases looking grimmer than ever, it will be a difficult feat for the UNC System schools to make the grade this semester. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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On Sept. 23rd, North Carolina State University was one of the first of the UNC System schools to address the anxiety-inducing question that had been looming since outbreaks of COVID-19 forced most students off campus weeks earlier: What happens in the spring? In an email, the school announced to students that they would be welcoming them back into on-campus housing for the spring 2021 semester. The email requested that students fill out a form indicating their housing plans for the next semester by the following week. The announcement left students, who were in the middle of their first round of midterm exams, with a tough decision on a tight deadline. Here, three NC State freshmen give their thoughts as they anticipate their next-semester plans. Robert Kobrin Kobrin has been back at home with his parents since late August, being part of the initial exodus of students off campus. “It seemed like the normal college experience and then it kind of just all went downhill,” he said of his short-lived experience. “I know the university started restricting stuff about a week-and-a-half in, then it spiraled down from there.” Kobrin ultimately decided that he would move back on campus for the spring. “They’re saying that they have a lot of plans in place and that they have restrictions set up, and based on how other colleges have gone I was willing to take the risk.” When asked what NC State would have to do differently to avoid a similar situation to the fall semester, he responded, “Honestly, spend more money. I think you look at the successful colleges… the ones that are doing well are the ones that put money up front to test everyone on a fairly consistent basis to make sure their campus was more locked down in a way, and I think if State does that effort up front, things will be fine.” Kobrin believes that if NC State is to bring students back, they cannot panic if cases begin to rise. “Obviously when you have a big college you’re going to have cases, and I think they also really need to make the commitment to power through,” he said. “Which sounds bad, I guess, up front, but I think it’s safer for the students in the long run.” Cassidy Petrykowski Petrykowski, like Kobrin, has spent the past six weeks at home. She is less sure of her plans for the spring, however. “I’m actually genuinely surprised they are letting us come back to campus next semester, because I don’t really see what’s changed,” she said. On the housing form, Petrykowsi responded that she was interested in on-campus housing for the spring, but she is not committed to anything yet. “They sent out a form telling us that they would have us house individually, there would be no roommates, which I think is a nice gesture but I don’t know if it really tackles the real problem, which I believe is the parties,” she said. Petrykowski, who lived in the university’s honor college housing, said she never participated in, nor saw, large social gatherings taking place while on campus, yet she felt the consequences of other students’ actions just the same. “I think the administration has a duty to the students that are following the rules to deal with those that aren’t,” she said. “But at the same time we’re all adults, we all have a family that could be affected by this, so (the responsibility belongs to) both.” Chris Payne While most students were being sent back to their hometowns, Chris Payne stayed put. He was able to fill out a Special Circumstance Housing Special Request Form that allowed him to stay on campus through the fall semester. However, Payne didn’t think he was going to even have the chance to come back after the semester ended. “I figured they would send everyone home for Christmas and Thanksgiving and then just close down campus completely, so I was kind of surprised when they said they were going to have spring housing,” he said. Payne is skeptical that bringing students back will end any differently than it did the first time. “I kind of think it’ll be the same result,” he said. “Everybody is going to come back and they’ll send everybody back home, because they can’t really control what people are doing so the students are just going to go socialize and spread the virus again.” Payne says drastic measures must be taken to avoid a repeat of the fall semester, starting with a crackdown on the off-campus gatherings. “Close down Greek life, that’s the main thing,” he said. “The first big things, the first clusters, all came from the Greek Village and it's because they’re hosting parties, having events, and everyone’s showing up and spreading the virus all around campus.” Looking Ahead Payne was right in his assessment that the first clusters began with off-campus parties and Greek life events. On August 18th, the first cluster reported to students was at an off-campus residence that was known to have hosted a party less than two weeks prior. The following day, two clusters from sororities at Greek Village were reported. Of the 27 total clusters reported by NC State, ten were connected with Greek life and an additional nine were from off-campus residences. In the Sept. 23 email about spring housing, Chancellor Randy Woodson ensured that the university would take greater care to enforce social distancing rules. “Moving forward, NC State will more aggressively enforce violations of our community standards and state mandates on and off campus, by students and employees, in order to keep our community safe and well.” Additional steps being taken include shifting to single-occupancy dorm rooms, increasing capacity for quarantine and isolation dorms, and enhancing testing and contract-tracing capabilities. UNC-Chapel Hill and East Carolina University, both large UNC System schools with similar COVID-19 case numbers to State, revealed similar plans to bring students back to campus next year. What remains to be seen, however, is how well those schools will be able to contain the virus in their second shot at a return to quasi-normalcy. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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3/18/2021
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