Cal Poly revises fall reopening plan after public outcry. Here’s what’s changed
A week before students are set to move onto campus, Cal Poly made some last-minute changes to its reopening plan for the fall term.
The updated plan, which comes after public outcry, requires that students present negative COVID-19 test results within 72 hours of moving into on-campus housing, according to an email sent to the campus community Tuesday evening from Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong.
In addition, the university is reducing its cap on the number of students living in campus residence halls from nearly 6,000 to 5,150, Armstrong wrote in the email.
Cal Poly has also slightly cut back the number of in-person classes offered from 13% to 12% — or 511 classes out of 4,300 offered — though faculty say this decrease is only because more teachers have chosen to teach their classes virtually.
Meanwhile, Cal Poly is taking a firm stance on what it expects from its students: Those who “engage in behavior that compromises the health and safety of the Cal Poly community” may face suspension or expulsion from the university, Armstrong wrote in his email.
The changes come as Cal Poly has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases among students and employees — with eight additional cases reported since Monday, bringing the university’s total to 45 total positive cases since March — and one week after Cal Poly faculty penned an open letter urging students not to return to campus. The letter has garnered more than 430 signatures as of Thursday.
Armstrong said his administration has worked closely with county Public Health Officer Dr. Penny Borenstein and health experts from the university to build and revise the university’s reopening plan.
At a news briefing on Wednesday, Borenstein said they are working to ensure Cal Poly’s reopening is as safe as possible.
“Our goal is not to absolutely stop the spread of COVID-19,” she said. “We know that that is not a possibility. But we want to mitigate the risks to the extent possible and create the conditions whereby we keep the disease within the campus community as well as on campus as low as possible.”
University faculty say the updated reopening plan is an improvement upon Cal Poly’s earlier plan, but only marginally so.
They’re calling for robust surveillance testing — which the university said it is working to achieve the capacity for — and more concise and clear information from the university about its reopening plans.
Cal Poly students and parents, meanwhile, are also confused and frustrated.
“It’s just kind of hard to understand what’s going on,” fourth-year architectural engineering student Alex Ameri said. “I wish we would have some way to have more direct input into what’s going to happen.”
Cal Poly reduces number of students allowed to live on campus
Students are due to move onto campus Sept. 3 to 13.
Just a few days ago, Cal Poly said it was planning to allow up to 6,000 students to live in on-campus housing. Now, they have decreased that cap to 5,150 students due to the large number of continuing and first-year students who have deferred their housing contracts to the winter term.
That brings the university’s on-campus population down to 60% capacity from 70% capacity.
As of Wednesday evening, the university had 4,606 housing contracts from students wanting to live on campus for the fall term, but that number may drop significantly by Friday, Armstrong said.
First-time students received their class schedules on Wednesday, and the deadline to defer on housing contracts was Wednesday before midnight, he said. Students with fully virtual schedules are encouraged to defer their housing to the winter term if they can.
“If they’re going to be home — which the majority of our students live more than 100 miles away — studying at home virtually and have the connection to WiFi, then that’s good,” Armstrong said at Wednesday’s SLO County Public Health news conference. “We’re also worried about students with economic and other disadvantages. We want them to feel comfortable to be on campus where they have WiFi and the ability to be successful, even if they’re 100% virtual.”
The university will house all students in single rooms, meaning no students will have roommates. Students living in on-campus apartments, however, will still share kitchen and dining space with a few other students.
Students living on campus will be able to get takeout meals from the school’s dining options and order food from GrubHub, which will accept their meal plan dollars, for a contactless delivery, according to the university’s website.
Additionally, the university will not allow any off-campus visitors in the residence halls, said Keith Humphrey, Cal Poly vice president for student affairs.
The university will clean residence halls on “a much more aggressive schedule than normal,” Humphrey said, and students will be supplied with masks and cleaning supplies to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The decrease in students living on campus adds to the university’s already long list of budget concerns, Armstrong said. Cal Poly has $27 million in coronavirus-related expenses and an overall budget deficit of $35 million as of late July.
“Fortunately, our enrollment is staying strong, but we are making our decisions first and foremost on health and safety, and second on student success,” he said. “There are some definite budget ramifications of our decisions, but we believe it’s the right thing to do.”
Ameri, who lives in the Bay Area and will not be living on campus for the fall term, is still concerned that any students will be living on campus. A friend of his went to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, he said, and was forced to move out of his dorm after COVID-19 outbreaks were tied to the university’s residence halls.
“It’s a terrible idea (to have students living on campus),” Ameri said. “UNC opened at about 60% capacity for students on campus. That’s about the same as what we’re doing.”
Students must have negative COVID-19 test results
In an additional effort to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak, Cal Poly will require students to take COVID-19 tests and present negative results within 72 hours of moving into on-campus residence halls.
Students who are not living on campus are encouraged to take a COVID-19 test before attending in-person classes, Armstrong said.
The requirement took many parents by surprise. Some are now finding it difficult to obtain a test for their children, especially those who live in another state and do not have any COVID-19 symptoms.
“Our county does not provide a 72-hour turnaround,” one parent, Marna Palsgaard, wrote on Facebook. “I’ve called our primary care physician, diagnostic labs and county health. They don’t want to test unless a person has symptoms.”
Another parent, Kelly Harrigan, is having similar problems getting a test for her son, who will move to campus on Sept. 4.
“I’ve called 10 places ... and none will test him as he’s asymptomatic, no underlying health conditions and he doesn’t work in health care,” she wrote to The Tribune via a Facebook message.
Cal Poly Campus Health & Wellbeing has tested more than 450 students for coronavirus since March but only provides testing to those who are symptomatic, according to a recent campus communication from Armstrong.
Cal Poly professor and epidemiologist Dr. Aydin Nazmi said the university is working to providing surveillance testing — which refers to testing students in regular intervals to better monitor whether the disease is active on campus — but is still in the planning stages.
“Since there is such a long latent and incubation period, and indeed in some people total asymptomatic infection, the possibility of passing the infection to others is high,” Nazmi wrote in an email to The Tribune. “Surveillance aims to ‘capture’ as many positive cases as possible — and then isolate them and quarantine their close contacts — in order to slow down spread, or even reduce incidence.”
But because the nation is experiencing a bottleneck for certain supplies and personnel to increase the number of tests available, it’s difficult to get to surveillance testing capabilities, Nazmi wrote in the email.
“At the moment, our team is planning for the most optimal surveillance protocol given our circumstances and population,” he wrote. “We will have a surveillance system in place, beginning with our existing capacity, but the details as to how fast that can grow, how often we can test, are still being finalized.”
Currently, Cal Poly has the capacity to test more than 600 students per day, according to a recent campus communication sent by Armstrong.
Students who test positive for the virus prior to arriving at Cal Poly will be required to isolate at home and not travel to campus.
For students who test positive while living on campus, the university has 117 isolation and quarantine apartments on campus. Those students will have meals delivered, private bathrooms and support from the school’s counseling center and other academic resources.
This story was originally published August 27, 2020 at 11:52 AM.
