Quick hits.
- Jerry Falwell Jr. submitted his resignation as president of Liberty University to the institution’s trustees, saying he was moving on completely from the institution. (The News & Advance)
- After a video of white Western Carolina University students using racial slurs circulated on social media, several of the college’s football players said they would sit out of workouts and team activities in protest. (The News & Observer, Winston-Salem Journal)
- Communications staff at the University of Colorado system have been instructed to have statements on “sensitive” topics — such as Covid-19, race relations, and the First Amendment — vetted by the president’s office, drawing criticism from one of the institution’s politically elected regents. (The Denver Post)
- Nine Greek organizations at the University of Pittsburgh have been placed on interim suspension for violating health and safety guidelines. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
Virginia colleges are steering millions to a new Covid-19 testing company. There’s a problem.
Several Virginia institutions, like the College of William & Mary, George Mason University, and Virginia Commonwealth University, contracted the New Orleans-based company Kallaco to provide Covid-19 tests for students to use before they return to campus. There is one problem: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told The Chronicle this week that Kallaco’s throat-swab test is not approved for at-home use. The FDA approved the test’s use only when a medical professional collects the swab.
Students were mailed test kits to swab their own throats, and those results could be inaccurate, meaning student with a false negative could come to campus and potentially infect others. Our Michael Vasquez has the story.
More Covid-19 cases on campuses.
Trends show that Covid-19 cases on many campuses will continue to increase or emerge when students return. Do you still find this section useful, or would you rather read about something else? Email me your thoughts: fernanda@chronicle.com.
- At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 31.3 percent of students tested for Covid-19 last week returned positive results. The system’s Pembroke campus has 66 active cases, and seven new clusters have been reported at North Carolina State University. (Indy Week, WBTW, The Technician)
- Ohio State University has had 80 students and 12 faculty and staff members test positive for Covid-19 in its first week of testing. (WCMH)
- The University of Alabama of Tuscaloosa has reported 531 cases of Covid-19 among its students, faculty, and staff members. (AL.com)
- At the University of Pittsburgh, 11 students and five employees have been confirmed to have Covid-19. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
- Iowa State University has reported 130 cases of Covid-19 in its first week of classes. (The Gazette)
- Two sorority houses at the University of South Carolina were put under quarantine after residents tested positive for Covid-19. (The Daily Gamecock)
Watch out for this reopening move.
Virginia State University canceled its in-person classes for the fall semester on Monday. The university had planned to hold only its first four weeks of classes, starting August 17, online. Students were allowed to move onto campus, and in-person classes were slated to start on September 14.
The university switched gears after several other colleges saw an increase in Covid-19 cases since reopening. In May, Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, threw cold water on college presidents’ confident plans to return to campuses in the fall. Pushing back start dates and later canceling in-person classes could be another emerging trend for colleges.
Quote of the day.
“As we know, the students have arrived, they’re back, and it’s a scary situation out there.”
— Ali Ramlawi, a restaurant owner in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the city council enacted a state of emergency ordinance to emphasize public-health rules now that University of Michigan students are back.
Footnote.
Zeynep Tufekci has a knack for saying things first. She’s also usually right. Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, has warned that Facebook could fuel the fires for an ethnic cleansing, and that YouTube’s algorithm for recommendation could lead to radicalization. During the pandemic, Tufekci pushed for masks when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended against wearing them.
Tufekci spoke with The New York Times about how she’s gotten so much right about technology and the pandemic. Read the conversation here.
