College admins will blame students when their ill-conceived re-opening plans fail

Can most colleges and universities be re-opened safely while a pandemic rages? Absolutely not! But all too many are going to try anyway, and virtually all of the plans involve magical thinking about young college students leading an ascetic, isolated lifestyle despite university admins signaling that campuses are safe to re-open. The next stage, of course, will for admins to blame students for the failure of their harebrained schemes to work, and eventually this is going to involve draconian sanctions:

As colleges and universities across the country grapple with rising coronavirus cases, they are increasingly disciplining newly returned students for violating pandemic safety rules, and pressuring fraternities and sororities to stop holding events that violate bans on partying.

At the Ohio State University, 228 students have received interim suspensions for violating rules against large gatherings during the pandemic, the university said on Tuesday. Most of the students were living off campus, and have been asked to remain away from campus until their cases have been adjudicated; some have already been reversed. Violators who live on campus could lose their university housing if their cases are deemed serious enough, the school said.

Montclair State University in New Jersey, which reopened its dorms this month and began classes Tuesday, said it had already suspended 11 students from living in university housing for gathering without masks or social distance.

“Please understand, there will be no second chances,” school officials warned students in an email message sent over the weekend (not a text message, as an earlier version of this item said). “Any student who violates the safety protocols will be immediately suspended from housing (possibly for the remainder of the year), will be referred to the director of student conduct for disciplinary action and will be immediately de-registered from any courses or programs that have an on-campus component.”

Syracuse University suspended 23 students last week after a gathering on the campus quad that the dean of students decried as “incredibly reckless.” Thirty-six students were suspended by Purdue University after a party at a cooperative house. Penn State University suspended a fraternity for holding an unsanctioned social, and Drake University banned at least 14 students from campus for two weeks for partying.

In Florida, the president of the University of Miami, Julio Frenk, said the school had begun evicting students from dorms for violations, warning in a video that the university — which has had 141 cases since the start of the school year — would continue to monitor student behavior on and off campus

Given decisions to re-open, I’m not even saying that harsh enforcement of mask-wearing and social distancing policies is necessarily wrong; it’s probably better than the alternative of just sitting back and allowing more yet outbreaks to happen. But the problem is the initial premise. If it’s incredibly dangerous for students to engage in normal personal interactions campuses should not be open. And ultimately the bad consequences of re-openings have to hang on the university administrators making these decisions (and the policy-makers who have slashed funding from schools), not students who fail to live up to completely unrealistic expectations.