The University of Texas at Austin has laid out a comprehensive list of variables to be weighed before it reverses course, including high rates of employee absenteeism.
Photo: Jay Janner/Zuma PressColleges spent the first part of the summer deliberating how to reopen campuses and classrooms. Now, they are spending the remainder thinking through what kind of dangers it would take to close them.
By setting hard triggers for a potential shutdown, schools that are planning to bring students back to campus hope to avoid the chaos that accompanied their March closures. Creating those plans means considering possibilities like student or staff deaths, increasing infection rates and full ICU facilities.
There is no clear federal guideline for how to press pause, leaving colleges, along with states, cities and K-12 schools, on their own to figure out protocols.
Colleges and universities have assembled large teams to think through quarantine plans and contact tracing in case of an outbreak, as well as when to shut down dining halls and classrooms and how to weigh the risks of sending students home.
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Many schools have earmarked dorms or even nearby hotels as potential space to isolate symptomatic students; they’ll provide food and medical care and attempt to warn others who may have been exposed. But the number of rooms set aside varies widely, from a few dozen to hundreds. In the event of a crisis outbreak, students could be asked to leave some campuses on short notice.
The University of Texas at Austin laid out a comprehensive list of variables to be weighed to change course, including a student death, high rates of employee absenteeism, limited isolation facilities and a two-week upward swing in the percentage of tests coming back positive.
“From the very beginning of the process, one of the things we knew was that the situation was going to change over time,” said Arthur Markman, a psychology professor at UT Austin who is part of the planning group that helped steer the school toward a reopening. “We made an assessment of where we would like to be when we open as well as at various stages including when we might have to get out.”
Syracuse University has identified five levels of Covid-19 outbreaks and plotted out how it would react to each one as part of its plans for the fall.
Photo: Dan Lyon for The Wall Street JournalSyracuse University has identified five levels of outbreaks and plotted out how it would react to each one, from 10 or few cases that can be contained, up to an outbreak of more than 100 cases where transmission is occurring at a significant rate and “there is no realistic strategy to contain or control the situation,” according to the school’s plan.
If a worst-case scenario arises and the school believes it will take more than one month to “flatten the curve,” students would be sent home. They would leave with only what they can carry and everything else would be left behind. But sending students back home because of an outbreak on campus comes with risks—including exposing other travelers and additional communities to the virus.
Some schools are choosing not to publicize the bleak calculus for when continuing on campus would no longer be possible, including benchmarks for how many illnesses may be too many or when the local hospital’s ICU is too full, because it is too much of an admission that such awful developments could come to fruition.
“Most schools have a plan in place, but they will not release it,” said Luis Toledo, a data and policy analyst at the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, which is tracking how U.S. schools are dealing with the pandemic. “If you release it and acknowledge there is a possibility of students dying, it begs the question: Why are you bringing students back in the first place?”
Some schools are still focusing their efforts on the logistics of reopening, including housing fewer students in each dorm, installing Plexiglas in the financial-aid and registrar’s offices and fielding questions from faculty. Many institutions are hoping to avoid shutdowns by starting classes early, canceling fall break and sending students home for finals at Thanksgiving.
Liberty University in Virginia would move to at least a partial shutdown—stopping in-person instruction—if it gets to be seven days from reaching capacity in its quarantine spaces or the local hospitals are within 10 days of capacity for Covid-19 patients, or if testing for symptomatic people becomes unavailable, according to a plan submitted to the state. That would also happen if more than 5% of all students, faculty and staff have symptoms or test positive within a two-week period. The school would entirely close the campus and send students home if the infection rate tops 15%.
For the University of Kentucky, it is less about numbers than about trend lines, spokesman Jay Blanton said. That school will keep an eye on infection rates on campus and around the Lexington region and is checking nightly capacity at the university hospital. It may also need to shut down campus if personal protective gear becomes difficult to obtain, or its app that will allow students and staff to report their daily health status fails.
“It’s the combination of factors rather than one specific trigger or threshold,” Mr. Blanton said.
Colby College in Waterville, Maine, which is bringing students back to campus with a comprehensive testing protocol and mix of in-person and online classes, has set out plans for four color-coded levels of operation, with partial shutdowns of classrooms, dining halls and exercise facilities possible, if needed.
But it’s not as simple as saying they will move the safety level from yellow to the more critical orange level with five cases of Covid-19 on campus, or to red with 10 cases, President David A. Greene explained. For example, if there were 10 cases but they were all among students in the orchestra, easily tracked and isolated, he said, that might not cause as much alarm as fewer cases across multiple dorms and without clear connections, which may not be as easily contained.
Dr. Greene said he is in close touch with local hospitals to keep an eye on capacity.
“If we were in a position where we were overwhelming the local health system with cases that initiated at Colby, I would find that an untenable situation,” he said.
James Sullivan, who has one child heading into his junior year at Colby and another about to begin as a freshman, called the school’s preparation “a Cadillac of a contingency plan.” But he’s still wary of a midsemester pivot to fully remote instruction in the event that case numbers tick up.
“They’ve done so much to hedge against the possibility, but at the same time, they acknowledge it’s a possibility,” Mr. Sullivan said.
Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com and Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com
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