UNC-Chapel Hill moves all classes online after 130 more students infected with COVID-19
UNC-Chapel Hill will move all undergraduate classes online starting Wednesday, after 130 more students tested positive for the coronavirus, the university announced Monday.
The announcement follows reports of four COVID-19 clusters over three days in dorms, apartments and a fraternity house. UNC has reported 324 confirmed cases — 279 students and 45 staff members — since February, according to its online dashboard.
Those numbers may not reflect all the cases related to campus. Health officials have said students who provide an out-of-town home address or don’t self-report a positive test at a non-UNC-affiliated testing site are not immediately counted in Orange County.
“As of this morning, we have tested 954 students (last week) and have 177 in isolation and 349 in quarantine, both on and off campus,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Bob Blouin said in a news release. “So far, we have been fortunate that most students who have tested positive have demonstrated mild symptoms.”
UNC data showed 13.6% of the 954 students tested last week were positive — nearly twice the percentage testing positive on average in the previous three weeks. The university has reported four clusters of positive COVID-19 cases since Friday: in the Ehringhaus and Hinton James dorms, in the university-affiliated Granville Towers apartments, and at Sigma Nu fraternity. A cluster is defined as five or more positive cases.
The administration expects more students will want to move off campus with the switch to remote learning, they said in the news release. But they added that international students, student athletes, and students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to reliable internet service can remain.
Later Monday night, UNC’s law school said it also would shift to all remote classes on Wednesday.
“We feel that under these circumstances, it is the best decision for our community,” according to a statement on Twitter. “Although we will miss seeing our students in person, we are capable and prepared to provide an outstanding, quality legal education remotely.”
The N.C. Public Service Workers Union’s UE Local 150 responded to the university’s decision with a statement saying administration officials “gambled that they could contain a spread until tuition bills were locked in and lost miserably.”
The decision to move classes online “has come entirely too late,” said the union, which sued the UNC System on Aug. 10 on behalf of housekeepers, professors and other staff.
“It is a decision that the administration has taken on only reluctantly as a reaction to the mess they’ve created and the amount of national negative coverage they’ve received for failing to take even the tiniest amount of consideration,” the union said.
Sherryl Kleinman, UNC’s Emerita Professor of Sociology, said the plan “falls far short of what is needed.”
“The University cannot control the density of fraternity or sorority houses, those living in apartments in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and not even in dorms on campus,” Kleinman said. “Athletics may well continue. Guskiewicz and Blouin should be working with the chancellors and provosts at all other UNC campuses to return to the arrangements in March.”
UNC Faculty meeting
The news was released just ahead of an emergency meeting of UNC’s Faculty Executive Committee on Monday. The meeting — initially planned to discuss the rising number of infections — focused on the transition to online classes.
While they knew there would be infections, faculty members and administrators said they were surprised to see so many so fast.
Several infectious-disease experts and epidemiologists at the meeting said contact tracing so far has not found any infections transmitted in educational spaces, such as classrooms or labs, or between students and instructors.
“What we have found is that most of the transmissions have been within the social sphere of campus life, and that has been really challenging for us to manage and to hold people to the level of accountability that we probably needed to,” Blouin said.
“So I guess in terms of lessons learned, certainly, that was a big lesson learned,” he said.
Orange County cases climbing
State data shows Orange County’s number of new daily cases has been climbing since Aug. 12 — nine days after students officially started moving back into campus housing. One-third of UNC’s roughly 29,000 students live off campus.
The county’s numbers had fallen steadily since July 6, the data showed — but since Thursday, the county has seen double-digit spikes in new, daily cases.
As of Monday, Orange County had 1,475 positive cases, the state reported. Roughly 25% of those cases were reported in people ages 18-24 — up from 22% on Aug. 12 — while another 36% were reported among those ages 25-49.
College students also have been returning in Durham and Raleigh, but the number of daily, new cases in those counties continues to decline, data show. The number of new, daily cases statewide also is declining.
The data reported on UNC’s dashboard and Orange County’s coronavirus website may not fully portray the number of infections, since students tested off campus are tracked based on the address provided to the testing facility or whether they self-report their results to the university.
UNC students make up about a third of the 82,302 people reported to be living in Chapel Hill and Carrboro in 2018, unlike in Durham and Raleigh, where students are a much smaller part of the population.
That dynamic has fed concerns in Orange County about what would happen when those students returned to campus for the fall semester. In July, the county banned dine-in and alcohol sales at restaurants after 10 p.m. after students were seen hanging out late at night in downtown Chapel Hill restaurants.
Chapel Hill concerns, complaints
UNC students agreed before returning to campus to wear face masks, wash their hands and practice physical distancing to prevent the spread of infection. On campus, students adhered to the rules, administrators said.
“It’s the activity off campus that we just do not have any control over,” Guskiewicz said.
Jonathan Sauls, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, said UNC has steps it can take to enforce the rules and punish violators, up to and including removing the student from school.
But UNC would prefer to work with Chapel Hill or Carrboro to enforce the rules among students who live off campus, he said. Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger has asked UNC officials to issue the same penalties for off-campus violations of state and local COVID-19 rules as they have said will be in place for on-campus violations.
“We don’t want to shift the burden to the town,” Sauls said.
Chapel Hill police received three complaints in July and 10 in August, town spokesman Ran Northam said in an email Monday. Each violation was documented and the residents warned that a second visit could bring a citation, he said. None have been issued yet.
“We are staying in close contact with the University on these calls. We are working together to provide educational outreach, and the University may follow up further about how they will handle discipline,” Northam said. “When necessary, we follow up with the people to provide further information and education in an effort to avoid future visits.”
Police reported visiting only one house over the weekend for a loud party. They visited seven houses the previous weekend, reports showed. The report does not mention large-gathering violations.
One warning was issued to an off-campus student house for violating the governor’s order limiting gatherings, Northam said last week. He did not say which house was cited, but reports show police responded Aug. 8 to the Zeta Psi fraternity on West Cameron Avenue for a mass gathering violation and to a house on Isley Street for violating a state order.
Police, town and UNC officials also visited a house near campus shortly after students returned when a video spread on social media showing about 50 young women exiting the house without masks and physical distancing.
The Carrboro Police Department also has not issued any citations, Capt. Chris Atack said in an email to The News & Observer. They had 19 complaints in July and nine so far for August, and have contacted the Health Department about some business violations, he said.
On campus, Guskiewicz reported three students have been removed from their dorms for violating community standards since school began Aug. 10.
UNC’s Student Affairs office has received 197 referrals about on-campus community standard violations, UNC News Media officials said Monday. They did not provide additional information, citing privacy laws.
UNC Police are working with Chapel Hill to jointly patrol off-campus areas, spokesman Randy Young said.
How to report a violation
Serious violations, including crowds of more than 25 people outdoors or crowds not practicing physical distance, can be reported to 911. Minor violations, including people without face masks and small gatherings that are not following physical distance guidelines can be reported here:
▪ Chapel Hill: 919-968-2760 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday
▪ Orange County: Health Department, 919-245-6111 (leave a message if no answer), or online at orangecountync.gov/RegisterComplaint
▪ UNC-Chapel Hill: Fill out the Student Conduct Referral Form online at https://tinyurl.com/y3o7g66z, or call 911 after hours
Staff writer Kate Murphy contributed to this story.
This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 3:33 PM.
