It’s not working. Send NC college students home.

Updated 8/26 with N.C. State closing campus dorms:

For colleges to keep their campuses open this fall, everything has to work perfectly.

That begins with students, who need to behave with a responsibility beyond their years with COVID-19. That means wearing masks and avoiding crowded bars. It means staying away from off-campus parties and smaller gatherings at the fraternity or sorority house. It means, quite simply, valuing college more than the college experience.

Schools also have to take extraordinary measures. They need to offer rigorous testing of the whole school community. They need strict rules and firm penalties for COVID misbehavior. They need uncommon discipline.

Instead, some college students in North Carolina and across the country are behaving like the bulletproof young adults they think they are. Testing is largely inadequate. Cases are rising. September hasn’t even arrived.

It’s not working.

Early last week, COVID outbreaks forced UNC-Chapel Hill to shift to remote instruction only. North Carolina State did the same but welcomed students to remain in campus housing before eventually closing dorms amid clusters of positive cases. Late in the week, East Carolina University officials announced it, too, was going online, and UNC-Charlotte said that it would pause in-person classes and housing for students until Oct. 1.

The same is inevitable at other schools. Unless they have extraordinary protocols in place or are small enough to create a testing/tracing COVID “bubble” for their students, colleges and universities should send on-campus residents home. That decision should be made now, while students won’t bring risk to the families and communities they’re returning to.

It’s no small irony that upperclassmen largely will get to stay in off-campus apartments and, at some schools, fraternity and sorority houses. Such off-campus housing is where colleges have the least amount of control, and it’s where problematic parties have contributed to the spread of the virus. But while it’s easy to blame students for this failed college experiment, schools also bear responsibility for plans that included far too much pleading for good behavior and far too little testing, tracing and other accommodations for when students inevitably fell short.

It’s no mistake that one of the rare COVID successes — at least for now — is Duke University, where widespread and regular testing of students and staff resulted in only 22 new COVID positives last week. Another early ACC school success: Virginia Tech, where officials have banned any gathering — on or off-campus — of more than 15 people. The school also has collaborated with Blacksburg police to monitor off-campus behavior. Last week, after being notified by Blacksburg officials about off-campus parties, the school suspended seven students for violating student conduct/COVID-19 policies.

Such draconian measures may make some college communities uncomfortable, but they might be what’s necessary for schools to manage the virus when they consider bringing students back. For schools without stern regulations and robust testing already in place, however, it’s too late.

We understand why schools felt they had to try. The bottom line of remote-only learning is unforgiving, and in North Carolina, the UNC Board of Governors insisted that schools bring students back despite concerns of faculty members and public health experts. Now, the same Republican lawmakers who appoint the BOG must come to the rescue so that COVID-related losses don’t do irrevocable damage to universities.

For now, colleges and universities need to learn from what went wrong this month and prepare more thoroughly for when conditions are right to bring students back again. The “college try” with COVID didn’t work. It’s time to regroup.

This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 11:58 AM with the headline "It’s not working. Send NC college students home.."