"STEM undergrads > non-STEM undergrads"
For me, this superiority complex heavily tainted the open campus, freedom of thought feel colleges strive to represent. Constant bragging about whose curriculum is more challenging is one thing, but suggesting without a whiff of substantiation STEM majors wont spread covid as much because they "understand the science and mathematical models"?
I feel like I'm back in the school library trying to focus on my work while some loud, insufferable 20 year old with zero work experience two tables away decries sociology majors.
Even if you forbade those students from coming to campus, how would you prevent students from leaving? Barricade them in? Our shortened fall break heavily encouraged students to stay on campus, but so many people left to see their families. It's not realistic.
The university is doing 1), as well as 2) to an extent by cancelling spring break.
Interestingly, they haven't opted to do pre-arrival testing giving the following justification:
> Based on the lessons we learned last fall, we expect students’ highest risk activities prior to returning to campus are likely to be traveling to campus and engaging in social activities before classes begin, so efforts will focus on arrival testing and a shelter in place protocol.
We will however have biweekly covid testing throughout the sem, which should be quite effective I think. For Fall, it was only weekly, which meant someone who got infected right after their test would not know until a week later.
I'm a bit skeptical with how much faith you put in those pursuing STEM degrees. There may be some correlations, but I think the delineation between "STEM and non-STEM" is oversold. Just because someone understands the correct thing to do re: COVID doesn't mean they'll actually do it
Regular testing is great, but it needs to be coupled with effective contact tracing to curb spread.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/notre-dame-coronavirus...
Maybe CalTech is very different, but I truly cannot imagine this at MIT. Students go out and party, even at top programs that have a disproportionate number of "traditionally nerdy" people.
Further, students aren't the only people present. Faculty exist, and some of them can bring Covid into the bubble. Administrators and staff exist, and some of them can bring Covid into the bubble. Once a few students are infected the "don't leave campus" plan does not achieve much of anything. You mention daily tests, but you can be infectious before a test is positive. And faculty will throw a fit about this.
> At Caltech, every undergraduate could understand the science and the mathematical models behind the policy, and see that it is correct.
There are STEM faculty at top universities who can't seem to understand the basics of how the pandemic functions. I cannot possibly imagine that every single 18-year-old who is smart and interested in science is going to be able to resist the enormous amount of misinformation about the pandemic and stay-at-home orders.
> Same for MIT and Harvey Mudd on the science aspect, although I'm not quite sure about MIT. MIT does offer undergraduate degrees in quite a few fields that aren't STEM, such as music, theater arts, global studies and languages, and several others, and I'm not sure how much STEM people in those majors have to take.
This is crossing a STEMlord line for me. Where my wife works, her department (in the humanities) has more teachers choosing to teach online than the computer science and physics departments. I think you are enormously quick to treat fresh out of high school engineering students as rational actors and everybody else as ignorant buffoons.
It is possible things have changed substantially over the years, but when I was there and definitely for quite a long time after, attending parties outside of campus was very rare at Caltech. Parties on campus were not common either, and most of them were parties within a house.
Caltech undergraduate life is kind of like being in a science monastery. It's not merely a school of nerds. It's a school of the people who nerds think are too nerdy.
On the STEM vs. non-STEM issue, I'm not treating "fresh out of high school engineering students as rational actors and everybody else as ignorant buffoons".
Everyone, without exception, needs to rely on expert opinion in some matters. No one has the time and capacity to become expert themselves in all fields that are relevant to all important decisions we have to make in our lives.
Sadly, in many of the areas where we have to rely on experts there are many with financial or ideological interests in getting people to not listen to the experts. This results in people being presented with conflicting opinions all purporting to be from or backed by experts in the relevant areas.
One of the best ways to resolve such a situation is, if you can do it, is to learn enough about the subject yourself to be able to look at the same information and methods that were used to produce the conflicting opinions and determine which came from actual experts and which did not.
In this one very particular area, namely determining if a particular set of behavioral rules and procedures to prevent a particular community from getting COVID and to limit its spread within that community if it does get in is scientifically justified, STEM students are going to be more likely to be able to do the type of evaluation described in the prior paragraph than are non-STEM students.
Would you say I'm being a "STEMlord" if I said Caltech students were more likely than, say, students in Julliard's piano bachelor's degree program to be able to evaluate evaluate whether someone making a claim about the theoretical upper limit on the efficiency of a classical thermodynamic engine is correct?
It works the other way, too. There are plenty of areas where I'd expect that Julliard piano student to be way better than any Caltech student at evaluating conflicting purported experts. It is just that those areas don't happen to be relevant to the specific problem of convincing a group of people that specific anti-COVID measures are correct.
If I personally knew a bunch of Julliard students who did a better job at this than Caltech students, then I'd certainly ask for some actual data backing up your claim. I see no reason why a freshmen majoring in CS is more likely to make healthy pandemic choices than a freshmen majoring in history.
Here's how I imagine it could work at Caltech.
1. For undergraduates, give everyone a rapid response COVID test when they arrive. Anyone who fails is quarantined until they are no longer infectious.
2. Once an undergraduate is cleared to move in, they must not leave campus for the rest of the term. This should be fairly easy. When I was there, most people only had to leave on weekend, because food was only served as part of your room & board contract during weekdays. That could be extended to cover weekends during COVID. Most other things that we used to leave campus for back then are now readily obtain online for delivery.
It is #2 that I think would be problematic at many schools. I recall that earlier in the pandemic some told students to not leave campus but they were not obeyed.
At Caltech, every undergraduate could understand the science and the mathematical models behind the policy, and see that it is correct. Also, violating the policy after you agreed to it would probably be seen as an honor code violation, which the students take very seriously.
Same for MIT and Harvey Mudd on the science aspect, although I'm not quite sure about MIT. MIT does offer undergraduate degrees in quite a few fields that aren't STEM, such as music, theater arts, global studies and languages, and several others, and I'm not sure how much STEM people in those majors have to take. (Caltech has non-STEM degrees too, such as English, but they still have to take the same calculus, physics, and chemistry that STEM majors have to take--when I was there that was two years of calculus and two years of physics and I think a year of chemistry, although I believe now it is just one year of calculus because nowadays almost everyone has had high school calculus).
For the military academies I assume the students would stay in line because they could be ordered to, and obeying orders is a big deal at those places.
3. OK, we've got a COVID free collection of undergraduates. But to have in-person classes we need someone to teach them. Professors don't usually live on campus, so the "once verified as clean never leave" approach won't work for them.
This could probably be handled by having professors on days they are teaching take a rapid response test in the morning, early enough to have results before their first class.
4. For graduate students that live on campus and are not married (or are married but their spouse is also a graduate student at the same school), a similar approach to that for undergraduates could work.
These graduate students could also handle much of the teaching of undergraduate classes, reducing the need for professors to come in.
5. For researchers not involved in teaching, and other staff, you could probably arrange so that they and the students (undergraduates plus whatever graduate students are serving as teachers) do not come in contact.
6. Reorganize classes as far so they are done Hogwarts style. Have separate classes for students living in Ricketts House, Dabney House, Blacker House, and so on.
Couple this with regular testing. The idea is that if someone in one house does get COVID, you find it with the rapid testing, and you can quarantine that house. Since they only have classes with members in their own house, there is a good chance this will catch it before they have spread it to the other houses.
However, just because it might be doable doesn't necessarily mean it is worthwhile.
It would take a lot of planning and a lot of schedule manipulation and choreographing movements around campus to make it so if someone does get it, it is found out before they had spread it beyond a well defined sub-population that is easily quarantined. That might require too much control, except maybe at the military academies.