Talks with Torrey is a faculty and student Q&A discussing University of Idaho questions and issues. It was a Zoom event over the summer mainly utilized to discuss how COVID-19 would impact the Fall 2020 semester, but the event was recently brought back.
Joining Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Torrey Lawrence was Blaine Eckles, vice provost of student affairs and dean of students.
COVID-19 spread within Greek houses
- Several sorority and fraternity houses have had COVID-19 outbreaks this past week.
- The houses with outbreaks were not named in the meeting, but Kappa Kappa Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta and Delta Gamma members stated their houses were under lock-down, according to Argonaut coverage.
- Most houses are operating under surveillance testing and precautions.
- Any in-house members who recently travelled, have any symptoms or have been in contact with a person with COVID-19 will be tested.
- There is an initiative to test wastewater for both Old Greek Row and New Greek Row, which, have two different water systems.
- Public health officials have set a “10% guideline,” where if 10% of in-house fraternity or sorority members have COVID-19 or exhibit COVID-19 symptoms, the entire house must quarantine, Eckles said.
Adjustments to COVID-19 case reporting
- Scott Dorsch, a UI graduate student, expressed concerns of COVID-19 cases not being reported fast enough on campus. As of now, UI reports the prior week’s case counts every Monday.
- Eckles said official case numbers are reported to the university at least three times a day.
- Cases numbers aren’t made public immediately so UI has time to check for repeat cases, already isolated cases and any other contingencies which could interfere with accurate reporting.
- Originally, UI stated university-based COVID-19 testing would return results within 24-48 hours. At the start of the school year, there were reported delays in results being returned to those tested.
- “My understanding is now that we are in that window nearly all the time if not all,” Lawrence said. “I actually had a test about a week and a half ago and it took 12 hours and 26 minutes to get the results, which is about as fast as it’s going to get.”
Election Day
- ASUI is pushing to make Election Day, Nov. 3, a university holiday.
- Voters in several precincts can vote at the Student Recreation Center on Election Day. More details about voting are available in The Argonaut’s voting guide.
Spring 2021 semester
- There is no concrete plan for the Spring 2021 semester at this time.
- Lawrence said school will most likely resume on Jan. 13 with a week or two of online/remote instruction.
- Each student will be required to take a COVID-19 test upon returning to campus. The period of remote instruction is to ensure everyone obtains COVID-19 test results before returning to in-person or HyFlex classroom settings.
- There is no concrete plan for spring break at this time, either.
- Several other institutions have opted to cancel spring break while others have rescheduled or reformatted the structure, Lawrence said. UI is currently looking at which options would suit students and faculty best.
- A proposal will be made within the next few weeks.
- Any plan will result in a required testing and remote instruction period.
- Deloara Shoop, manager of Student Accounts, expressed concerns for the state of charges for online classes next semester. As of Aug. 24, fees will not be removed for online courses for the Spring 2021 semester.
- “The deadline for the setup of the spring schedule for departments passed last week…. We’re taking those numbers and using numbers from fall to try to predict what enrollment will be in those different types of courses,” Lawrence said. “We’ve had a lot of people look at those fees…and evaluate if we can reduce or remove those completely.”
- “We have some financial challenges and, even more concerning, we have a lot of unknowns still,” Lawrence said. “So, we’re not planning to waive them completely. Instead, what we are looking at doing is we can use what the prediction of what enrollment will be and figure out ‘can we figure out if we can cover that with fees for truly online classes before.’”
- Final decisions regarding course fees will be announced before registration.
Carter Kolpitcke can be reached at [email protected].