Brown Daily Herald

Pipatjarasgit ’21: President Paxson, since when has safety been your priority?

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 19:02:44 GMT

On Aug. 11, President Christina Paxson P’19 announced “modifications” to the University’s original fall 2020 plans released on July 7 (though the term “reversal” is more appropriate in my view). This announcement came the day after students were supposed to (but didn’t) receive their housing information, less than a week before the start of the pre-registration add/drop period and, most glaringly, less than three weeks before students were supposed to arrive on College Hill beginning Aug. 29. Ultimately, I support this decision, as I believe it is in the best interest of safety for students and the greater Providence community. But the suddenness of President Paxson’s recent reversal, juxtaposed against her April 26 op-ed for the New York Times, raises questions about whether she actually prioritized safety before.

Many other schools were putting safety first weeks ago through decisive actions and clear communications. Several institutions in New England that had intended to reopen in person have since backtracked and will be offering all fall 2020 courses online, such as Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory in Boston on July 22, as well as Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, on Aug. 5. Plenty of other schools along the East Coast have made similar decisions, including Princeton, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University and American University. Brown University stands out as having reversed course and deciding to start the semester all-online only after many other peer institutions had already decided to do so.

The reversal casts the viability of the University’s original plan into deep doubt. The need for a new plan seems to be an implicit admission that the University was unable to keep students safe under its previous plan. While Brown’s decision now appears to be the best option for keeping our community safe, the fact that the University’s reversal follows the decisions of many other schools raises a sobering question of whether or not safety, in Paxson’s adamance for reopening, had been a top priority up to this point. The University may have made this new, last-minute decision in the true interest of safety, but perhaps it is simply following its peer institutions because not doing so would be otherwise indefensible.

Paxson’s op-ed is perhaps the best example of her original commitment to reopening with little regard for whether the environment is actually safe. Paxson titled her piece in a way that speaks for itself: “College Campuses Must Reopen in the Fall. Here’s How We Do It.” The opinion piece focused on the economic harm that could be caused by not reopening college campuses, whereas the term “safely” was used a mere three times, suggesting that safety may not be Paxson’s guiding principle for reopening. Interestingly, Paxson makes her argument as if she were an infectious diseases expert, when in fact she is a health and family economist.

More importantly, the University’s messaging around safety and how it would have responded to safety concerns under the previous plan have become even less clear in light of this new change. “Colleges and universities must be able to safely handle the possibility of infection on campus while maintaining the continuity of their core academic functions,” Paxson wrote in her April op-ed. Furthermore, Paxson wrote, “Our duty now is to marshal the resources and expertise to make it possible to reopen our campuses, safely, as soon as possible.” If this were true, it would mean that a safe reopening, according to Paxson, is achievable; all an institution would need to do is simply take the proper steps. Therefore, the University’s last-minute decision to not reopen campus in September is indicative of one or both of the following: Either Brown failed in its planning for a safe reopening, or Paxson, a health economist but not a health care professional, exaggerated and overstated the realm of possibility for students to safely return to college campuses in the age of COVID-19.

What has changed in the state of Rhode Island since July 7, the day that Brown announced its fall 2020 decision? The seven-day average of reported deaths due to COVID-19 has remained in the low single digits since early July and has even been in consistent decline since then. It is also true that Rhode Island’s number of new, daily reported cases is significantly higher than it was on July 7. Paxson did note in a June 23 faculty meeting that she would reverse course in August if conditions worsened sufficiently. However, if we follow Paxson’s logic in her op-ed, this increase in rate of cases shouldn’t matter as long as the University can “safely handle the possibility of infection on campus,” which, as Paxson indicated, “universities must be able” to do. There seems to be a discrepancy between what Paxson promised in her op-ed and what would actually constitute a safe way forward. Paxson also maintained in her op-ed that universities’ plans should not involve sending students home in response to “upticks or resurgences in infections.” The University is clearly shifting, either for a month or for a semester, to remote learning, with the situation in Rhode Island having “deteriorated” within the past few weeks. Perhaps the University is hoping to avoid this problem of sending students home by not allowing students to return to campus in the first place, but this once again reveals a flaw in Paxson’s op-ed argument: The University is no longer living up to her confident claims that campuses will be able to safely reopen this fall.

Last-minute decisions and a lack of transparency provide for little student flexibility, and these patterns of action among University administration are not new: Brown’s reopening plan was announced on July 7, just five weeks ago, and students were asked to hastily make a decision as to whether or not they wanted to return to campus by July 15, just four weeks ago. Likewise, undergraduate students intending to live in University housing were told that they would receive housing information by Aug. 10, but the Division of Campus Life quietly changed this to the week of Aug. 10. Three weeks prior to the beginning of a semester is when universities and their students should normally be making their final preparations for the beginning of the semester. But instead, by pushing a necessary decision to the last minute, the University has confused and deeply stressed students. Many more last-minute decisions are likely to follow, and there appears to be no end in sight, harming the almost 85 percent of students who had been preparing to return to campus.

I am a rising senior, and even with my occasional criticisms, I have loved my time at Brown. Personally, this decision is disappointing, effectively eliminating my senior year experience. But as much as I want to return to campus and attend in-person classes, I am glad that Paxson and the University finally seem to have come to their senses, making safety their priority by taking the most extreme step needed to protect the community: keeping our campus population as small as possible. But this decision and its context, based in Paxson’s apparent newfound interest in safety, highlights the University’s conspicuous patterns of overpromising, underdelivering and turning its back on students, especially those facing, in Paxson’s own words, “financial, practical and psychological barriers as they try to learn remotely.”

Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit ’21 is a concentrator in anthropology, French and Francophone studies and Latin American and Caribbean studies. He misses College Hill dearly and can be reached at poom_pipatjarasgit@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

As fall semester nears, students already on campus voice serious concerns about living conditions

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 01:54:20 GMT

College students across the country are preparing for an academic year like no other: masks in near-empty lecture halls, regular nasal swab testing and no large campus gatherings.

For the limited number of students who will be permitted to return to campus in late August, healthy and safe dorm conditions are thought to be non-negotiable. But some students living in Vartan Gregorian Quadrangle (New Dorm) over recent months say living conditions have been anything but.

Ninety-six students currently live on campus, according to Tracy Mansour P’22, director of Residential Operations at the Office of Residential Life. In March, The Herald reported that over 300 students would reside on campus for the remainder of the semester. At the time, students remained in the dorms assigned to them at the beginning of the semester, but were soon consolidated to select buildings.

Of those students on campus now, 29 are residing in Block A and 10 in Block B of New Dorm.

The Herald interviewed 10 students who have lived or are currently living in the buildings since the COVID-19 pandemic closed campus. They painted a murky picture of inconsistent living conditions, irregular communication between students and staff and mixed levels of confidence in the University as the fall semester approaches.

“The safety of our students, staff, and members of the campus community is of paramount importance to Facilities Management,” Assistant Vice President for Facilities Operations Paul Armas wrote in an email to The Herald.

While some students were satisfied with their accommodations, others shared concerns about the cleanliness of communal spaces and recounted troubling interactions between students and staff.

Three students, all of whom are international and have been living in New Dorm since late March, agreed to speak with The Herald only on the condition of anonymity due to fear of personal repercussions. All three said they have been taking strict coronavirus precautions, only to feel let down by the living conditions offered by the University since it closed its doors to the majority of the students.

“I’m trying my best to stay calm,” one student said. “I just don’t feel safe here anymore.”

‘Spiders, Worms, Flies and Hair’

New Dorm is composed of a mixture of rooms with private bathrooms and four-bedroom suites clustered around communal living spaces. The Office of Residential Life told students their rooms would be cleaned prior to their arrival. Some students found their rooms cleaned and sanitized, but others were not so lucky.

Liz Kaplan ’22 opened the door of her suite to find it filled with relics of the rooms’ previous residents: stacks of newspapers, scattered alcohol bottles, crusty toothpaste and mysterious stains splashed around the sink.

“Just disgusting,” Kaplan said. “That’s really the only way I can describe it.”

And problems persisted past move-in, the students said. Communal bathrooms and kitchens have been mucky and smelly.

The three students who requested anonymity, all of whom still live in New Dorm, outlined some of the conditions together in a June 9 email to ResLife entitled, “Spiders, Worms, Flies and Hair.” Of the two bathrooms on their floor, one shower had no hot water and the one that did had a hair-clogged drain and dozens of worm-like crawling creatures, the students wrote.

“It is causing us a lot of stress and anxiety, so hopefully there’s something that you can do to help us get rid of the bugs and hair,” read the email, which was reviewed by The Herald.

To date, ResLife has not responded to the email.

ResLife told students who had been approved to remain in residence halls for the remainder of the semester that “Our goal is to provide a housing configuration so that no more than two students share a bathroom,” according to a March email reviewed by The Herald.

But eight students said that they suspect they had shared a bathroom with many more — sometimes seven or eight other students — at some point during their time in New Dorm.

In an email to The Herald, Mansour wrote that the ratio established for bathroom usage was two students per bathroom fixture. “The per fixture ratio means that no more than two students are assigned to a particular toilet, shower, or sink,” she added. Mansour did not explain the discrepancy between this and the March email to students.

The state of the kitchen and bathroom eventually prompted Kaplan to request to move buildings. After a three-week back-and-forth with ResLife, Kaplan was granted a room with a private bathroom and kitchen in Barbour Hall.

“I understand they have a high volume of emails right now,” Kaplan added. “But I just feel that you shouldn’t have to fight to have liveable housing situations.”

Elise Ryan / Herald

Unmasked workers in and out

The students said the bathroom has been cleaner in recent weeks. And they’ve adjusted to the odd bug here and there, as well as the lack of air conditioning and unreliable hot water. But they added that staff behavior has them feeling perpetually on edge.

Students said they lost count of the number of staff members — University employees and third party contractors — circulating through the dorms, making it difficult to know at any time how many people they might encounter, and how many were or were not wearing masks.

Half the interviewed students described incidents of unmasked staff members congregating in hallways or unexpectedly entering their dorm rooms without notice.

Staff are required to wear masks on campus unless an exception applies, Armas wrote in an email to The Herald. “And if any student has a concern about non-compliance,” he added, “they are encouraged to be in touch with Facilities.”

University officials said they have been taking all the right precautions and trying to balance the need to ready the dorms for the upcoming semester while maintaining a safe environment for students continuing to live on campus through the summer months.

“Staff have been working at Brown since the very beginning of the pandemic to ensure continued services to students and a healthy fall return to campus,” Armas wrote in an email to The Herald.

Facilities Management circulated a notice to all New Dorm residents last week informing students that they would be conducting repairs in Block A and B — including in occupied rooms — on weekdays for the rest of the month, from noon to 9:00 P.M. or later.

“Additional check-points have been put in place to ensure notification has occured before any work in residence halls commences,” Mansour wrote in an email to The Herald.

But efforts to prepare the rooms for incoming students have left current residents feeling vulnerable.

Thousands of miles away from their parents, students don’t want to take any chances that could lead to infection. “We do not have any family here,” one student said. “If we get sick, there is no one here to take care of us.”

One morning, the student was woken up by the sound of a Facilities staff member entering her suite. When she asked him where his mask was, he lifted up the neck of his T-shirt to cover his nose and mouth. “It’s here,” he said.

Elise Ryan / Herald

‘Trying their best’

Not all students have voiced similar complaints. Mahira Farhin ’23 said that her overall experience in New Dorm had been “pretty good.” Because of the volume of take-out students were eating, trash quickly piled up in common spaces. But she said there wasn’t much the University could do about it.

“I think the school is trying their best,” she said.

“A lot of it did have to do with students not taking their trash to the trash room and not cleaning up after themselves,” Kaplan said.

Dhiraj Khanal ’23 was “initially skeptical” about the level of hygiene obtainable in a student dorm building. It’s difficult to shake the knowledge that half a dozen students are sharing the same facilities during the pandemic, Khanal said. But for the most part, he has not seen any problems.

Mohammed Akel ’23 was handed an assortment of cleaning supplies when he moved into his room. “It was a nice gesture,” he said. Akel’s room has a private bathroom which he is in charge of keeping clean. He said he has not noticed any insect-related problems. Though he rarely uses common spaces, he said he regularly notices cleaners working, all of whom have been wearing masks.

One morning, he too was woken when a staff member opened his door. “I think they just had the wrong room,” Akel said. “I think it was an innocent mistake.”

All students who voiced concerns about living conditions said they do not blame individual staffers. Rather, they are frustrated by persistently infrequent and unclear lines of communication between Residential Life, Facilities and students living on campus.

The year ahead

The three anonymous students concerned about their New Dorm living conditions shared their experiences with Zane Ruzicka ’23, Undergraduate Council of Students campus life chair. “He was the only person who listened to us.”

Ruzicka arranged a meeting with two Facilities administrators, which took place Aug. 4, to voice the concerns of the New Dorm students. “Leaving the meeting,” one student said, “I felt heard.”

Ruzicka hopes to work collaboratively with ResLife and Facilities, to ensure that other students won’t endure the same unsanitary conditions or the feeling that their concerns have been ignored.

“I am pleased that we are doing all we can to ensure a healthy return to campus in the fall,” Armas wrote in an email to The Herald.

A limited number of students are due to return to their dorm rooms in less than a month, while the broader student population may return in less than two months if public health conditions allow. The experiences of some current residents over recent months has left them nervous for the months ahead.

“If they can’t make it work for us,” one student said, “how can it work for thousands of people?”

Carroll ’21: Reducing the pandemic fees is good. Now we need long-term transparency and change.

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 01:30:19 GMT

Last week, the Brown Undergraduate Council of Students launched a campaign against what we deemed Brown’s “pandemic fees” and nearly 2,000 Brown community members and concerned parties signed our petition.

Wednesday, Aug. 12, the University responded in an email by waiving “a number of fees for the fall” and reducing fees for students “who are remote and not living in the Providence area … by more than $600.” Both of the pandemic fees called into question by UCS, the remote-learning fee and the leave-taking fee, were removed by the University.

As student body president, I’m sure I speak for all my peers on UCS in sharing how ecstatic and thankful I am that the University decided to accept students’ calls to action. However, this moment should not be lost as an opportunity to push for further financial transparency from the University.

The fees revoked this semester are typically added to students’ bursar accounts with little justification — and in some cases, many do not even know they are paying these fees at all. As much as I commend the University for removing these inequitable fees for this fall, I call upon Brown to provide further clarity and increased financial transparency for the future.

In addition, I ask that the University clarify how the “off-campus housing fee” will be used this semester, as Brown is still charging it to hundreds of Providence locals, on-campus students and off-campus students. The fee generally pays for many in-person services and events that will now possibly be inaccessible to all students this fall given the recent announcement that Brown may remain fully remote.

How On-Campus Students Pay the Remote Learning Fee

While the off-campus housing fee, officially the “non-resident/commuter fee,” was recently removed for remote learners following UCS’s petition and the change to the University’s fall plan, the $920-per-year fee has long been controversial, with the University providing little-to-no clarification as to what the charge pays for. The University has only publicly clarified that the fee covers broad Campus Life Division “services and resources” with the only examples of these “resources” being “Faunce House, security services and off-campus information and listing services.”

Particularly for “commuters,” students whose families live within 30 miles of campus, it is hard to imagine why those from the local community should pay to live in their own homes, even in another state, with little-to-no access or need to come to campus during remote learning.

Further, what many may not know is that the non-resident fee is typically charged to all students, including those living on campus. For those living in Brown dorms, the fee is hidden in their housing costs and only billed separately when they move off campus. This means most students and families never even know they are paying this fee, which makes it impossible for them to fully understand their bills and advocate for themselves.

This issue will be exacerbated if campus reopens, applying the fee to even greater portions of the Brown community. Students from the Providence community, those stuck in leases and those without a stable home to return to will be the hardest hit by the full fee.

While the lack of transparency surrounding this fee is a general concern, it is even more egregious that students, including those living in the Providence area, will not have access to physical campus services and resources while being charged the full fee. And despite even increasing the fee by 3.72 percent since the last academic year, the University has failed to explain how it plans to provide comparable services online to make the fee worthwhile.

In light of this major accomplishment and the reduction in hundreds of dollars in fees following student activism, it is more important than ever that we push for long-term change and full transparency about where exactly our money is going.

While we don’t know for certain what exactly these “resources and services” are, it’s reasonable to assume that the costs of huge Campus Life events, such as the Student Activities Office’s annual Halloween Extravaganza, were included in that budget. This event, for example, provided hundreds of students all-you-can-eat food and activities like pumpkin decorating and a live haunted house. It is difficult to imagine how a Zoom event, or even a socially-distanced service for 15 people, will cost nearly as much as the dozens of in-person Campus Life events supposedly formerly covered by the fee.

The huge sums of money no longer spent on in-person services should go back to students, including those who are from the local community, are unable to learn remotely or are otherwise unable to return home. This should certainly be repaid at a reasonable rate relative to the reduction in spending on events and other services and the closure of Campus Life community spaces, such as Faunce House and the Brown Center for Students of Color lounges.

If Brown is still charging full price to hundreds of students from the Providence community, those living on campus and local off-campus students, it still needs to be able to explain exactly where our money is going and how students will receive the full benefits of the fee during a pandemic. If Brown cannot explain this, it should not be charging any student increased fees for seemingly decreased services relative to a non-pandemic Brown University experience.

The Larger Problems

Despite significant progress in recent days, there is substantially more the University could do to respond in an equitable manner to this pandemic and the discounted campus and academic experience we will be taking part in. This school year, Brown increased tuition and hiked fees for all students by approximately $3,000 for the academic year. However, prior to UCS’s advocacy, Brown’s only planned fee reduction was waiving the semesterly $33 “recreation fee” for remote students.

Our calls for transparency and a reduction of fees were very reasonable, and we are glad the University thought so, too. But peer institutions have offered their students far more. For example, Princeton, Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University all cut tuition prices by 10 percent. In addition, Penn, which just reversed its decision to bring students back to campus, agreed to not increase its tuition by the pre-planned 3.9 percent. As the pandemic continues, I hope Brown continues to push to keep up with our peers in reducing costs, understanding the tough financial circumstances facing many students and that our experience will not be comparable in a mostly remote environment.

It is certain the University is hurting due to the pandemic, but so are Brown students and families. However, students cannot simply bill more, decrease spending or fall back on a multi-billion dollar endowment.

If the charges billed to students this semester are for legitimate services, the University should take the opportunity to highlight the labor of its employees and demystify the University budget by clearly explaining where our money is going. If it can’t, Brown students and families shouldn’t be footing the bill to cover the University’s losses.

Brown undergraduates to be tested for COVID-19 twice a week for foreseeable future

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 23:45:53 GMT

The University released its guidelines Aug. 11 for the free COVID-19 testing that will be required of returning students and employees during the fall semester. The summer testing pilot program currently in place will transition to this academic-year testing initiative beginning the week of Aug. 24. The new initiative will require routine, asymptomatic testing at least weekly for students, staff and faculty returning to campus or Providence.

Students and employees coming back to campus will be required to undergo a baseline test upon their arrival. For undergraduate students, arrival may range from late August to late September given the University’s new plan, under which the majority of students will not return to campus until the week of Sept. 21. “I can’t make an absolute guarantee, but the goal is that everybody will be tested on the same day they arrive or within the first 24 hours,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark said. Afterwards, everyone must participate in routine testing at least weekly.

University community members will be expected to undergo asymptomatic testing about every three or four days, Clark added, noting that this interval may change over time.

Any student exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms is asked to notify University Health Services. Health Services will screen the student and help arrange a virtual appointment with a clinician to assess the person’s health and schedule a symptomatic test if necessary, said Vanessa Britto, associate vice president for campus life and executive director of health and wellness.

Alongside these measures, asymptomatic, routine “testing is essential and really has to be one of the foundational elements for identifying and essentially stopping the community spread of (the) virus,” Clark said. Routine testing will “enable an understanding of the incidence of novel coronavirus in the on-campus population and help identify the proportion of asymptomatic positives over time,” according to the Healthy Brown website.

Testing “will help us understand exactly how COVID is impacting our students both on and off campus” and “understand what community transmission might look like,” Britto said.

Britto stressed the fundamental importance of asymptomatic testing to maintaining an understanding of the scope of COVID-19on campus. “When you think about the age demographic of the traditional undergraduate population … 30 to 50 percent of that population is asymptomatic. They don’t have symptoms. They (may) have the disease, they may be incubating the virus, but without testing, we wouldn’t know,” she added.

The announcement about testing guidelines follows the University’s prior decision to conduct randomized testing of those returning to Brown this summer as part of its pilot program. By assessing the testing process and considering several testing partners over recent months, the University developed an informed strategy for the fall, Clark said.

Testing Frequency

To settle on a rate for asymptomatic testing, the University sought “a balance between frequent enough testing so that you get a clear window into prevalence on campus and whether there is a community spread … and something that’s practical to implement,” Clark said.

Testing frequency and the means of administering the test will vary on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the University’s issued guidelines. Clark explained that to help determine how frequently University community members should be tested, the University considered medical and public health experts’ recommendations to develop two categories, “with a focus on the amount of contact an individual is likely to have with other campus community members:” high contact and medium contact.

On-campus, off-campus and commuter undergraduate students and first-year, second-year and Gateways medical students will be considered high contact, and will all be tested twice each week.

Other high-contact individuals will also receive tests twice a week.High-contact individuals generally include those who satisfy the following criteria: remaining on campus for at least three days a week; learning, teaching, advising or supervising others in person; or working around students, in residences or in places where social distancing may not be feasible. Graduate students and University faculty in Providence meeting these criteria would be considered high contact, according to the Healthy Brown website.

Josh Neronha ’22 thinks this testing rate for undergraduates is “great” because “having community transmission at Brown is pretty much inevitable, and I think the best way to alleviate that is testing,” he said.

But many graduate students and faculty may fall into the medium-contact category.

Medium-contact people will only be tested once a week. This testing rate applies to graduate students or faculty who take classes or teach remotely or who work in private, on-campus offices or areas conducive to social distancing, as long as they will not be on campus for more than two days. The goal is to eventually be able to provide testing twice a week to medium-contact graduate students and employees at their request, Clark said.

Those who do not fall into either category include students and faculty who will be completely remote, meaning they will not be teaching, studying or researching on campus, as well as staff who are permitted to visit the campus weekly for at most half a day. Medical students on rotations as third and fourth-years, as well as Alpert Medical School faculty, must follow guidelines for health care workers that are separate from those of the University.

Additionally, higher-risk groups may seek access to tests prior to returning to campus, but “we’re not obligating anyone to be tested before they arrive” on campus, as doing so may prove challenging or unsafe for some, Britto said.

Depending on the public health situation in Rhode Island, testing frequency regulations are also subject to change — but likely, not in the immediate future. If, for example, “the numbers in Rhode Island are drastically less than what they are now, maybe there’s a possibility of cutting back on frequency many months from now,” Clark said.

Testing Process and Location

A nasopharyngeal swab will be used for all those who qualify for routine testing. Polymerase chain reaction, which looks for viral genetic material, will be used to analyze the test. “We have the most information about this type of testing, and so we’re trying to keep the science and evidence in front of us and base decisions on that,” Britto said.

The University will not be administering antibody tests at this time but “may consider conducting antibody tests in the future” if there are developments in public health guidance or research, according to the Healthy Brown website.

The University has chosen the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center as the location for asymptomatic tests to replace the summer pilot testing site at 205 Meeting Street in order to accommodate the influx of students, Clark said.

The University’s third-party partner for the summer testing pilot program, Verily, will continue to provide the staff and infrastructure for this testing, Britto wrote in an email to The Herald.

To maintain social distancing, asymptomatic people will typically self-administer the test while under the instruction and guidance of observing clinical personnel. If the student needs or requests assistance, the clinician can administer the test, Britto said.

Neronha received a baseline asymptomatic test this summer upon returning to campus to conduct laboratory research. He described the process as “honestly really easy. I was probably in and out in five minutes.”

Meanwhile, personnel from University Health Services will conduct all testing for individuals with COVID-19 symptoms, taking the necessary safety precautions, according to the Healthy Brown website. Summer symptomatic tests have taken place at Rhode Island Department of Health sites, but this location will change to a University facility for the academic year.

The University also plans to create a separate annex for students with respiratory symptoms within isolation and quarantine residences, and “symptomatic students will be swabbed there in the respiratory clinic,” Brito said. “It will be efficient for the student; it will be efficient from the standpoint of the consumption of healthcare resources.”

Lifespan laboratory partners in Providence will quickly process symptomatic test samples in the fall, Britto said. But the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA will take over asymptomatic analysis with an expected turnaround of within 24 hours. It’s important that the result of a test comes back before the administration of a subsequent test for the safety of the community and so that a person who tests positive can be notified as soon as possible, Britto added.

Tracking and Scheduling

In implementing testing and symptom tracking, the University is continuing to work with Verily. Using Verily’s Healthy at Work online tool, Brown community members will have to complete a daily report of their symptoms and register for their tests.

Students who do not arrive for their scheduled test will receive follow-up communication, such as an initial reminder and request to reschedule, followed by additional measures as needed, the details of which are still under development, Clark said.

“We’re absolutely going to be mandating for those who are in isolation or quarantine to symptom track, and certainly we want people who are asymptomatic even to also be doing it,” Britto said. “On either side of this equation, it’s important.”

Britto also emphasized the importance of adhering to public health guidelines and health practices, including social distancing, hand washing and wearing face masks, regardless of the test results. “We really need people to do all three. It’s really, really important,” she said.

But if a student does test positive, PWN Health, which is the clinician network working with Verily, and UHS will contact them and provide further guidance, and the University will take appropriate action to ensure health and safety.

“If someone has a positive test, I want them to know that we’re here, we’re going to support people, we’re going to wrap services around them, we’re going to keep them comfortable, we’re going to monitor them closely, we’re going to be in partnership with them,” Britto said.

While students may feel relieved upon opening their inbox to an email from PWN Health confirming a negative test, “one of the most important things that we will stress this year is that a negative test does not mean any license to amend public health practices” since the result only applies to the time of testing and does not account for any exposure thereafter, Clark said. “There’s the danger of feeling a false sense of confidence.”

“It’s very easy for all of us, just from the standpoint of human nature, to develop issue fatigue, where over time you just get tired of following the rules. … So I would caution people to not let their guard down, to think about the fact that you may not experience symptoms but you absolutely could be incubating and therefore spreading virus,” Britto said.

A platform through which the University can publicly report data about testing results in the aggregate that are not linked to any individuals, such as, potentially, the weekly rate of positive tests on campus, is also being developed, Clark said. In doing so, the University would remain reasonably transparent without compromising privacy; individual test results would only be shared as legally required by public health guidelines and for contact tracing.

The University will employ its own contact tracing program established in tandem with the Rhode Island Department of Health. Additionally, University administrators addressing COVID-19 will receive more continuous, updated information about the quantity and location of people testing positive to better understand the pandemic’s prevalence and trends and assist with contact tracing, Clark said.

Regular testing will continue at the University for the foreseeable future. “This testing is going to be in place as long as we have folks operating on campus during the academic year here or until we get to the point many months from now when there’s a vaccine and we start to move past it. So, there’s not going to be any established end date at this point,” Clark said.

Acknowledging that not everything may turn out perfectly, Britto said, “we are doing our best to think through some of the permutations that would sort of keep the community healthy, the student population healthy (and) assessed as quickly as possible by people who are protected in the right ways, and get students the information they need quickly.”

University announces decreased fees, room, board costs

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 22:37:43 GMT

The University will decrease some student fees for the Fall 2020 semester, according to an Aug. 12 email from Student Financial Services.

Student Financial Services stated in their email that these decisions were motivated by the University’s decision yesterday to postpone the planned arrival of students until late September. In an email to The Herald, University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote, “The waiving of fees conveyed to students today is one additional way that Brown is supporting students financially in this time of uncertainty.”

For those students who will reside on campus, the University has decreased housing and meal fees to reflect the new plan for a shortened on-campus semester. The plan, announced Aug. 11, would allow students to move into campus residences during the week of Sept. 21, before in-person classes potentially resume on Oct. 5. Housing costs fell from $4,587 to $3,910. The cost of the 20 meals per week and Kosher/Halal meal plans decreased from $3,054 to $2,447, while the 14 and 7 meals per week plans decreased from $2,880 to $2,304 and from $2,368 to $1,994 dollars, respectively.

Students studying remotely and not living off-campus in the Providence area will see a reduction of more than $600 in fees, according to the email. Specifically, the University has eliminated the non-resident fee of $470. Additionally, the University will waive the $143 activity fee and $33 recreation fee for all students. Prior to the Aug. 12 update, the recreation fee was only to be waived for students studying remotely, despite the Nelson Gym remaining closed for the fall semester. Student Financial Services noted that the removal of the activity and recreation fee changed the financial aid cost of attendance for the Fall 2020 semester, which may impact financial aid eligibility for some students. The Office of Financial Aid will notify students whose financial aid eligibility has changed.

Finally, the University announced that it would waive both the readmission and late registration fees for Fiscal Year 2021 and would eliminate them permanently in Fiscal Year 2022. The readmission fee of $70 previously applied to students returning to Brown after taking leave. The University will waive the $15 fee for registering for courses after the preregistration period closes, but will retain the $15 fee for students who register for classes after shopping period closes.

In the days leading up to the announcement that Brown’s plan would change, a petition from the Undergraduate Council of Students calling for the non-resident fee and readmission fee to be removed circulated on social media. The petition, which has collected over 1,800 signatures online, was not mentioned in the University email. UCS President Jason Carroll said that when UCS previously tried to get the University to waive these two fees, they were met with pushback from the administration. Carroll said that the decision to drop the fees now “really shows what student labor and student advocacy can do and what changes can be made.”

Pollard ’21: Flawed housing policies and Brown’s broken commitments to transparency in ...

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 21:16:40 GMT

Prior to students’ return to campus this fall, the University has upheld its policy requiring students to spend six semesters living on campus, and promised to uphold their agreement to house all students who request it. In light of COVID-19, the University has guaranteed that all students returning to live on campus will be housed “based on single room occupancy” with the goal of “de-densifying” residential spaces.

Unfortunately, since the release of Brown’s “Plan for a Healthy and Safe 2020-21” statement on July 7, the University’s commitments to “transparency” and to “developing plans with the goal of maintaining the financial well-being of students and employees” have been repeatedly broken. Specifically, as undergraduate students attempt to plan for the fall semester, the Office of Residential Life’s housing policies have been frustratingly inconsistent. According to the Undergraduate Council of Students, 41 percent of students have listed residential halls in their top four concerns about returning to campus. They are right to be concerned, according to health guidelines from both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University. Without access to kitchens, students will be dependent on grab-and-go meals from dining halls; those with dietary restrictions face the added stress of whether or not they can trust the food they are given. Bathrooms are to be cleaned more frequently, though considerations of facilities staff hazard pay and overtime wages are absent from the administration’s public correspondences.

ResLife promised to release housing information for students on campus Aug. 10, but to date students have yet to receive their assignments. Furthermore, in correspondences to the Brown community on August 11th, the University released new plans about staggering student arrivals through September. Initially, August 10th left very little time for students to start creating their housing group’s own internal policies surrounding cleaning, guests and bathroom use. Now, students have to manage the added confusions of living in housing pods in which new people will be quarantining for fourteen days throughout September. Managing one’s housing pod is difficult in the best of circumstances. While Brown’s new arrival plans are safer in theory, the University’s inability to communicate this plan until mid-August is problematic for students who are already facing serious planning issues such as transportation to campus.

Additionally, housing assignments are made considering only one of two factors: “either the style of housing (suite/apartment or non-suite/apartment) or being assigned near another student who has mutually requested to be assigned near you.” Since ResLife cannot provide students with the ability to even anticipate — let alone plan — what their personal facilities and housing group will be, many students are finding it difficult to trust the University right now. In my own experiences living exclusively with college students in closed-loop social isolation bubbles, building trust and mutual accountability is critical to the success of the pod and necessary for maintaining mental health. It takes time, and without information about those with whom they would share high-risk spaces, many students are forced to choose between studying remotely or risk a housing situation that accommodates neither their needs nor their safety.

Even with the trimester system and the option of attending classes remotely, the University admitted in an email correspondence to rising juniors in July that they did not anticipate having the necessary space to provide students with enough single-person housing on campus. Even though they have now successfully addressed this specific issue by going back on their word to juniors seeking off-campus permission, each single room still does not have the necessary facilities like a private kitchen and bathroom that would be necessary, according to the CDC, to fully prevent spreading the virus amongst asymptomatic carriers.

Furthermore, the University has yet to release a comprehensive explanation of how self-isolation housing will quarantine potentially infected students. The University claims that students, when waiting for test results or quarantining, will be moved to alternative housing which “should at a minimum include a single room with its own adjoining bathroom,” though information on where these rooms are, and how students will safely move remain absent. Still, the details released on August 11th in the University’s “Campus Safety Policy” about students’ isolation practices remain vague, mentioning that students will be “directed to ‘isolate’ from others” and that multiple services like Dining, facilities, and EMS have “partnered to ensure that students are supported.” No further plans have been released regarding potential evacuation or outbreak containment.

The University claims to “follow at all times guidance from the CDC and RIDOH,” yet the lack of single-user bathrooms and the overall absence of clear plans for students who need to quarantine blatantly undermines this claim. Multiple students believe that reopening campus under the current plan will inevitably go awry, even with staggered arrivals.

To date, ResLife has not told students about the ratio of students to bathrooms, or how the minor access to kitchen storage will be organized. Understandably skeptical of on-campus housing, rising juniors lined up for the newly rolled out off-campus permission waitlist in June in the hopes of bypassing the stressors associated with living on campus. Therefore, some students were planning to return to Providence to live off-campus regardless of whether or not they had permission to do so.

Without a clear date on when they would be given or denied off-campus permission from the June waitlist, rising juniors struggled to make any plans. Volunteers at ResLife answered multiple calls without the authority to release any information and couldn’t provide students with any number more specific than that “over 350” students were on this waitlist. They were also unable to assist students in planning by giving them any sense of how many people might be allowed off, though the creation and maintenance of such a list certainly implies that at least some people would be granted permission.

Shockingly, On July 24th, ResLife emailed students on the waitlist that no one would be given off-campus permission at that time. The Location of Study Form was closed, and they were automatically assigned to live on campus. These juniors received an email from ResLife containing the following:

“…we were uncertain — prior to the deadline for submission of the Fall 2020 Location of Study Form — if we would be able to meet the demand for on-campus housing among all students who require it … For this reason, we opened a new waitlist for students to indicate interest in off-campus permission. Because we now know that we will be able to meet the requirements both for students covered by the housing requirement and seniors who have requested on campus housing, we have closed this waitlist and are not extending additional off-campus permission.”

Students were not informed until after committing to their preferences that the new off-campus waitlist was created to inform ResLife of whether or not their on-campus capacity would be filled. At this point, all Juniors who were denied off-campus permission were automatically re-assigned to on-campus housing, as they had been unable to mark “attending remotely” as their second choice preference. As such, some students decided to simply deal with living on campus, while others fought through multiple phone calls with ResLife volunteers to re-registered as remote students so that they could either live at home, or live in Providence secretly.

On August 11th, ResLife once again changed their policy without warning. All students previously on the June waitlist have now been granted off-campus permission. Less than a month before classes begin, students must reorganize their off-campus living situations, which includes re-negotiating sublet situations, and having tough conversations about which lessees will return, in order to abide by the city’s restrictions on college students living together.

The multiple miscommunications about off-campus permission by the University have had grave effects on students’ financial well being and planning stress. Students have a time-sensitive need to prepare for a living situation that keeps them safe from COVID-19, but they have both lacked critical information on the nature of their assigned university housing and have had the University go back on their word twice, making it nearly impossible to plan ahead.

Furthermore, students have discussed in online forums that granting widespread off-campus permission can have detrimental long-term effects on the gentrification and rent prices of the Fox Point area. Many have mentioned this as a reason for choosing to study remotely instead of trying to get off-campus permission, though such considerations for the Providence community have been absent from University correspondences.

Brown’s housing policies make it unnecessarily difficult for students to follow health guidelines. The University’s contradictory communications about students living off campus is creating additional financial and mental strain. In order to both contain the spread of COVID-19 and support the University’s financial priorities, Brown is demanding blind cooperation from its students without extending the trust necessary for a productive relationship with the institution. We will all be signing attestations that we will “follow required public health practices, and that (we) understand that disregard of public health practices is a conduct violation that could result in removal from campus.” How could we possibly follow required public health practices if the University will not allow us what we need to do so in terms of on-campus self-isolation? How can students properly plan ahead to live responsibly to stop the spread of COVID-19? I predict that when an outbreak does occur on campus, policies like these will be used to avoid the University’s liability and instead blame the behavior of students who tried to live within the administration’s unrealistic restrictions.

Beth Pollard ’21 can be reached at beth_pollard@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

Brown undergraduate classes will be fully online until at least Oct. 5

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 13:15:34 GMT

Updated 12:06 P.M. August 11, 2020

The University is implementing a “phased approach” to in-person undergraduate instruction and student returns to campus in light of the shifting public health landscape, according to the Healthy Brown website.

As part of this approach, all undergraduate courses will be taught remotely until the week of Oct. 5, meaning in-person teaching will resume at least two weeks later than initially planned — or not at all.

A limited number of students will be allowed back on campus prior to this date, as part of phase one of the fall term. Most undergraduates will likely be invited back to campus in phase two. The University will make a decision by Sept. 11 about proceeding with phase two or shifting to a fully remote semester.

Students invited to campus for phase two of reopening may choose to continue to study remotely, and faculty members may choose to teach their courses remotely if they have health concerns even if in-person classes begin in phase two. Employees who are able to continue their work remotely in the coming months will do so, according to the Healthy Brown website.

Graduate and medical students will still return to campus before Sept. 7 for in person instruction in most cases, Paxson wrote.

Undergraduate students living off-campus are “discouraged from returning to campus until late September,” Paxson wrote.

Public health conditions

The beginning of the second phase will depend on whether the in-state severity of the virus has sufficiently declined.

“If by September 11, COVID-19 cases in Rhode Island have declined from their current level over a 14-day period and the number of students who test positive for COVID-19 is sufficiently low, then we will follow our current plan to offer many smaller undergraduate courses (with no more than 20 students) in person beginning on October 5,” President Christina Paxson P’19 wrote in an Tuesday email to community members.

“If these conditions are not met by September 11, the remainder of the semester will be remote,” she wrote.

Undergraduates who live in environments that are unsafe or unconducive to remote study, who have planned research and laboratory work or who cannot return home because of international status will be able to apply to return to residence halls before Labor Day.

Paxson’s email follows a wave of announcements from institutions across the country who have altered plans to bring students back to campus — or reversed those plans altogether. Howard University and Princeton University were among the institutions that announced they will be moving completely online for the fall semester last week. In their decisions, both cite difficulty in quarantine procedures for students, health risks for surrounding communities and diminished quality of on-campus experience.

Following months of successful efforts to reduce the number of coronavirus cases in the state, new infections began to gradually increase over the past month. Governor Gina Raimondo announced the extension of Phase 3 and a reduction in size of social gatherings to 15 people on July 29.

“It is unclear whether cases will decline or continue to rise in the coming week,” Paxson wrote. “We must confront the reality that bringing students back in smaller numbers is the safer course,” she added.

Academics, campus life

This newly-adopted phased approach to the start of in-person instructions does not impact the tri-semester model announced last month, Paxson wrote. “The expectation is that first-year students will still arrive for the spring term and continue to the summer term,” she added.

The pre-registration process will continue as planned, with students receiving their initial course registrations on Aug. 14 and the add/drop period following from Aug. 17 to Sept. 22. Students can order physical or digital course materials through the Brown Bookstore website beginning Aug. 24.

From Aug. 22 to Sept, 15, students living both on- and off-campus will be expected to adhere to the University’s quiet period. During this time, students are “expected to remain in their residents halls except for a limited number of specific essential activities,” wrote Eric Estes, Vice President for Campus Life, and Rashid Zia, Dean of the College, in a campus-wide email Tuesday.

During this time the University will be following quarantine requirements put in place by the Rhode Island Department of Health. This includes “wearing masks, social distancing, testing, contact tracing, and limiting the size of social gatherings for attendees and especially hosts,” Estes and Zia wrote. Failure to comply with these requirements will be considered a violation of the University Code of Student Conduct.

The new staggered arrival plan means previous housing requests by students to live with friends on campus no longer apply. “Returning to campus before Labor Day will invalidate any prior requests for specific neighbors unless they also apply for and receive permission to move in at the end of August,” Estes and Zia wrote. Students who return in the first phase will likely be reassigned to a new room upon the return of the remaining students in the second phase depending on the public health situation.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Nearly 800 students to attend Brown remotely for fall semester

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 00:19:00 GMT

Approximately 800 undergraduate students will study remotely during the upcoming semester, accounting for around 15.5 percent of respondents to the Fall 2020 Location of Study Form, which was completed by sophomores, juniors and seniors in July.

The form, which was due July 15, asked students to indicate whether they planned to complete their coursework remotely or on College Hill. If they chose to study in Providence, students were also asked whether they intended to live on or off campus.

Dean of the College Rashid Zia wrote in an email to The Herald that the response rate for the form was not 100 percent at the time of publication, but noted that at least 97 percent of students completed the form.

The data reviewed by The Herald broke down enrollment plans by student’s class year, financial aid status, gender and membership in historically underrepresented groups.

Among sophomores, juniors and seniors — all of whom are invited back to campus this fall — the highest percentage of sophomores, 19.1 percent, indicated plans to study remotely, followed by 16.7 percent of juniors. Only 11.5 percent of seniors indicated that they planned to study remotely.

“I imagine for seniors, the desire to come back for their final year is probably a strong motivator to want to be with their classmates, to work on research projects, to be in Providence for one last year,” said Dean of the College Rashid Zia. “And for sophomores … there is a hope that this pandemic will abate at some point, and that they know they will have additional time to come live and reside in Providence.”

Because first-years will come to campus for the spring and summer semesters of the tri-semester academic calendar, their enrollment plans were not included in the data the University provided to The Herald.

A total of 29.7 percent of international student respondents across the three class years plan to study remotely, according to the data. Those students have had to weigh immigration guidelines and public health concerns, The Herald previously reported.

About 16 percent of students receiving financial aid from the University plan to study remotely, while 15 percent of unaided students indicated the same, according to the data.

Additionally, 15.9 percent of HUG students have opted to study remotely, while 13 percent of non-HUG students said they would study away from College Hill.

Usha Bhalla / Herald

Zia said that discrepancies in study plans between aided and unaided students, as well as HUG and non-HUG students, are small enough to be considered statistically insignificant, and that variation is normal and expected. He also said that the University hopes to ensure that no community is disproportionately impacted by any decision affecting student life. “If we saw large variations here, we would be concerned,” Zia said.

With each policy analysis, “what we do try to gauge is whether or not there’s going to be an impact on equity and access to the campus, and whether students felt free to make these choices, and there’s nothing about these numbers that suggests any significant differences between student groups, except for international students,” Zia said. “And those are really circumstances outside of our control.”

As a member of the Healthy Fall 2020 Task Force, Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity Shontay Delalue wrote in an email to The Herald that she “was one of multiple voices that centered equity as we discussed a variety of options” for a safe return to campus. “Similar to (Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan) work, while the (Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity) serves as a central office, it is everyone’s job to consider equity and inclusion,” she wrote.

Of students studying in Providence, 30.8 percent of students on financial aid plan to live off-campus in Providence or commute, while 40.3 percent of unaided students plan to do the same. The dataset reflects a similar discrepancy between the percentage of HUG students living off campus or commuting (29 percent) and the higher percentage of non-HUG students indicating the same plans (38.7 percent).

Zia said that he does not believe that there are inherent privileges associated with off-campus housing that may explain the higher proportions of unaided and non-HUG students choosing to live off campus or commute. Rather, he argued, the discrepancies are a function of difference in student preferences. “I imagine people make that decision for a variety of reasons,” he said, emphasizing that some students may choose to live on campus to find community.

“There are students at all levels of financial aid that choose to live off campus,” Zia said. “Those decisions are relatively stable for all students, regardless of financial aid.”

Individual circumstances will inevitably vary regardless of identity group, Zia said, and the University will continue to honor the unique challenges students may be facing. “Brown believes deeply in allowing students to make choices for their individual circumstances,” Zia said.

“The data set alone is not enough information to compare non-HUG and HUG responses,” Delalue wrote. “We know that all students were given access to the same information in order to make the most informed decision for themselves — likely in consultation with their families. It is my hope that all students were able to make the best and most informed decision for themselves which is in line with Brown’s approach to education.”

Given the pandemic’s proven disproportionate impact on people of color across the country, “some HUG students, among others, may be in more vulnerable situations due to the nature of the pandemic and its impact on families of color,” Delalue wrote. “It is my hope that students can access campus resources and support remotely and be given access to the information they need to make the best decision for themselves.”

As the United States reckons with racial inequity in its institutions, including in higher education, Delalue wrote that the OIED will continue to engage with students regardless of their location of study. “Whether students are back on campus or studying remotely, they are our students,” she wrote. “This does not change the fact that their voices are critically important.”

‘This is going to end:’ Anthony Fauci joins Ashish Jha to address COVID-19 pandemic in ...

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 17:59:25 GMT

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, spoke through screens to the Brown community and the public Friday afternoon, sharing practical public health advice and updates on the nation’s COVID-19 response. Fauci was interviewed by Ashish Jha, the incoming dean of the School of Public Health, who is currently the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

Opening the event, President Christina Paxson P’19 introduced Fauci as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for over 35 years and an advisor to six presidents on domestic global health issues, as well as a principal architect of the AIDS response in the 1980s.

To exemplify Fauci’s commitment to mentoring young scholars, Paxson cited the story of Luke Messac — a current emergency medicine resident at the University — who tweeted in mid-July that as a Harvard undergraduate 13 years ago, he sent Fauci an email “out of the blue,” requesting an interview for his thesis. After the thesis was complete, Fauci read Messac’s work and sent back a glowing response. When Messac posted a screenshot of Fauci’s endorsement to Twitter, the post garnered over 431,000 likes and 51,000 retweets.

Thursday evening before the event, Jha looked forward to his conversation with Fauci, a scientist who he has long considered a personal role model.

“One of the things I really admired about (Fauci) is his ability to communicate effectively to people,” Jha told The Herald. “He doesn’t dumb things down.”

Jha added, “I think it’s really important that public health leaders speak up at a moment like this, especially when there’s so much misinformation out there … it’s particularly important to have credible scientific forces.”

During the event, Fauci addressed a wide range of complex topics, from the development of an efficacious COVID-19 vaccine to his past work combating HIV/AIDS, as well as the policy surrounding states’ closing and reopening plans.

“Anybody who says we are not living in a divisive era in our country is not paying attention,” Fauci told viewers.

“If we can somehow get the country unified together, we could make it into the fall and winter looking good.”

“It was as if there’s public health principles, and then there’s ‘open up the country,’” Fauci said, emphasizing how problems have arisen as reopening plans have not strictly enforced public health guidelines. “One is not the enemy of the other — one is the gateway to get to the other.”

Fauci listed his pillars of proper public health practices: “Universal wearing of a mask, physical distancing, avoid crowds, outdoor better than indoor, washing your hands … and — if you’re in a situation where it applies to you — stay away from bars. Bars are bad news when it comes to the spread.”

“Those things work,” he said. Still, he acknowledged that some states have been better able to enforce these practices than others.

“If we can somehow get the country unified together, we could make it into the fall and winter looking good,” Fauci said.

Jha and Fauci also discussed the process for vaccine creation and implementation. Fauci said he feels “cautiously optimistic” about the vaccine process, citing the results of ongoing vaccine trials.

Fauci explained that phase one clinical trial data as well as research in animal models indicates that the vaccine candidate “induces a response with neutralizing antibodies. That’s at least as good, if not better than the plasma of convalescent people, which tells me that’s a good start,” Fauci said.

He added: “We know that the body is capable of making a good response … because we have so many people who clear the virus and do well. So the goal of a vaccine is to do as well, or hopefully better than natural infection in inducing a good response.”

But even when a vaccine makes it through all stages of clinical trials, the issue of disseminating the vaccine throughout the population remains. Fauci said that even if a vaccine were ready by early 2021,“we’re not going to have 100 million doses — we’re going to have tens of millions of doses, which means that we’ve got to prioritize.”

“It’s going to end because of science.”

Fauci said that when a vaccine is released, it doesn’t mean life will automatically return to normal. He advised, “You must never abandon the public health approach. You’ve got to think of the vaccine as a tool to be able to get a pandemic to no longer be a pandemic, but to be something that’s well controlled.”

No vaccine is 100% effective — the common flu vaccine was only 46% effective in preventing the flu during the 2019 – 2020 flu season — but some, like the shot for measles, are around 98% effective.

For COVID-19, Fauci said, “I believe we’ll get an effective vaccine. But we don’t know if it’s going to be 50%, or 60%. Hopefully, I’d like to see 75% or more, but the chances of it being 98% effective is not great.”

To contextualize current scientific efforts to combat COVID-19, Jha and Fauci recalled their own experiences dealing with other highly infectious diseases. Fauci detailed some of his scientific work fighting HIV, while Jha saw pneumocystis pneumonia drastically decrease in severity during his time as a resident at the University of California at San Francisco between the years of 1997 and 2001. “Science, when it works, really is miraculous,” Jha said.

“This is going to end,” Fauci said. “And it’s going to end because of science,” Jha added.

Fauci also brought up the prospect of developing antiviral drugs that could stop the infection as soon as a patient gets a positive test result. “Quite frankly, there really is no reason why we cannot do that. There’s no reason why that’s not possible. Heck, if we did it for HIV, we can do it for coronavirus,” he said.

After the initial discussion, Jha introduced University students, who posed their own questions for Fauci. The first came from Shekinah Fashaw, a PhD’23 student at the School of Public Health in Health Services Research. She asked Fauci to give his perspective on the impact of the “two pandemics that we’ve seen colliding:” COVID-19 and racism.

“Dr. Fauci is like my Beyonce as a public health student, so it was definitely an amazing experience to be able to ask him that question,” Fashaw told The Herald after the event.

Fashaw’s dissertation work focuses on the racial and socioeconomic disparities in access to Medicare home health services, and she has also studied disparities in nursing homes. “I don’t think I ever saw my work as timely or important as I see it now,” she added.

“Maybe it will be a wake-up call for society to change.”

“COVID-19 didn’t create these disparities, it didn’t create racism, it didn’t create the issues of health equity, but it really did highlight and exacerbate many of the disparities that we see,” Fashaw said. “Racism and residential segregation (are) … truly the fundamental cause of the health disparities and health inequities that are experienced in this country by Black and brown communities,” she added.

“Maybe it will be a wake-up call for society to change,” Fauci said, referencing this collision of racism and COVID-19. “The thing that you can do now is make sure that resources are concentrated geographically to those demographic groups that are clearly at higher risk for infection,” he said.

Other student questions came from medical student Katie Barry MD’23, who asked for Fauci’s advice for future physicians, Watson Institute Master of Public Affairs student Margaret Elam GS and recent graduate Abdullah Shihipar MPH ’20.

As the event came to a close, Jha asked Fauci: “Have you had a day off since this pandemic began?”

“Not to engender any sympathy — but I have not had a single day off since the very beginning of January when we decided that we were going to start working like crazy on a vaccine,” Fauci said.

He credited his wife with helping him keep up the busy schedule, adding “we also are fortunate in that we are taking care of one of my daughter’s dogs. … That dog never does anything but, just, want to be near me.”

So what is key to Fauci’s consistent engagement at the NIH, at the White House on the Coronavirus Task Force and when responding to the countless emails that flood his inbox?

The simple respite of a long dog walk, he said.

—Additional reporting by Emilija Sagaityte.