UNC ditches its hybrid reopening plan after just a week for fully remote classes
Aug 18, 2020, 04:33 IST
- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is making all undergraduate courses remote starting on Wednesday.
- The university reopened last week with a hybrid model.
- The COVID-19 test positivity rate at the school rose from 2.8% to 13.6% in the past week, according to a statement from Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Robert Blouin.
- Students will be able to cancel their on-campus housing with no financial penalty; the two administrators wrote that they believed the majority of residential students would change their plans for the fall.
- Maddie Ellis at The Daily Tar Heel reported that the university had 349 students quarantined and 177 isolated on campus. The paper also released a strongly worded front-page editorial on Monday criticizing the situation as mismanaged.
- The university had already reported four COVID-19 clusters as of Sunday.
- Barbara Rimer, the dean of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, wrote in a statement that after just a week of the campus being open and multiple clusters popping up, it was time for an "off-ramp," referring to the university's "on-ramp" reopening plan. "We have tried to make this work, but it is not working," she added.
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