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Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post
Washington Post
With students — and covid-19 — on campuses, college towns look on warily
By Karin Brulliard
Oct. 1, 2020
As the novel coronavirus surged in Georgia this summer, aggressive
efforts by the city of Athens to curb transmission — with the state’s
first local shelter-in-place order and its second mask mandate — looked
to be paying off. Case numbers were among the lowest in the state, and
hopes were rising that schoolchildren in one of Georgia’s poorest
counties might return to their classrooms this fall.
Then in August, the biggest school in town reopened — the University of
Georgia. Coronavirus cases exploded among the 39,000 students,
temporarily turning Athens-Clarke County into one of the nation’s
coronavirus hot spots and, in the view of many residents and local
leaders, recklessly endangering the community.
Campus outbreaks have fueled tensions in college towns and cities
across the country, from San Diego to Morgantown, W.Va., even though
there is little evidence so far of spillover into local populations.
In many ways, these dynamics reflect enduring town-and-gown friction,
characterized in recent decades by clashes over student behavior and
land use by universities. But never before have the conflicts played
out amid a global pandemic that is forcing colleges and local
governments to balance life-or-death matters of community health
against the financial solvency of higher-education institutions that
may be their towns’ biggest economic engines.
“We’ve begun to feel like a colony of the university with the degree to
which we’ve been ignored and even blamed for the covid outbreak,” said
Russell Edwards, a member of the Athens-Clarke County Commission, who
described the result as “a huge fracture in the town-and-gown
relationship.”
In some communities, local governments and schools have presented a
united front, but increases in cases have stirred resentment among
residents and triggered student-directed crackdowns by public health
officials. In others, elected officials and university administrators
have publicly traded blame and sparred over strategy.
In Athens, the university’s handling of the campus outbreak has become
a lightning rod, spurring student protest, angry letters from
residents, admonishment from faculty and even censure from Michael
Stipe of the Athens-born band R.E.M. The university has defended its
efforts, pointing to sharply dropping case numbers. And to the
frustration of city leaders, the school is pressing on with plans to
host 23,000 people at the Bulldogs’ first home football game Saturday.
The discord may be especially thorny in towns that are home to
land-grant universities such as Georgia and the University of
Wisconsin, which view themselves as having a responsibility to the
entire state, not just the locality where they sit, said Stephen
Gavazzi, an Ohio State University professor who wrote a book about
town-gown relations.
“It’s unprecedented in terms of the public health implications,”
Gavazzi said of the present moment. “There are so many competing
influences here.”
Although driven by students, campus outbreaks in most jurisdictions are
added to city or county coronavirus data, sometimes upending metrics
that dictate timelines for reopening businesses or resuming high school
sports. The deeper concern, government officials and residents say, is
that college students do not live in bubbles and might seed community
transmission with outings to bars, gyms or supermarkets.
“You drive through downtown Madison, you’re driving through campus,”
said Joe Parisi, county executive in surrounding Dane County. He has
urged the University of Wisconsin to send infected students home,
rejecting criticism from public health experts who say that would
spread the virus more widely.
“Implicit in that statement is it’s okay for them to stay here and
infect our community,” Parisi said. “I think there’s a way to do it
carefully.”
University of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank has rebuffed Parisi’s
calls and asked the county to do more to stop off-campus gatherings. UW
last month paused all in-person instruction for two weeks and says it
has increased testing and contact tracing. Coronavirus cases linked to
the campus, which total about 3,000, have slowed in recent weeks,
though they still represented 65 percent of new cases in Dane County in
the two-week period ending Sept. 21.
‘A matter of life and death’
The extent to which college outbreaks are bleeding into their wider
communities is unclear. A recent study, not yet peer-reviewed, found
that two weeks after schools opened for in-person instruction,
coronavirus cases increased in counties that are home to colleges. But
the researchers did not evaluate the extent to which infections on
campuses seeded the surrounding community.
The public health department in Madison says it has no clear evidence
of spillover of cases from UW. Joe Gerald, a University of Arizona
researcher who tracks the coronavirus in Arizona, said it is too early
to detect spread from campus outbreaks in the state, but it may be that
the overlap between students and locals is minimal enough to prevent
that.
After months of planning, will colleges' virus prevention efforts get trashed by a few student parties?
But many public health officials view it as likely that thousands of
new cases in young adults — who the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention says are playing a significant role in spreading the virus —
will radiate beyond campuses if given the chance.
In a bid to prevent that in East Lansing, Mich., Ingham County Health
Officer Linda S. Vail last month placed 39 large group houses near
Michigan State University under mandatory quarantine. Although the
university moved most classes online shortly before school started,
thousands of students had already come to town, causing a surge that
Vail described as a “crisis situation” that seemed “bound to spread
out.”
The University of Arizona has partnered with Tucson and Pima County to
break up student parties and issue a 14-day shelter-in-place
recommendation on and near campus to curb an outbreak. It was lifted
Tuesday after cases declined, but Tucson City Council Member Steve
Kozachik, whose ward encompasses the campus and surrounding area, said
his many high-risk and elderly constituents remain resentful about the
students living among them. Kozachik, who has organized pop-up testing
at student high-rises, wants to see regular testing of all enrolled
students.
One of his constituents is Diana Lett, 65, vice president of Feldman’s
Neighborhood Association adjacent to campus. She bought her house in
1986, when most properties nearby were owner-occupied; now nearly 80
percent are rentals, she said. Even during the pandemic, nights are
filled with the din of student parties, she said.
Lett has asthma and so badly wants to stay clear of college students
that last month she made an extreme decision: When she learned the
house next door was being sold, she bought it in cash, using half her
retirement savings, to prevent it from being turned into a rental.
“Did I want to take on a second home? No. I regard it as a matter
of life and death,” Lett said. “The university chose to flood our
community with people who are spreading covid, and I’m furious about
it.”
In Athens, University of Georgia students returned to smaller classes,
some of which are being held online, and a campus mask requirement.
Still, coronavirus cases skyrocketed: More than 3,300 students and
faculty have tested positive, making up more than three-fifths of the
county’s total.
Critics say the university needs to do more contact tracing, wastewater
analysis and surveillance testing of students; the school conducts up
to 500 surveillance tests daily, compared with 1,500 at Georgia Tech.
University of Georgia officials say cases and test positivity have
dropped dramatically as of late, but because the university has not
always reported total tests and provides only weekly updates, there’s
suspicion about the numbers, said W. David Bradford, a public policy
professor.
“We can’t get the basic statistics we need,” Bradford said.
Local officials were taken aback when UGA President Jere W. Morehead
told a reporter the problem was off-campus bars and parties that are
the city’s responsibility and “beyond my control.” City leaders,
including the mayor, shot back that a statewide order stunts their
ability to further limit gatherings and allows businesses to opt out of
mask mandates, and they noted that the city had been sued by bars after
trying to impose a 10 p.m. closing time. They urged Morehead to use his
influence with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to allow more restrictions.
University spokesman Greg Trevor said in a statement that the school is
optimistic the decline in cases will continue. The university president
was not available for an interview, said Trevor, who flagged a recent
university Q&A with Morehead, which did not mention relations with
the town.
“The question for higher education is not, do we remain open or do we
close? Rather, the question is, in my view, how do we learn to carry
out our mission as safely as possible while mitigating the spread and
impact of the virus? We cannot shut our doors when the world needs us
most,” Morehead said in the Q&A. But, he added, “COVID-19 remains a
serious threat to our community. … We must redouble our efforts to
ensure the downward trend continues. ”
That is little comfort to Adrianne Freeman, an attorney and UGA alum
who wrote a letter to university officials urging them to “consider the
impact of your decisions on our small town.” Freeman was hopeful her
first-grader, who has Down syndrome, might be able to return this fall
to school, where she receives special services. Instead, the girl now
“mostly stares at the screen” for 15-minute virtual speech therapy, she
said.
“UGA students are all going to school, and meanwhile my 6-year-old and her cohort have to learn on Zoom,” Freeman said.
Even with students back, foot traffic feels lighter in Athens these
days. But there’s enough that Shakti Power Yoga, about a mile northwest
of campus, was able to resume classes in mid-August. Owner Ruby
Chandler, 28, said clients have been assiduous about masks and
distance, and she’s grateful to be back in the serene studio. But she
doesn’t thank the university for that.
“As a local, I think there’s a little bit of a feeling that the
university gets to be here and there are people who are residents who
make that work,” she said.
This week, Athens, a city known for graceful antebellum architecture,
was gearing up for another source of hometown pride: the Bulldogs
football team. The team is playing Auburn University on Saturday
evening in a 93,000-seat stadium capped at 25 percent capacity to allow
social distancing.
That will be a boon for local businesses, which were hit hard by the
pandemic, said Athens Chamber of Commerce President David Bradley. The
chamber estimates full-capacity home games bring $25 million to $35
million to the local economy over a weekend, he said.
“If we didn’t have football, it would yet again be a very difficult time for the folks who are employing Athenians,” he said.
But the game is sowing angst for other Athens residents, said Tim
Denson, a county commissioner. The university has acknowledged that
fans will descend from far and wide, and while it says tailgating is
prohibited, it is allowing fans to “gather near their vehicle” with
their traveling party on campus parking lots.
“I heard from a woman who lives in my district, she’s
immune-compromised, and she can’t understand why it should be allowed
to have tens of thousands of people come into our city when the health
situation is so dire that she can’t go to the grocery store,” Denson
said.
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