The rapid global spread of coronavirus and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic not only is causing businesses, schools to close, pro sports leagues to suspend their seasons indefinitely and forcing the NCAA to completely cancel its single-biggest money-make, the men’s college basketball tournament, better known as March Madness.
But the way that you’ll know – and that we’ll all know – that COVID-19 is a really big deal in this country is when three out of every four college students planning to go on a big Spring Break trip decide to cancel their plans and head home for the week instead.
Perhaps surprisingly – or perhaps not so surprisingly – that’s NOT happening this year.
College students crowd South Beach in Miami Beach, FL, during Spring Break 2018. (Jeffrey … [+]
Oneclass.com, a website that provides class and book notes along with study guides and test prep materials primarily to college students, surveyed more than 2,000 college students on Wednesday this week to see whether the growing pandemic is affecting their Spring Break plans. And 73.6% of them – or almost three out of four – said no mere virus is enough to stop them from going to the beach for a week of partying, to the mountains for five days of skiing and five nights of hard drinking and chasing the opposite sex, or even from flying to Europe for week of smoking weed in public and communal living in the hostels.
Of course, in the aftermath of President Trump’s announcement of tough restrictions on travel across the Atlantic – and announcement made Wednesday night after he survey was conducted – means that if students who are U.S. citizens do get to Europe for Spring Break chances are high that they’ll have to spend at least 14 days in self-quarantine upon their return to America. They’ll also have to find their way from the Continent to the United Kingdom in order to fly home because Trump’s emergency order effectively is forcing airlines to stop flying from all other European nations to the United States for at least the next 30 days.
Just 26.4% of the students surveyed on 45 campuses around the nation said they’ve cancelled their plans for a big Spring Break fun trip this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. One such student, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, told a Oneclass.com surveyor that “For spring break, my friends and I are planning to go to our individual kitchens and look at the Google Earth street view of Miami! Can’t wait!”
Many other students asked surveyors about the responses they were getting from their fellow students, apparently to make sure they weren’t out-of-step with the thinking of a majority of their peers.
The classic Spring Break trip to the beach will likely be an even more popular destination this year. Not only will Trump’s order greatly restricting air service over the Atlantic deter more students from flying to Europe – an increasingly popular Spring Break destination in recent years – but widely reported cases of COVID-19 reported on cruise ships have caused lots of cruise ship passengers to spend most or all of their voyages restricted to their rooms. And that means some of those 18- to 23-year-old Spring Breakers most likely will switch their destinations to beach destinations.
And that gas prices have fallen dramatically in the last week in response to a oil price war triggered by Saudi Arabia and Russia will help make getting to the beach – or other party destinations – significantly cheaper.
Meanwhile, Spring Break will be twice as long for many thousands of college students. More than 100 schools – and the number is growing by the hour – already have told students not to come back to campus after just one week away. By giving students a second, unscheduled week off from their studies many schools are hoping to give their buildings a deep cleaning to fight off possible transmission of the coronavirus. Many more are using the extra week to give their faculty members time to convert their planned lectures and classes for the remainder of the Spring Semester for presentation online instead of in actual classrooms. Some plan currently to do all instruction online for anywhere from one week to a month after the students do return. Several already are planning for all instruction between now and the end of the current semester to take place online.
They’re also coming up with ways to keep students from congregating on campus. Some are urging students to stay off campus or to return to their parents’ homes for the time online learning. And even those schools where students for the most part will physically return to their campus are canceling most or all events that would bring large numbers students together in one place
In addition to cancelling March Madness on Wednesday, the NCAA also canceled all remain spring sport championships this year. Schools that do plan to continue competing in at least some sports this Spring are preparing to do so without any fans being allowed into the venues. Schools all around the nation have moved or are expected to move to cancel on-campus concerts, theatrical performances, on-campus conferences and other large events. Few schools have announced thus far that their Spring graduation ceremonies will or won’t be cancelled, but clearly the cancellation of such rites of passage now is up for discussion.
