Colleges Ramp Up Coronavirus Testing For Spring Semester As Some Plan More On-Campus Activities

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, American colleges are updating their virus mitigation and containment measures as they prepare for the spring semester. The past two weeks have seen scores of new announcements about how institutions plan to conduct their operations in the new year.

A major development is the growing number of institutions implementing stronger Covid-19 testing requirements for faculty, staff, and students after a semester in which more lax testing protocols were in place. In almost all cases, the mandatory testing is accompanied by additional requirements such as wearing masks, maintaining social distancing, and avoiding large social gatherings.

While most campuses are sticking with their current strategy of relying on remote and hybrid instruction and limiting the number of students permitted on campus, several colleges are looking to increase on-campus courses and residential opportunities for their students.

More Required Covid-19 Testing

Many universities are scaling up mandatory Covid-19 testing, consistent with recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control highlighting the importance of wider screening to help curb the spread of the virus. That advice squares with new evidence from more than a hundred colleges in the New England region that shows the effectiveness of frequent “surveillance” testing of people without symptoms.

“It’s my understanding that schools that have done frequent testing of asymptomatic students have kept their rates at well below 1% positivity,” said Stacy Gabriel, who directs testing operations at the Broad Institute, which partnered with the New England area colleges and has administered about 3.5 million tests to college students. She continued. “schools that use another approach, of only testing symptomatic or only contacts of positives, have a rate at least tenfold higher.”

Institutions in the University of North Carolina system will mandate re-entry testing for the spring semester or will require students to show a negative Covid-19 test in order to return to campus.

At the flagship campus in Chapel Hill, students, faculty, and staff will be tested upon returning to campus in January and will be required to undergo regular coronavirus testing throughout the spring semester. The university has decided to delay the start of the semester and eliminate traditional spring break. All undergraduate students living on campus and in Chapel Hill or Carrboro must also undergo regular asymptomatic testing twice a week throughout the semester.

At the University of South Carolina, all students, faculty and staff who live, learn or work on the Columbia campus will have to show proof of testing or Covid-19 antibodies prior to returning to campus. Thereafter, all students, faculty and staff on campus will be required to be tested at least once every 30 days.

Other major universities announcing mandatory virus testing for returning students and employees include:

• The State University of New York system, with 400,000 students enrolled at its 64 campuses, will, in addition to required testing, delay the start of in-person classes until February 1.
• West Virginia University will require students taking in-person courses and/or using on-campus resources to receive a negative Covid-19 test before starting spring classes.
• The University of Michigan cancelled on-campus housing contracts for next semester, but it will implement mandatory weekly testing for all undergraduates who live on campus, attend in-person classes or activities, or work at or use on-campus facilities.
• University of Arizona students planing to take in-person classes this spring will be required to be tested for coronavirus. During the past fall semester, only students living on-campus were required to test. The expanded testing will also apply to faculty and staff.
• Next spring the University of Florida will require most of its on-campus students to undergo Covid-19 testing every two weeks and will enact disciplinary measures against those who fail to do so.
• Within the past month, Temple University, Washington State University, the University of Illinois, the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University, and the University of Wisconsin have all announced required testing for returning students and/or employees.

Increased On-Campus Presence

Some universities intend to allow more students to return to living on campus, albeit with stricter public health measures, such as surveillance testing, in place.

At Princeton University, for example, undergraduates will be able to return to campus next semester even though most courses will continue online. Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber explained the approach in a letter last week to the campus community: 

“During the fall term, we cultivated strong public health norms and practices on the Princeton campus; monitored and learned from experiences with the virus at Princeton and elsewhere; and established an on-campus testing laboratory. In light of that work, we have concluded that, if we test the campus population regularly, and if everyone on campus rigorously adheres to public health guidance about masking, social distancing and other practices, we can welcome a far greater number of students back to Princeton.”

Eisbruber stressed that students electing to return would face “special responsibilities and conditions associated with participating in our residential community while the pandemic continues… A choice to return to campus is a choice to accept limitations and take on new responsibilities.”

Princeton students will be required to quarantine upon their return and to follow masking and social distancing requirements throughout campus. All undergraduates residing on campus or in the Princeton area will be required to participate in the University’s coronavirus testing program and comply with all contact tracing, quarantine, and isolation mandates. Parties and most other social gatherings will not be allowed. Undergraduates will be prohibited from hosting visitors and restricted from traveling. To further reduce the risk of spread, the university will house students on a one-to-a-bedroom basis.

American University plans to double the number of in-person classes offered this spring over the number in the fall semester, focusing on courses in the sciences, visual and performing arts, media studies, and select other areas. It also intends to increase both in-person co-curricular activity and university housing for students with specific programmatic requirements and/or acute housing needs. American’s classes will start one week later than originally planned, and spring break will be canceled.

Michigan State University will increase the number of in-person courses and plans to bring an additional 2,500 students back to the residence halls in the spring. Other institutions planning to increase their on-campus opportunities include Lehigh University, the University of Delaware, and Loyola University (Chicago).

One of the more aggressive, and surprising announcements came from the University of Alabama, which indicated it was considering requiring faculty, staff, and students to return to campus full-time in early January unless they presented a medical excuse. That revelation was made to the Faculty Senate earlier this month, when university administrators unveiled a proposal that beginning Jan. 7 everyone working at the school would be expected to stop working remotely and resume in-person work.

That goes a step further than the policy already implemented earlier in the semester that required all university faculty and staff to resume in-person work at least two days a week.

Although the University has hastened to add that the plan was not official, it has already met with considerable criticism within the University, especially in light of the fact that as of November 19, it had the fifth highest number of Covid-19 cases (3,219) of any university in the nation. And it didn’t help the University’s case to learn that Alabama’s head football coach, Nick Saban, 69, has contracted the virus and was unable to coach in Saturday’s game against arch-rival Auburn.

Whether Alabama follows through with this plan remains uncertain, but if it does, it’s hard to imagine many other universities will elect to follow its example.