Yale professor's letter welcomes students back to campus with invitation to "emotionally prepare" for death
Aux Features great job internet
Unfortunately for too many students, the traditional back-to-school checklist has a morbid addition this year, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic and a very straightforward Yale professor. After obtaining all the notebooks and overpriced printer ink cartridges and elaborate calculators that will be used most often to spell BOOBS, there’s one more important bit of school prep to take care of: Emotionally preparing for death—your death, the death of a friend or loved one, etc. Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson discovered this rather blunt statement from Yale’s Head of College and psych professor Laurie Santos, perhaps not-so-curiously tucked away at the bottom of a Yale Daily News report. The quote is taken from Santos’ July 1 email to residents of the school’s Silliman College, announcing Yale’s plans to reopen on-campus housing. It makes for quite the welcome letter:
We all should be emotionally prepared for widespread infections—and possibly deaths—in our community. You should emotionally prepare for the fact that your residential college life will look more like a hospital unit than a residential college.
The U.S. is famously a death-denying country, so the idea of acknowledging our own mortality—let alone fully preparing for it—is kind of a huge ask for most people. Yet Santos’ email is refreshingly frank in a country where the government can’t wrap its head around taking care of citizens on the most basic level, and an alarming number of said citizens reject wearing masks as an infringement of freedom. And let’s not even get started on the absurdly high percentage of people who wouldn’t take a COVID-19 vaccine if offered. Is the idea of emotionally preparing for death kind of fucked up? Yes. But for some people it might also be a necessary step to encourage safer behaviors, and clearly “screaming inside our hearts” hasn’t quite taken hold the way we’d hoped.
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And let’s not even get started on the absurdly high percentage of people who wouldn’t take a COVID-19 vaccine if offered.I get it if you’re worried about a new vaccine, that’s somewhat rational. But the amount of crossover in the “I don’t want to wear a mask” and “I don’t want to get a vaccine” populations scares the shit out of me.
If the anti mask idiots are the same % of people not willing to take a vaccine that would be alarming. Even though we have way too many antivaxer idiots the Trump flavor aid drinking assholes seem to be an even larger amount.
Presumably those aren’t just anti-vaxxers, they’re also the same people who don’t get the flu vaccine because it’s too much trouble AND the people who think Covid is a hoax. So conceivably a much bigger group overall.
There has to be a percentage of the population that is going to want to sit back on the vaccine until it has proven its worth. Especially if the vaccine is being pushed by this administration. I’d expect the number who are hesitant now to drop if the vaccine proves effective.
And I think this is fair. Vaccines can and do come with side effects (though there’s no actual evidence that Autism is one of them) just like a billion other things we put in our body every day. Something new comes on the market, it’s not unwise to wait a bit to check if it’s good, or if there’s another that might be better. Doing due diligence is good sense, and something I think more people need to do in regards to their medical care (if they have that luxury). It’s the people who have reaped so many benefits from immunizations, and yet who act as though the entire concept is evil, who drive me up the wall.
That’s how I feel. Right now I think its a race for the pharma companies to get the first one on the market because they will make billions off it. I’d bet my paycheck that corners will be cut, and data will be skewed favorable. I’m not opposed to any vaccine, but I’m not gonna be a guinea pig either.
The virus will then start taking out only anti-vaccine dolts. If that’s the chance they want to take, let them go for it.
Unfortunately it’ll also increase dangers to people who can’t always get vaccinated, like infants, people on chemo, pregnant ladies, etc.
I assume they’re mostly the same people. It just makes sense. Both positions basically boil down to “you can’t make me think beyond myself.”
In what sense is refusing to get a vaccine a self-interest move?
Herd immunity.
In that there is a perceived risk associated with the vaccine, and they would rather risk getting “just a bad flu,” even if that puts others at risk than accept the risk that they are convinced is inherent (autism, microchips, gay drugs, sign of the beast, I dunno, whatever is in their strange little heads, man) in a vaccine.
When you determine matters of self interest using alternative facts.
Mass vaccination is scientific application of herd immunity. (A tremendous, painful irony is that “let’s just get herd immunity” has been a clarion call of people who resist all meaningful attempts to fight the covid-19 pandemic, as though herd immunity is a thing that just arrives on its own to save everyone while you kick back and wait.) If a certain, pretty high percentage of a population gets vaccinated against a disease, that disease loses the opportunity to spread and thrive in that population, hence even the unvaccinated are protected. But if hocus pocus bullshit about Bill Gates being a shapeshifting Illuminati cacodaemon stops enough people from getting the vaccine, that threshold is not met and the disease can still thrive in that population, thereby granting it further chance to mutate into new strains.This is fairly basic stuff about what vaccines are and why they’re important.
To add to your point …“Numerous diseases have been eliminated in many countries thanks to herd immunity produced by vaccination programmes. But herd immunity is not something that can be achieved by natural infection.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-15/coronavirus-herd-immunity-unlikely-without-vaccine/12559298
I know for a fact one of the organizers of the anti-mask protests in Michigan is a notorious anti-vaxxers. But many of the other anti-mask people are just right-wingers and sexists who can’t stand having a female Democrat for governor. Can’t say for other states.
As an aside I always thought she was attractive. But that It’s Shark Week motherfuckers comment made me swoooooooon.
I ordered the “It’s Shark Week, motherfuckers!” t-shirt yesterday. Considered adding a “That woman from Michigan” one, but I figured one Gretch love t-shirt a day was enough.
I’m hoping that Darwinism takes care of that Venn diagram cross-section of society.
I, for one, do not trust our current government’s ability to produce a vaccine. I assume it would be made by a Trump company, consist of tap water and baking soda, and cost ten thousand dollars a dose.
You forgot the bleach. Via needle.
Yeah. I’m planning on waiting for the second or third vaccine.
I’ll take the one that works, lasts longer, and doesn’t come with a laundry list of side effects.
I’m a good distance removed from college at this point, and I realize there’s a business component to the colleges wanting students on campus, but why the hell would students be going back on campus right now?I have to believe that most classes can be administered online and other options possible for those that aren’t (like those classes will be offered again in Spring or something). Taking chances with your life and the lives of others, while exposing yourself to the subset of the population most likely to be carless and infected, seems insane to me.
Because, by and large, college students just aren’t that bright. I saw some being interviewed on TV yesterday and they were all saying ‘Yeah I’m gonna go to parties and not wear a mask, I’m young and a virus can’t hurt me!’The vast majority of colleges are money making ventures first and foremost. They do not accept only the best and brightest, they accept only the people with the money to pay them or the ability to get loans to pay them. Finding that out was literally the most disappointing part of going to college for me.
The vast majority of colleges are money making ventures first and
foremost. They do not accept only the best and brightest, they accept
only the people with the money to pay them or the ability to get loans
to pay them.
This is almost word-for-word what my admissions letter from DeVry said.
That’s a humble brag if I ever heard one. =)
Just with spelling and grammar errors, because, DeVry.
“This is almost word-for-word what my admissions letter from DeVry said.”I cannot like this enough. I paid my way (remember when that was possible?) through a state university in the mid-90’s, and the only way that was possible was because I worked full time and my dad let me live at home rent-free as long as I kept up with the lawn and snow shoveling. I still don’t know how anyone attends my former uni these days without a lot of loans and grants.
The vast majority of colleges are money making ventures first and
foremost. They do not accept only the best and brightest, they accept
only the people with the money to pay them or the ability to get loans
to pay them.
This is almost word-for-word what my admissions letter from DeVry said.
This snark is so fine I’m even starring the double-post.
On a non-snarky note, I genuinely have no idea why my comments keep double posting. Does it happen to other people?
I’ve see it frequently, but I don’t know that it’s ever happened to me. I feel like it’s a perfect time for “forget it Jake, it’s Kinjatown.”
I would star you if I could, but that’s another thing Kinja has fucked up for me.
Remember how much we all hated Disqus? I miss Disqus.
I dunno. Do you have a twin? Or, perhaps you are you a very large person?
Usually connection issues, like a drop in service when you post will sometimes cause a double post.
I already did.
You got 2 stars from me Bart!
I am reminded that an alarming number of college students’ philosophy towards life and death is WOOOOOOOOOOOO! Much like a well-known American cult I can think of.
I have to agree. I am 20-some years out of college, but the realization that the whole thing was nothing more than a money grab really was disappointing. And I was at a small liberal arts school in Ohio. Even (or maybe more so?) on a small campus you are little more than a dollar sign to those outside the classrooms.
The vast majority of colleges are money making ventures first and foremost. They do not accept only the best and brightest, they accept only the people with the money to pay them or the ability to get loans to pay them. It’s been this way for a startlingly long time. Most professors I’ve talked to say they noticed a precipitous decline in the quality of students starting in the mid ‘90s. Before that point, there was a certain expectation that students knew how to write, do advanced math and generally display a level of intellectual curiosity. I graduated in the early ‘00s, and I can tell you that my “elite liberal arts institution” was loaded with dunces that made the cut because their parents paid the entire tuition, plus a little extra toward the endowment. From the sounds of it, these days babysitting is a key part of being a professor. Also, fielding angry phone calls from helicopter parents.
My students say they prefer the connection of face to face (even though I’m teaching them from behind a mask and face shield. I’m teaching a class that’s online and in person at the same time. Students have to sign up for in person seats as our auditorium can only hold 1/3 of them at a time with the social distancing rules. Over 90% have signed up for a day each week that they want the right to come in person. I, on the other hand, am freaking out and hoping the university comes to its senses and moves all classes online.
I think the business side of things is key. Colleges make a lot of money housing and feeding students.The education being not as good is BS. Online learning can be harder for some, easier for others. And the fact that grammar and high school kids are doing home learning for the time being already, college students should be too. If my 5 year old can start kindergarten online this year, a bunch of 18 year olds can do the same.
“Colleges make a lot of money housing and feeding students.” – No, they mostly break even on room and board. They make money charging far higher tuition than junior/community colleges for the same courses, with the expectation that the quality of teaching and campus life will justify the markup. The fear here is that if students decide to do online courses at cheaper public colleges, they won’t come back at all.
I’m not sure which colleges you’re referring to, but approximately 30% of our revenue comes from money made on room/board. The last institution I worked at made less, I think about 15-20% of total institutional revenue (was public 4 year, not private) for a variety of reasons, but it’s a big money-maker anywhere I’ve been an administrator.
Revenue, or profit? Because food prep and building maintenance aren’t cheap.
“Colleges make a lot of money housing and feeding students.” – No, they mostly break even on room and board. Also, some of that room and board money goes into things like salaries. And people are surely not going to pay higher tuition because they can’t be there in person to compensate, so professors (like Dr. Mrs. fcz1) are in a pretty bad place right now.
But it isn’t like the dorms and dining halls sitting empty leaves schools sitting on a heap of cash.The drive to attract students with the non-academic side of life is very costly, and a lot of schools are sitting on hefty loan payments for new dorms, dining halls, student centers, etc., and they need butts in seats and beds to meet those obligations.
I took a few summer classes from the local CC when I lived in Pittsburgh, and it really surprised me that all of my profs were not only usually tenured, but also heads of their respective departments at their regular colleges/universities (U of Pitt, Duquesne, etc). On break with my sociology prof, I asked him why he isn’t just taking the summer off. “I’m bored, and it’s so much more fun to teach a class where people want to learn rather than just get the class out of the way and move on.”He was the head of the philosophy department at Duquesne. My point is that in larger cities with a lot of colleges and universities, your education will be as good if not better when you spend less money at a CC. Also: it pays to talk to your profs, and always utilize office hours with them.
But, by all accounts, it hasn’t been as effective, especially for younger children. Congratulations to your 5-year-old kid, but it does seem like there’s a difference.
I am not saying its ideal, but the alternative is allowing more vectors for a deadly virus.
I think it depends on the major, and what year you are. The core classes can be done remotely, but junior/senior level classes require a lot more interaction. And if your major is lab-dependent (chemistry, engineering, etc.), that’s not likely to be done remotely very well.
Very true, but given the current pandemic, it seems like colleges would be smart to pivot undergrad, and especially first and second year students to take classes that do no require labs and such.A lot of college is the balance of having to take X classes before you can take Y class. Like I need to take calc 1 before calc 2, so I might as well take chem 1(with lab) this semester. An interesting theory I have heard is some schools looking at condensing certain class paths down so students forced to remote learn can dedicate fully to one subject and complete an entire class load in one semester that may take, say three. So if you are a first year engineering student who isn’t going to get lab time. Instead of worrying about those lab classes now, you basically dedicate 15 credit hours to an accelerated Calc program that counts as Calculus 1 thru 3. Calculus can be taught entirely remotely and in fact may be better done that way. Dedicating an entire semester to just math may not be up some peoples alleys but for others it may be a better way to learn subjects.
One of my cousins kids who is 10ish went from c+ to straight a’s. Turns out he thrives when hes given a task and then allowed to complete it in his own way and on his own schedule, rather then having a teacher standing over his shoulder telling him he has 15 minutes and he has to do the task a very specific way. I’m hoping that teachers and lawmakers will see that not everyone thrives in a teaching system that was invented 150 years ago by German monarchists who created it for the expressed purpose of churning out better factory workers and soldiers for the kaiser and introduce some flexibility. I have no doubt my cousin would do much better even after this if he was allowed to do a significant portion of his work remotely
Online kindergarten is worthless and they shouldn’t even bother. Let’s be honest, the value of kindergarten is in getting kids to socialize and accept each other, and that’s it.
My current university is opening the dorms but halving occupancy so that every bedroom is a single. I suspect they’re going to mostly lose money on room+board this year.
With certain precautions put in place, I can understand how it can be tempting to try to go back to campus.I see a lot of parallels between my college experience (pre-Covid, of course) and the “bubble” concept put in place for the NBA and NHL playoffs. I lived on campus. All of my classes were on campus. I ate all my meals in on-campus restaurants and dining halls. All of my activities were on campus. It was a very self-contained community, and it was exceedingly rare to venture outside of it. Conceivably, if you can test everyone before they arrive on campus and then encourage everyone to stay inside that “bubble”, it could work on paper — have a bunch of verified-Covid-negative people interacting only with each other (in a safe manner).The problem is that there are always exceptions. The bubble isn’t completely enclosed. Not everyone will live on campus. They’ll need to venture into the community for dining, grocery shopping, and other errands where they’ll encounter more people who are outside of the bubble. Faculty and staff also bounce in and out of the bubble because they go to their off-campus homes and also interact with the outside community.It’s a tough decision because the online learning experience is quite different from an in-person experience — especially for a science/engineering major that involves extensive labs and hands-on projects. I am sympathetic to those who have to make tough decisions right now (students, their parents, faculty and staff members) and those affected by the tough decisions of others. I don’t know what I’d do if I were in their shoes other than stress out and have a nervous breakdown.
A lot of them WANT to. They have been looking forward to the rez experience for a long time and apparently haven’t quite accepted that they’re not gonna get it. I heard some interviewed on the radio yesterday and one was like “i don’t work well at home”. Which. Get the hell over it. That is not a good reason.
I know that a lot of schools are doing remote-only, or encouraging students to take gap years. I heard that MIT was having students who need to be physically present for coursework (like, lab work or other things that can’t be done remotely) live in dorms with their lab mates, so that they can be in pods together, so as to limit cross-contamination between groups.
Because a lot of students go to college to get away from their parents. If they can do that while simultaneously being financially supported by their parents, that’s living the dream.
And then you have the ones with precarious or dangerous home lives who are relatively safe and properly fed at school. They might happily risk a virus to avoid abuse or threats of abuse in places where they still won’t be completely safe from the virus.
There are a few reasons, some better than others.Part of it is purely money – colleges want the $$ from room and board. But part of it is that some of these students don’t have great living situations, or stable internet, or had somewhere to live for the summer but not the fall. Dorms aren’t the safest place to be covid-wise but they can be safer than a shitty apartment or a home with an abusive parent or a friend’s couch. That’s the case for at least one student my husband knows – he’s a mental health counselor at a university – and I’m sure there are more.That said, a friend of mine just started as a prof at our alma mater, which is a smallish, relatively isolated college with a lot of students from rich/well-off families. She said a significant number of students are just flat out taking the year off, and plan to re-enroll in fall ‘21 because they don’t think they’ll get much out of a year of virtual classes. But these are students whose families have resources to keep them home and possibly not working that whole time.
why the hell would students be going back on campus right now?Because you can’t bang your classmates via Skype?
Is S(kyp)ex a thing yet? Tell me when it’s a thing.
It used to be called “cyber” and it was a thing 20 years ago. And when it was called “phone sex” it was older than that.
That sounds like a weaponised STD the Joker would come up with.
But only the ’89 Nicholson Joker.
And he was the best Joker.
In addition to what other posters have written, quite a few majors need labs that can’t be replicated at home. You might be able to do an Intro to Physics class with home-based experiments, but the more advanced sciences need resources that are only available on campus.
I took an advanced level physics class remotely and it was great. By remote, I mean I skipped every class to go skiing, studied from the textbook, and showed up to take tests every few weeks. I got a B and I am not very smart.
I was listening to a podcast about this very thing. The universities clamoring to reopen fastest are often the private ones that charge an arm and a leg, because without the on-campus college life/experience, they’re charging students tens of thousands of dollars for Zoom classes that are of no greater quality than those from a community college or state university, and they’re afraid students and parents will recognize that.At least some students seem to get the message though. Anecdotal, but my local state university is quite cheap, has record enrollment, and no immediate plans to return the student or employee populations to campus (with the exception of a handful of classes that absolutely cannot be done online, and those are being run with a shitton of new precautionary measures).
Online classes are okay, but you lose a lot being unable to interact with students and the prof.
And while some people might prefer online classes, others might find it hard to pay attention to an online lecture when they’re a tab away from PornHub. It’s hard to break the habits when you’re sitting at a familiar place like your desk.
Assuming the teachers are competent at teaching online, which is a very different skill set.And will people pay the same exorbitant price for a year at Yale for online courses?
There’s also all manner of people on campus who work there but don’t teach. Teacher’s aides, student teachers, the campus stores, food vendors, student union, librarians, etc. Those jobs are gone if the campus is closed.
As easy as it is to make fun of idiot zoomers going back to college and ignoring science, staying home might not be a good option for tbe overwhelming majority of students. Most people are going insane sitting in relative peace in their own homes, I can’t imagine how bad it would be if I had been forced to live in someone else’s home for an extended period of time, and for most people that’s what their parents’ home becomes a couple years into their college careers. All that assuming there’s even enough room for them to start with. My parents downsized to a significantly smaller condo when my sister and I were out of the house, so we wouldn’t even have had the option of going home.
Because students whose schools aren’t giving them a fully-virtual option this year are terrified of risking their scholarships/loans & their degrees/careers on taking a year off from school. Blame the schools, not the kids.
Where I work the students aren’t even being allowed the option of taking a year off. Sounds like the US actually has it’s **** together a bit better than the rest of us in that regard.
Depends on the school (& on the program). Still pretty crappy that people lose their scholarships if they do it, too.
Wow, students in your country are allowed to choose whether to go “back on campus” or not? Not here 🙁
I work at Oxford and the University here is refusing to allow an online option, even for international students, or an option to take a year out. They have to choose between dropping out of their degree or returning to Oxford. And terms (‘semesters’) are only 8 weeks so that’s a lot of travelling back-and-forth.
Students have written a letter with many, many signatures requesting more sensible policies and it’s still vacation for now, so fingers crossed for a more sensible policy change by the time term starts!
The U.S. is famously a death-denying countryOne case in which you used the U.S. when you really mean “Western culture.”
“You should emotionally prepare for the fact that your residential college life will look more like a hospital unit than a residential college.”This is one of those things where I can sympathize with the sentiment, but not the speaker. I do think having large scale in-person lectures is foolhardy and a recipe for disaster at the moment. The idea of having students in dorms also feels rather risky – most dormitories are designed with communal bathrooms and food preparation areas, and the cleanliness and hygiene habits of 18 year olds (particularly the guys) usually leaves something to be desired to begin with.And yet, the quote just sounds pompous and inane. Given that this is a tenured academic we’re talking about, that shouldn’t be too surprising. But seriously, the dorms will look more like a hospital unit than a college? How does that play out exactly? Will there suddenly be a full staff wearing PPE hovering over the students’ beds and walking through the hallway 24-7? Medical monitoring equipment installed on the wall over the beds? Will students be required to wear gowns while residing in the dorm? Will there be color-coded pathways taped to the floor? A shop in the lobby where I can buy flowers, candy, and paperbacks while visiting someone?Less glibly, but more realistically, if there are students that are truly sick enough to require hospital level care, wouldn’t they then be in the hospital? Is there some reason you would want to keep them in the dorm? Perhaps a dorm would make a good space for a temporary hospital if ICU’s become overwhelmed again. But if that happened you wouldn’t have non-patients residing there at the same time.This just sounds to me like a case of someone attempting to be very melodramatic to get their point across, but inadvertently sabotaging their message by doing so.
It sounds to me like an older person more concerned for their own health than being truthful. Everyone is of course entitled to reasonable concern for their own health, but being blatantly dishonest as a scare tactic, even for a good cause, is patently unprofessional, especially for a psychology professor.
“You should emotionally prepare for the fact that your residential college life will look more like a hospital unit than a residential college.”This literally happened in NYC. Dorms were literally used for hospital overflow.
Yes, but as I pointed out, did they continue to keep students residing in them while they were being used as overflow? That would seem a bit far-fetched.
Regarding dining halls, my alma mater is limiting seating capacity and requiring dining reservations while expanding take out. Curious how this will play out.
Please form a single line while I take everyone’s names!Thanks!
Are we lining up first, last, or last, first?Signed,Zod, General
The U.S. is famously a death-denying country…I think you meant to say death-defying country. USA! USA! I’m gonna live forever, motherfuckers!
RIP Ass Dan.
Trump freed us from the burden of carrying health insurance Obabe put on the American people, and I haven’t been to a doctor in 4 years. That means I’m as strong as a bull. MAGA! USA! USA!
“your residential college life will look more like a hospital unit than a residential college” – This isn’t “refreshing frankness,” it’s irresponsible hyperbole (not to mention crap writing – word repetition), given that the covid hospitalization rate for college-age students is a fraction of that of retirees. That doesn’t mean students should ignore the crisis, or even that schools should re-open dorms at all, necessarily, but a psychology professor of all people should know better than to cry wolf.
If there is a significant Covid outbreak in a communal living environment, like a dorm, it’s going to spread quickly and there’s a decent chance they’ll lock it down with students being sent home or barred from leaving their rooms for some amount of weeks. Hospital is probably not the right analogy, but I’m not sure a good one exists.
Maybe they should have just said “this decision is reckless and foolhardy, but only a very small percentage of you are likely to actually die.”
Repetition has long had an important role in effective communication. Good writing often deliberately uses simple words repetitively in order to effectively hammer home a point. Speeches and texts that have withstood the passage of decades, if not centuries, have often done so in part because of, not despite, their strategic employment of repetition.
“WE SHALL go on to the end. WE SHALL FIGHT in France, WE SHALL FIGHT ON the seas and oceans, WE SHALL FIGHT with growing confidence and
growing strength in the air, WE SHALL defend our island, whatever the
cost may be. WE SHALL FIGHT ON the beaches, WE SHALL FIGHT ON the
landing grounds, WE SHALL FIGHT IN the fields and in the streets, WE SHALL FIGHT IN the hills; WE SHALL never surrender.”
“…a new NATION, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil WAR, testing whether that NATION, or
any NATION so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met
on a great battle-field of that WAR.”Even: “Veni, vidi, vici” uses assonance (repetition of similar sounds) along with implied repetition of subject: “I came, I saw, I conquered,” and no one as yet has pointed out how multiple forms of repetition have made this writing, as you put it, crap.The concept that “word repetition” necessarily equates to “crap writing” depends on, to be polite, a somewhat sheltered definition of “non-crap writing.”
As far as the claim of “hyperbole” goes, even a quick glance at the article (https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/08/18/school-of-public-health-study-says-students-may-be-able-to-safely-return-to-campus/) referenced above reveals the casual reader that said “hyperbole” was in response to joint research published by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital that indicated the infection of 4970 out of 5000 students was likely, when using only symptom based testing. So… hyperbole? At the time, no: Yale then had planned to test students only once per week, and the study had revealed that even testing students as often every 2 days would still result in 243 infections. Perhaps in response to the study, and perhaps as much in response to the concerns raised by professors like Ms. Santos, and to their credit, Yale has changed their testing policy to twice a week. This is likely to lead to far more infections than 243, but it is a step in the right direction. But this also indicates that the email sent by Professor Santos to her students was in no way tinged by alarmism.
“Good writing often deliberately uses simple words repetitively in order to effectively hammer home a point.” – Yes, but in this case, the meanings are different. The first time she uses the term “residential college” in the sentence, she’s referring to the realities of what the dorms will be like, whereas the second time she uses it, she’s referring to what the students hope it will be like. Ergo, she’s not being Churchillian or otherwise poetic; she’s just being sloppy. Look what happens when I replace one of the “residential colleges”: “your residential college life will look more like a hospital unit than a typical, pre-covid dorm.”Boom, objective improvement.
Here it’s really just a matter of institutional terminology.
Yale’s ‘residential colleges’ include dormitories but are not only the dorms. Based loosely on the Oxbridge model they are also organizational components of the university, each with their own dining hall, quad, recreation facilities, library, social calendar, fellows, etc…
On campus, no one would say, “what dorm are you in?” they’d ask what college, so while it reads awkwardly from outside its wording is unremarkable within the school.
In the south, part of the huge summer boom was a spike in 20-30s getting covid after bars opened and everyone started socializing again. While a very small % will go to the hospital or die, those aren’t the only outcomes of the virus. Plenty of people also feel like shit in various ways for several weeks. Combine that with tight nit communal living and the other stresses of college life (work, school, and general anxieties of naive youth), and a now you have students that are MIA for multiple weeks spreading their disease to everyone nearby. Many students do not quickly recover (emotionally or grade wise) from flunking every course for a few weeks, so drop out rates will likely spike this year. Ideally, letters like that will make students more prudent in distancing and better prepare them mentally if/when their campus sees a spike. I do think it was hyperbole, but I also remember (most of) being 20.
Hey! I know that guy!
BOOBS? Surely Yale students would be more sophisticated than that. This was a popular calculator game when I was in junior high:There’s 1 girl who’s 16 years old. She [has sexual relations] 69 times [with] (press multiplication button) 3 guys. How does she feel? (press equals button)35007 (turn monitor upside down for answer).
The boorish manners of a Yalie are not to be underestimated.
Yale:
She’s also the professor for the famously popular “Science of Well Being,” often touted as the most popular course at Yale
And in the name of accuracy, she’s not “Yale’s Head of College”, she’s the Head of Silliman College, which is a “residential college”, which at Yale is like a dorm you’re associated with for all four years.(Hey, FUCK the autoplay thing that started 5 minutes after I hit this page, ran for 15 seconds, and ended before I could find it to kill it. Great, great, work.)
Also the header image is not from Yale University, it’s the Yale Club in NYC which,“due to the current, global, novel coronavirus health crisis, the Clubhouse will be closed until restrictions are lifted by the State and City of New York.”
It’s accessible for free on Coursera. I took it for a few lectures and drifted to other pressing stuff. There were good things there but the course felt tailored to people who don’t have to worry about making ends meet.
Being emotionally prepared for death is good advice all the time.
Especially as long as I have a driver’s license.
I’m just thankful that I went to Gudger College.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-deaths-us-age-race-14863The death rate for college age people is .12%. Which means that out of 160,000 deaths in America, 170 of them, statistically, were college age. You do not do any good at all when you make hysterical, hyperbolic statements like this professor did. Just silly. The reason why some people do not listen to important health information is when people make these kind of fact free hysterical pronouncements.More people die of the regular flu when you are that young.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127698/influenza-us-deaths-by-age-group/
“More people die of the regular flu” is so March 2020.
Yeah, and it was right back then to for under 50 years old. I know people would rather be hysterical, but the numbers and facts do not lie.
The numbers aren’t “right”. It’s an unfinished sampling of data from a few months at the start of the virus. Drawing hard conclusions like “the death rate for college age people is .12%” is as much hyperbole as the professor as neither of you know what will happen in the fall. The most dangerous thing is when dipshits like you get a hold of these numbers, misrepresent the crisis across social media, and spread misinformation across the country.
Everything you just spewed at me applies to you. It isn’t “unfinished”, it is five months of numbers. They are the same everywhere. It isn’t “hyperbole”, it is a fact backed up by statistics. Anyone can read statistics. Nothing i misrepresented by me. The misrepresenting is done by dipshits like you who want hysteria. No one said go out and party or old people should toss their masks aside and kiss a covid patient. It is about scaring young people with baseless hysteria when the facts show they pretty much have very little risk.
That have a decreased risk from dying. They don’t have a decreased risk of being ill and spreading it throughout the school staff and community.
And anyone can spout off fucking numbers. It’s the multiple degrees and decades of experience that allow for reasonable analysis of the data, but I’m sure your two months of reading Facebook posts from Karen have made you an expert in epidemiology, pandemics, and public health.
You covid Karens are all the same. What you wrote is true for any illness. If you have little to no chance of dying, it is basically the flu. And those people have looked at the data, they all back what I wrote.
People on Reddit are not experts.
Their “community” is not just college-aged people, but includes faculty and staff, as well as family and friends.Death rate is not the same as hospitalization rate. The writer did not claim that their environment would resemble a morgue.It is very likely that the virus will run rampant through a dorm of careless college students. If a massive number of them become sick simultaneously, it’s going to look like a… what’s the word? Oh, HOSPITAL.Your flu stats are for a full year, and include older age groups. You’re comparing apples to caterpillars.But keep trying to minimize the impact of COVID. 5.5 million cases, 173k dead, and we’re nowhere near the end, thanks to people minimizing it.
Nope, the reason why people do not listen is not “minimizing” it. It is making outrageous obviously untrue and hyperbolic statements instead of making factual one. More people listen to what you say about anything when you are not lying about it. When you say something that strikes the public as absurd, they will not listen to you even when you are right later on. That is why people need credibility.
It’s not about the death rate. It’s about how it spreads, not just in dorms but also back to families, relations, and so on. Those lead to further death rates. School sucks, but never this bad.
Yeah, but unless you are living at home with grandparents or very old parents you are generally not coming into contact with at risk people on campus and if you are, then I am all for them staying home or doing online courses. People need to have common sense.
Dark souls : College : Prepare to Die Edition.
“The U.S. is famously a death-denying country”What? “Is the idea of emotionally preparing for death kind of fucked up?”Right, because before this virus thing started, nobody ever died.
That’s the most fear-mongering, overwrought nonsense I think I’ve seen during the pandemic, and that’s saying something.If that dumb bitch doesn’t have tenure yet, she should be fired for what essentially amounts to yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Perhaps this professor is simply trying to instill an appreciation of the philosophy of bushido in her students.