As current and former local residents and employees of Middlebury College with deep concern about the health of our community, we listened carefully to the presentation by college officials to the selectboard about plans to reopen the campus. We’ve concluded that although these plans were the result of serious work by many individuals, they do not offer sufficient assurance that the college can safely reopen next month without risking a COVID-19 outbreak in Addison County.
The announced plans have several troubling components, three of which are 1. failure to provide for ongoing weekly testing of everyone, 2. a lack of hazard pay for staff members whose jobs entail the greatest risk of contagion, and 3. too high a density of students as 2,200 or more are packed into dormitories with many sharing double rooms.
Even more importantly, the hoped-for success of the college’s plan rests on flawed assumptions about the expected behavior of 18- to 22-year-olds. We talk candidly with students all the time, and almost all uniformly agree that masks, social distancing guidelines, and travel restrictions simply will not be sufficiently followed. If only one or two percent of the students don’t follow a rigorous quarantine at home or inadvertently pick up the virus on their travel to campus or have a false negative test on arrival or visit friends in other states on the weekend or fail to stay “one cow apart” after several drinks at a party, then an epidemic can easily arise that will overcome our small hospital’s facilities and spread off campus.
Middlebury College officials have indicated many times that they will change plans as the pandemic develops. While the number of COVID-19 cases may have seemed to be plateauing in late spring, we are now seeing surges of the disease in more than 30 states. Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the federal government’s task force on the pandemic, warned this week that the virus “is extraordinarily widespread. It’s into the rural as well as urban areas.”
Vermont has so far been spared widespread occurrences of the disease, but that situation would rapidly deteriorate if thousands of young people spill into the state from “hot spots” all across the nation. Many educational institutions with protocols as carefully developed as Middlebury’s have already seen how quickly local epidemics can develop and have wisely switched to all online classes with a bare minimum of students in residence. We urge Middlebury College to do the same.
Jamie McCallum,
Michael Olinick,
Alexandra Baker,
Randy Benedict,
James Berg,
Sheerya Berg,
Thomas Beyer,
Margot Bowden,
Eileen Brunetto,
Jeff Byers,
Carole Cavanaugh,
Tricia Chatary,
Sunhee Choi,
Keith Conkin,
Erin Davis,
David Dorman,
Glen Ernstrom,
Kemi Fuentes-George,
Rebecca Kneale Gould,
Leger Grindon,
Larry Hamberlin,
William Hart,
Barbara Hofer,
Thomas Huber,
John Huddleston,
Gregg Humphrey,
Michael Katz,
Constance Kenna,
Orion Lewis,
John McWilliams,
Mireille McWilliams,
Jonathan Miller-Lane,
David Miranda Hardy,
Paul Monod,
Kevin Moss,
Stefano Mula,
Kamakshi Murti,
Elizabeth Napier,
Paul Nelson,
Peggy Nelson,
Charles Nunley,
Nancy O’Connor,
Judy Olinick,
Ellen Oxfeld,
Mike Pixley,
William Poulin-Deltour,
Robert Prigo,
Richard Romagnoli,
David Rosenberg,
Patricia Saldariaga,
Ira Schiffer,
Paula Schwartz,
Gail Smith,
Jessica Teets,
Gregg Vitercik,
Max Ward,
Kit Wilson,
Helen Young,
Gloria Estela Gonzalez Zenteno,
and Patricia Zupan