SUNY Oneonta sending all students home due to coronavirus outbreak
ONEONTA — SUNY Oneonta students are being sent home for the rest of fall semester.
Chancellor Jim Malatras delivered the news Thursday afternoon. Nearly 300 students tested positive in four days.
The news was devastating, said Olivia Ruby, a freshman from Whitehall.
She and her roommate were crying together, two hours after the announcement, she said.
“Honestly, it was the best two weeks of my life. I’m really torn up about it,” she said, adding that she can’t forgive the partiers who spread the virus throughout the college.
“I hope their getting drunk for two hours in a basement was worth it,” she said. “And you know what? They were the first to leave! We wanted to stay!”
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On Sunday morning, 101 students had tested positive for coronavirus and the campus closed in an effort to slow the spread. But by Thursday, according to the college’s COVID tracker, 389 students had tested positive, including 100 students who lived on campus and were in isolation. Another 54 on-campus students had symptoms and were awaiting test results. They were in quarantine.
More: https://poststar.com/news/state-and-regional/suny-oneonta-sending-all-students-home-due-to-coronavirus-outbreak/article_9fd45cce-c004-569c-b6f5-cb536153befc.html
SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras delivers the news Thursday afternoon at SUNY Oneonta about the closure of the campus for the fall semester after nearly 400 confirmed cases of coronavirus. At right is SUNY Oneonta President Barbara Jean Morris. Courtesy SUNY
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I assumed this must mean Albany State, the closest SUNY campus. My good friend got her Masters Degree from there this past year, but she had no in-person graduation, after weeks of remote classes, her diploma was sent via the mail. And from what we've seen, nothing's changed since then, I'm amazed that any schools or colleges are opening at all.
And I've been to college, students hardly live in isolation. Aside from classes with different groups of students, they're in and out of each others' living spaces all the time - not just friends or boy and girlfriends, but lab partners, study groups, play rehearsals, all manner of campus activities. That's what college is all about.
Out of curiously, I looked up the website for my elementary school and the protocol for their school year - set to open the second week of the month - is so complicated that it gave me a headache. In-school classes combined with virtual classes, daily health screenings, having meals in the classroom. And having worked with young kids myself, I can't imagine successfully enforcing "social distancing," under "normal" circumstances the early grades are one big petri dish. Did we learn nothing from what happened in Israel when they attempted to open schools at the height of this pandemic?? 
