@Smitty28 posted:If this is the case they'd get more respect if they were honest about it. This "we're doing it for the health and safety of..." is getting really tired. It's as close to zero risk to these students as anything they can do.
I don’t see it as an issue of honesty. They have certainly been more honest than the NCAA (who initially said that athletes are students and they won’t be treated any differently than other students). More like arrogance. I would argue the Ivies took the most cautious approach last spring because they could afford to. They shut down campuses, continued to pay employees, and moved classes online. Great, the virus was new and health officials were scrambling to figure out how to react to it. The Ivies all have multi-billion dollar endowments. They could afford to shut everything down and wait for better information and guidance.
I think they painted themselves into this corner over the summer. While other schools were figuring out how to minimize the risk of bringing students back to campuses and classrooms (mostly out of financial necessity), the Ivies made the decision that no level of risk was tolerable. (The medical risks are mostly to faculty and staff, not students.) This is the luxury of wealth and privilege. The Ivies will suffer zero long-term effects from shutting down. Having taken this hardline approach, there’s no logical argument for exempting sports… or glee club, or Hasty Pudding, or other activities that students love.
Where I really fault these schools is in delaying the inevitable. They knew that nothing was going to change for the spring semester. The most optimistic vaccine predictions would not have changed anything. They should have made these decisions in December at the latest.