Looks like Swarthmore is going the way of NESCAC, which means the Centennial conference is in trouble, baseball wise. This assumes that no athletics will happen if all students can't be on campus that would normally be on campus.
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Smoke, Northwestern did the same for the first two quarters (juniors and seniors on campus). Most of the learning is remote. They are Big 10 for athletics. So...after the football decision, so far some version of all seasons is on.
Hope these D3 folks can do the same. I'm not sure I can hold my breath that long.
They have lost their minds. Many schools are managing fine, they have learned how to do it, why can't these other schools learn and manage?
I think the HA D3s are not likely to have athletics if they can't have everyone on campus because it wouldn't be received as equitable (prioritizing athletes over others who desire to be on campus) and they don't have the argument that they need the revenue from athletics. But unfortunately, athletes at D3s do make up a significant chunk of the student enrollment so they risk losing them too. The highest academics will always have a waitlist to get in though so probably not their biggest concern.
I live in NESCAC-land (New England) in an area where there are very few cases but it's on the rise and we're about to get shut inside for 6 months due to weather. I can see the arguments from both sides. People are paying significant $ for their kids to get a high worth degree, and want their kids on campus, but the small towns don't want the problems and the kids can't be locked down on campus forever. 20 cases in ones of these small towns with small hospitals and the threat of community spread is a problem, while it's just a blip at some universities elsewhere.
I'm not saying I like the situation, and several kids I know are affected and it is heartbreaking. I am just hard pressed to find fault with how either the families, kids or administrations are feeling about things and the decisions they have to make.
Last I checked, 70K cases on college campuses and 3 hospitalizations total.
That is just terrible news about the NESCAC. I believe in precautions and all the protocols but I think schools have gone off the rails. I think it all comes down to insurance and lawsuits. My son has a few offers on the table with DIIIs and I'm wondering what this means for incoming NESCAC recruits and if DIIIs are going to see total chaos and a flood of available players come back into the recruit pool. This process has been crazy enough and now it might get even crazier. I saw Swathmore also announced no spring sports for the school.
Son just got the call confirming the above: No spring athletics at all for Swat.
Tried to talk to him about it.
"Not now, Dad. I'm discombobulated."
Daggummit Smoke, sorry to hear that. The boys deserve better. Keep him off the ledge.
I'm sorry Smoke, and truly bummed for him and his teammates. This whole situation stinks and we can't get to the other side of it fast enough.
That stinks. I'm sorry.
My condolences too, Smoke. Not happy to hear this and it’s so unnecessary. I didn’t realize that PA was such a mess of a state. Politics seems to be placed ahead of the best interests of student athletes there, and a number of other states too. I find it very disappointing and discouraging about where our country seems to be headed.
So sorry, that’s terrible news. This has got to end.
Wow. Sorry to hear that. That’s not encouraging news for us on the west either.
That sucks. Sorry, Smoke.
SoCal, I'm not hearing anything that would give me hope, but still, the calculus is different in a warmer climate with schools all located close to each other. My opinion is that if the govt allows SCIAC schools to open, most of them will, and if they're open, they'll have spring sports.
... but then again I still believe in Santa and the tooth fairy.
Smoke, I hope your sons at least have summer plans for baseball, if that's what they want. What's so disorienting is that last summer didn't happen the way it was supposed to, so this is the 2019s' second college summer - sort of - possibly with only half a year of actual college ball.
@baseballhs posted:Last I checked, 70K cases on college campuses and 3 hospitalizations total.
I don't know where you got those stats but I would bet it's going to get worse.
@smokeminside posted:Son just got the call confirming the above: No spring athletics at all for Swat.
Tried to talk to him about it.
"Not now, Dad. I'm discombobulated."
Sorry 😐
Oh man @smokeminside I am so sorry!
@TPM posted:I don't know where you got those stats but I would bet it's going to get worse.
Andrew Bostom
@andrewbostom
1/ Campus C19 update, 10/5/20: Despite ~70K C19+ tests at 50 major universities, barely any reported hospitalizations (i.e., 3), & no deaths. (Tabulated below, with explanation, & more refs following tweet thread)
Not sure why you expect it to get worse. Most schools have already had a spike in cases. My son’s school had 500 at one time, now only 15. This does not effect college students the way it does the elderly. Because as a society we want to be woke, fair and safe. This is one of the craziest things I have ever witnessed we have no basis except for fear and that apparently is a good enough reason. I don't feel bad for kids at Swarthmore, they should be pissed off, they should express themselves as pissed and then they should decide if they want to make a change. if you aren't willing to make a change then you have nothing to whine about it.
Put your money were your mouth is, if Swarthmore loses 50% of the student body they will change, you can bet your ass on it. The arrogance of schools and the lack courage by consumers is mind blowing.
This from the stop whining, get better, the coach always knows what he is doing crowd - look in the damn mirror.
Old school, I agree with you but where are they gonna go if they want to play? I wouldn't be surprised if every other D3 school/conference makes the same decision, especially the so-called High Academic ones.
Actually I do feel bad for the kids at Swarthmore, but they should be pissed off. The truth is they made a choice to attend an awesome school but it is also an institution of liberal values that are not reasonable or real to the world we live in...they have some kind of utopia in the their little kingdom that allows them to act this way. It is sad that to some degree the kids are just pawns. My hope is that students become adults, they make millions and they shutdown the money flow to the school. You want change demand, alumni turn off the supply, new grads donate nothing...when they call and ask tell them grow up and establish normal operating methods and standards...there is nothing that changes systems faster then a unfunded budget! if you won't shut off the supply nothing will change.
With the cost of college some real consideration has to be given to development over four years of work versus college. You don’t have to go to college to be a programmer. You just have to be good.
We (had a software company with partners) hired a kid who walked into our office explaining computer science at UCLA was too damn easy and boring. He was a VP of development of a product line by the time he was twenty-three.
Sorry Smoke. I fear my son's school will follow suit shortly. With both our kids being seniors -- just so unfair the final two years of their baseball careers were stolen from them. Its hard for me to get my head around the fact that I may have seen my kid's last game .... 18 months ago.
Big, painful lesson in not taking anything for granted.
I feel really bad for the Swarthmore kids and everybody else that is missing out on college sports & competition. It is hard for me to think back 40 years ago, but I loved being a college athlete. I absolutely loved practices and I loved working out and partying with my teammates. I know my oldest son felt the same way about his college teammates although I know he did far less partying than his old man. Our college lineup was made up of a rag-tag bunch guys that were so different from each other, but enjoyed each others company. I still stay in touch with many of them. While the college baseball competition may have come to a halt or pause due to Covid, I hope there is a silver lining somewhere within the team that they can enjoy each other's company going through this together.
Best of luck to all, and stay safe.
@baseballhs posted:Andrew Bostom@andrewbostom1/ Campus C19 update, 10/5/20: Despite ~70K C19+ tests at 50 major universities, barely any reported hospitalizations (i.e., 3), & no deaths. (Tabulated below, with explanation, & more refs following tweet thread)
@TPM, you will find Dr Bostom's completely objective COVID research next to his scholarly tweets about Hunter Biden. His extensive survey of 50 colleges (of the 5,300 in the U.S.) counted all hospitalizations from college dashboards... where many don't even report hospitalizations, plus those that report as a percentage (1 in 300 = 0%).
Yes, every rational person knows that 20 year-olds are very unlikely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19. But these schools also have employees to consider; around 1 for every 4-6 students. They are also partners in their communities where those students live, shop, eat, etc. It would be wonderful if there were easy answers to this problem but there aren't any. Losing a year of sports will be personally devastating for many students, but most people who work in higher academics don't hold athletics in that same high regard.
@MidAtlanticDad posted:@TPM, you will find Dr Bostom's completely objective COVID research next to his scholarly tweets about Hunter Biden. His extensive survey of 50 colleges (of the 5,300 in the U.S.) counted all hospitalizations from college dashboards... where many don't even report hospitalizations, plus those that report as a percentage (1 in 300 = 0%).
Yes, every rational person knows that 20 year-olds are very unlikely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19. But these schools also have employees to consider; around 1 for every 4-6 students. They are also partners in their communities where those students live, shop, eat, etc. It would be wonderful if there were easy answers to this problem but there aren't any. Losing a year of sports will be personally devastating for many students, but most people who work in higher academics don't hold athletics in that same high regard.
I believe all these dashboards include faculty and staff. All the ones I look at have that information. My son's school is not on the list you referenced, 8 positive test out of 20k given, no professors or staff. The partners in the community could be impacted, it's possible but they could also be out of business. If colleges and universities are testing weekly and isolating those with Covid isn't that good for the community? I guess they could be in other communities not testing and infecting people. Trying to impune someone by mentioning they are commenting on Hunter Biden is weak. Data is data, go refute the data, not the compiler. Go to those sites and point out where the sites don't list hospitalizations and then attack the data as incomplete.
This isn’t the only report with this info. We have zero hospitalizations at my sons school and all staff have gotten it off campus. Hold tightly to fear if you choose. I’m also surprised the Hunter tweets made it... I thought Twitter was censoring any negative Biden press.
3 is a ridiculous number. I know of two and I don't know that many college kids. One of my kid's teammates has had a really bad time with it and has been hospitalized twice. Once during his bout with covid and then he was in the ICU with bacterial pneumonia. The other was in and out.
What the colleges do is not "political" at all, in the sense that they are doing what they are doing to make some kind of political point. They are responding to their employees and their customers, and trying to make decisions that are in their best financial interests. In this, they are no different from any other business. The schools that are cancelling spring sports are either (a) public schools (as in the Pennsylvania and Georgia threads) that can barely afford them anyway and don't need them to recruit students, and (b) the ultra-selective schools with 10 applicants for every spot and huge endowments, who will fill their classes no matter what the athletes think. I can understand what they are doing, while at the same time thinking they are wrong and bitterly resenting it for the impact it has on my son.
Students coming home for the holidays can cause further outbreaks as well.
Let’s think about all people here.
@Gunner Mack Jr. posted:I believe all these dashboards include faculty and staff. All the ones I look at have that information. My son's school is not on the list you referenced, 8 positive test out of 20k given, no professors or staff. The partners in the community could be impacted, it's possible but they could also be out of business. If colleges and universities are testing weekly and isolating those with Covid isn't that good for the community? I guess they could be in other communities not testing and infecting people. Trying to impune someone by mentioning they are commenting on Hunter Biden is weak. Data is data, go refute the data, not the compiler. Go to those sites and point out where the sites don't list hospitalizations and then attack the data as incomplete.
It's not weak when both are true. Dr Bostom has an agenda, and his analysis is flawed. The first school on his list (U of Alabama) doesn't report hospitalizations. And is every student who gets sick and goes home to a hospital reporting that to the school? We don't know if that number is zero or non-zero, because there's no reporting system for any of this. The post here said, "70K cases on college campuses and 3 hospitalizations total." That's not even accurately representing Dr Bostom's data, but that's how this type of information gets whispered down the lane when the source attracts confirmation bias.
But again, I am not disputing that the majority of college students are at extremely low risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. But you can't have it both ways.. you can't say that colleges are overreacting but also reacting properly. I think most are managing this pretty well, but in no small part due to restrictions that so many people think should be removed. There's no simple way to mitigate the impact of this pandemic on businesses, including the universities. There is a trade-off between college students having a "normal" college experience (including supporting the local economy), and how many people get infected (and how sick they get). That's a very difficult balancing act.
The political part isn’t necessarily the universities themselves, but the professors pushing for virtual only, are for the most part very vocal and very political.
Would small liberal arts D3 colleges have sports if the market didn't force them to? It costs them money, it goes against the grain of what they are about academically, and many NARP students resent seeing athletes get preferred admissions.
If they had a chance to flip the question to "Should we add sports next year?", as they do now, would they? Could this be the beginning of the end of D3 sports?
@MidAtlanticDad posted:It's not weak when both are true. Dr Bostom has an agenda, and his analysis is flawed. The first school on his list (U of Alabama) doesn't report hospitalizations. And is every student who gets sick and goes home to a hospital reporting that to the school? We don't know if that number is zero or non-zero, because there's no reporting system for any of this. The post here said, "70K cases on college campuses and 3 hospitalizations total." That's not even accurately representing Dr Bostom's data, but that's how this type of information gets whispered down the lane when the source attracts confirmation bias.
But again, I am not disputing that the majority of college students are at extremely low risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. But you can't have it both ways.. you can't say that colleges are overreacting but also reacting properly. I think most are managing this pretty well, but in no small part due to restrictions that so many people think should be removed. There's no simple way to mitigate the impact of this pandemic on businesses, including the universities. There is a trade-off between college students having a "normal" college experience (including supporting the local economy), and how many people get infected (and how sick they get). That's a very difficult balancing act.
To be fair it is still weak to impune data because you say someone has an agenda. At least in this reply, you point out what you believe are flaws in the data with examples, IE Alabama. If your first reply focused on data inaccuracies vs attacking the person who compiled the data I think most people would have been enlightened. I agree with you on confirmation bias, people seek out data that supports their view all the time.
@PTWood posted:Smoke, Northwestern did the same for the first two quarters (juniors and seniors on campus). Most of the learning is remote. They are Big 10 for athletics. So...after the football decision, so far some version of all seasons is on.
PT....true, except for: Freshman and Soph athletes ... I have a friend whose son is Freshman Ballplayer; he is on campus at the school.
@baseballhs posted:Andrew Bostom@andrewbostom1/ Campus C19 update, 10/5/20: Despite ~70K C19+ tests at 50 major universities, barely any reported hospitalizations (i.e., 3), & no deaths. (Tabulated below, with explanation, & more refs following tweet thread)
There are only 50 schools. UF had about 3k cases reported in March. Schools now are having to close down football schedules, with staff and athletes infected. This poses an issue with staff bringing home covid. UF just cancelled with LSU. It's not just players anymore but staff. Nick Saban a good exmple COVID. These programs have the best care, they have facilities to quarantine players in, if a school has a medical program, guess where they go, and it's not reported.
If they are having trouble how does a program that has limited funds handle this virus?
Yes we know that younger folks don't get as sick but they still pass on the virus.
In a few weeks won't students be heading home to family for the holidays?
Also, it is with my understanding that reported cases in college gets reported to their state of residence.
@MidAtlanticDad posted:@TPM, you will find Dr Bostom's completely objective COVID research next to his scholarly tweets about Hunter Biden. His extensive survey of 50 colleges (of the 5,300 in the U.S.) counted all hospitalizations from college dashboards... where many don't even report hospitalizations, plus those that report as a percentage (1 in 300 = 0%).
Yes, every rational person knows that 20 year-olds are very unlikely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19. But these schools also have employees to consider; around 1 for every 4-6 students. They are also partners in their communities where those students live, shop, eat, etc. It would be wonderful if there were easy answers to this problem but there aren't any. Losing a year of sports will be personally devastating for many students, but most people who work in higher academics don't hold athletics in that same high regard.
Haven't seen any reports of students or staff overwhelming hospitals or having any significant issues other than the initial positives. Can you post some?
The study citing only 3 hospitalizations and 0 deaths is obviously incomplete: