We had students live on campus despite COVID-19. Here's why it was safe and effective.
Our students showed they would much rather take precautions and follow protocols than be relegated to a square on a screen.
At their best, college campuses are an antidote to much of the isolation, despair and lost opportunity that ails our society. But this time last year, they seemed like a dangerous weakness.
Conventional wisdom held that campuses would be the epicenter of COVID-19 transmission, and that college students would be weak links in our response to the pandemic. Some went so far as to argue that the residential college experience was doomed.
That was not our experience at Longwood University. As we look ahead to the fall semester, there’s a broader lesson in that success about the importance of close-knit, human connection.
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Many institutions had severe difficulty no doubt. But far more found strengths in their residential character itself to meet the challenge – allowing students to stay on track and communities to stay safe.
Our students showed they would much rather take precautions and follow protocols than be relegated to a square on a screen.
And it worked: We had no known or suspected cases of transmission in any classroom or academic space, in any campus dining setting, in any workplace setting, or in any instance to local community members other than other college students. Like many institutions, we saw more cases among students who live off campus than in on-campus residence halls, despite their relative density.
Our enrollment was actually up 5% last year – the highest year-to-year increase of any of Virginia’s public universities.
And the students were so committed to being back that they followed the rules, protocols and precautions carefully, playing an instrumental role in keeping the spread of COVID-19 manageable on our campus. Yes, we had a few disciplinary issues over the course of the year, but remarkably few.
Students avoided online classes
We held a majority of our classes in person, along with some in a hybrid model and about 20% fully online. We heard from a few students who preferred to take online classes. But far more did not, and they were looking for ways to arrange their schedule to avoid them.
We certainly did not avoid COVID-19 entirely. Out of about 4,500 students, we had 333 positive cases reported over the course of the past year. Fortunately, most were mild and no students were hospitalized.
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The overwhelming consensus among our students, faculty and staff is that the in-person experience mattered: the conversations with professors, the chance to have a flowing discussion back and forth among people with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints, the learning experience that benefits from the countless cues of often nonverbal communication that take place in a classroom but work barely if at all over Zoom.
That was true not just in the classroom but also perhaps just as important across all of campus – the residence halls, the dining halls, the student centers where conversations thrive and relationships flourish.
Students were determined to find ways to keep vibrant their beloved student organizations – student government, student news organizations, service and political groups, participating in club and intramural sports, and playing and celebrating intercollegiate ones.
While these are often considered the afterthought of college – the part of the college experience that goes beyond education – they are instrumental to the campus rhythms that foster formative lessons about how to live a life.
On-campus connections were vital
What may be surprising is that these traditions, these deep patterns of connection – so classic on a college campus at its best – didn’t prove to be a weakness when it came to mitigating the spread of COVID-19. They were key to the success.
The main reason why: Young people deeply value being part of such a community. Our students were eager not to lose it, so they followed the rules. A strong campus community also naturally creates a culture of mutual obligation and accountability, with real practical advantages.
Prompt and thorough contact tracing, for instance, which snuffed out lines of transmission before they could spread, was tremendously efficient for us. Our clinic director and head of wellness were talking multiple times a day, at the hub of well-grooved channels of campus communication.
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As diagnoses came in, roommates, teammates or friends in student organizations who were contact exposed could be readily determined by experienced campus members serving as contacted tracers – and quarantined from the general population almost in real time. Few institutions in society have managed contact tracing and quarantine as effectively as many residential college campuses.
Longwood did not reopen successfully despite being a tightly knit residential college campus. It did so because it is a tightly knit residential college campus – ready for an enormous effort from all, including the students themselves.
Meeting the challenge of the pandemic this past year, and doing so together, for the college students across America who had the opportunity to do it will be a lesson they will draw on always.
The habits of care for one another, care for the whole community, care for traditions and care for learning itself are some of the habits at the core of making our frayed democracy work in the generation ahead.
And that is a lesson for all of higher education to remember this fall as more institutions are ready to have students right where they should be: together.
Taylor Reveley is president of Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.