As colleges across Connecticut prepare to welcome students and staff back to campus, the surrounding towns are bracing for potential coronavirus outbreaks both on- and off-campus.
Officials in three Connecticut towns — Mansfield, West Hartford and Windham — wrote recently to state officials, asking them to reinstate stricter gathering restrictions in their towns to avoid potential super-spreader events.
“As host communities for large numbers of students, we believe it is absolutely necessary to have further restrictions on outdoor and indoor gatherings to protect the health of both our permanent residents and our student residents,” the letter says.
In Middletown, Mayor Ben Florsheim said he worries what might happen if Wesleyan students flout social distancing rules.
“Wesleyan is a big house-party, dorm-party school,” said Florsheim, a 2014 graduate of the university. “And those could be incubators for this virus if people are not smart about it.”
In Connecticut and elsewhere, young people have represented a growing share of COVID-19 cases, amid stories of teenagers and 20-somethings spreading the disease through unsanctioned gatherings. From July 5 to Aug. 1, people under 30 represented 43% of Connecticut’s cases, up dramatically from earlier in the pandemic. In total, since March, young people have accounted for only about 18% of cases.
Colleges and universities in Connecticut have submitted a variety of plans for testing and social distancing on campus. Yale and Wesleyan each plan to test students twice weekly throughout the fall semester. UConn and other schools have committed to lesser levels of testing, including an initial screening for all students who return to campus.
Though one recent study suggests schools should test students as often as three times a week, Dr. Anthony Fauci said during a recent press briefing with Gov. Ned Lamont that he’d been mostly impressed by universities’ back-to-school plans. Connecticut college towns should be all right, Fauci said, as long as schools handle the virus effectively.
“You’ve got to be careful if you’ve got people coming in from outside,” said Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “But I think if they maintain the guidelines they’ve put together for people coming back, they should be fine.”
If universities’ reopening plans go awry and the coronavirus begins spreading on their campuses, they also maintain the ability to backtrack and initiate a shutdown. But some town officials say the shutdown criteria is too vague to be comforting.
Just days before some campuses are slated to welcome students back, uncertainty still abounds. Last week, Johns Hopkins University announced that it had decided to move all its classes online, while UMass Amherst also switched tactics and decided not to allow many students back on campus.
Off-campus concerns
To buttress universities’ plans, some host municipalities are taking their own action.
In their letter to Commissioner James Rovella of the state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, the towns of Mansfield, West Hartford and Windham requested that the state reimpose stricter limits on gatherings. The towns specifically requested outdoor events be limited to 20 people, and indoor events to 10. Currently, the state’s reopening plan allows for outdoor gatherings of up to 100 people and indoor gatherings up to 25.
“While the colleges and universities are including initial quarantine and testing measures for on-campus housing and classes, we have an obligation to take appropriate measures to protect all of our communities,” the letter says.
Ben Shaiken, the deputy mayor of Mansfield, said the town sees large UConn parties every school year. This year, though, those parties could pose added threat.
“It’s something that we deal with every year. It’s part of being a college town,” Shaiken said. “With COVID, those events become significantly more concerning.”
In West Hartford, Town Manager Matt Hart and Mayor Shari Cantor said they’re less concerned because their local universities — including the University of St. Joseph and the University of Hartford — mostly have students living directly on campus.
Still, the specter of off-campus parties looms.
“We know there is risk when you bring people together. There’s no question,” Cantor said. “To young people: Let’s keep each other safe. We can all do our part to protect each other.”
Expectations and enforcement
UConn Dean of Students Eleanor Daugherty said the university is setting clear expectations with students about what is and is not allowed.
“We’ve done messaging on appropriate gatherings, and we’ve been very clear on inappropriate [gatherings],” Daugherty said. “It’s OK for four people to be on a porch hanging out. It’s not OK to have a gathering with 200 people.”
When UConn students first arrive back to campus, all residential students will be required to self-quarantine for 14 days. All students, whether they live on or off campus, will also be required to be tested for COVID-19 before they attend their classes.
During those first two weeks, Daugherty said, the university will provide activities such as scavenger hunts, book clubs and virtual recreation activities. Students won’t congregate in large numbers — at least not at university-sanctioned events.
If there are large parties or other unsafe gatherings that violate the university’s expectations, Daugherty said she expects the state police who patrol the area to intervene. If an incident is then referred from the state police to UConn, the university may also take action.
But Shaiken worries UConn hasn’t planned enough enforcement action and is relying too heavily on the assumption that most students will do the right thing.
“I don’t think it’s a reasonable expectation for anyone to have that someone’s going to follow the rules all the time,” Shaiken said. “What happens when people who are supposed to be quarantining decide to go to a party?”
In Middletown, Florsheim said he’s “cautiously optimistic” about students’ willingness to comply with Wesleyan’s requirements, having spoken not only with the university administration but also the student government.
“It makes me think that at least some students — and hopefully that’s a representative group — are thinking about the impact they are going to have when they get there,” said Florsheim. “The message is going to be better received in some way when it’s coming from your friends and your peers.”
Dr. Tom McLarney, Wesleyan’s chief medical director, described a number of additional precautions, including different levels of quarantine, twice-weekly testing, extra distance in classrooms and dining halls and a mask requirement even in dorms. Additionally, Wesleyan students won’t be allowed to leave campus and visit the rest of Middletown during their first two weeks on campus, McLarney said.
“[Wesleyan students] are an extremely caring group of people who look out for each other,” he said. “So I’m optimistic that they for the most part will comply with this.”
‘Nimble and responsive’
Shaiken said he worries, too, about what UConn would do if its campus did begin to see a coronavirus outbreak.
Daugherty and UConn chief financial officer Scott Jordan said the university’s reopening plan doesn’t include a quantitative, clear-cut threshold at which the school would move online or enact other safety measures. Instead, the university will continually monitor its ability to isolate infected or possibly infected students and to conduct contract tracing when positive cases are found.
If UConn finds itself unable to effectively isolate students and identify new coronavirus cases, then it would need to step back, they said.
“We have not predetermined a count, a number,” Jordan said at a July meeting of the Mansfield town council. “We’ll be prepared to shut down should we decide that we’re no longer able to manage.”
Daugherty said the plan’s fluidity on that count is not a bug, but a feature.
“The strength of the plan is its ability to be nimble and responsive,” Daugherty said. “That is our strength, that we have plans in place and we have the ability to be nimble, including making the decision to close.”
Wesleyan has a similar, non-numeric plan — the university’s reopening guidelines say it may close its campus if its isolation space begins to fill up with infected students. Wesleyan will also monitor disease indicators such as hospitalizations and test availability, and ultimately work alongside local officials on any closing or lockdown decisions, according to its plan.
Cantor, the West Hartford mayor, also worries about the lack of clear thresholds for the colleges in her town, and said she hopes to see additional guidance from either the state or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“There are some questions that we need answered,” Cantor said. “Even in our public schools, we don’t have guidelines. What if there is a positive case? What if there are five positive cases? Do you close?”
Gov. Lamont has endorsed allowing college students back on campus, as long as schools test frequently and follow the state’s protocol. But he has also pointed to plans for undoing that decision, if needed.
“I think we can do it safely,” Lamont said. “If we can’t, we’re going to change course.”
Emily Brindley can be reached at ebrindley@courant.com. Alex Putterman can be reached at aputterman@courant.com.
