Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

web.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 605 posts

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#391

Post by kopochameleon »

gevz wrote: post #313
generationP wrote: post #144

> Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. This is strange. Isn't the travel they are forcing quite possibly a cure worse than the disease? And are they really expecting students (many of them…

I’m not sure about mit schedule, but at Harvard, which announced same measures earlier today, the students has to vacate dorm rooms at the end of the academic year anyway. This happens at the end of April. So essentially Harvard is asking students to move out 6 weeks before the end of the year. One of those weeks is spring break. I’m sure students are in shock and there is a lot of chaos on campus. But according to w…

Agreed it is a bit disturbing how seemingly lightly K12 schools have been treating cases, which is possibly an indication of how lightly they will treat impending local outbreaks like that in Cambridge. I get there are fierce arguments on the side of keeping them open, NYC schools for example pointed to their free- and reduced-lunch program as why they can't close or go remote, (& that students don't have computers at home, or that parents rely on the school as babysitting).

This Seattle school figured out measures for handling lunch and remote schooling availability, at least: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/10/us/covid-19-s...

Especially in these early days, dispersal of dense populations can easily mean saving many lives. We need to flatten the curve so spread rate does not exceed hospital bed availability.

Nobody's saying we won't all be extremely inconvenienced by this, but slowing the spread will mean that inconvenience does not include many avoidable deaths. And now is the time to do everything we can. In weeks, once we feel the effects more closely, it is too late to make an impact.

This comic puts it well, the goal is to flatten the curve: https://twitter.com/SiouxsieW/status/1236721200291655680

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#392

Post by presumably »

mygo wrote: post #318
generationP wrote: post #144

> Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. This is strange. Isn't the travel they are forcing quite possibly a cure worse than the disease? And are they really expecting students (many of them…

> In what way are dorms worse than personal homes for diseases anyway? There is literature on respiratory infections in dormitories: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-019-0196-4 It’s unfortunately paywalled, but the original authors claim they’re working on getting it more openly available

https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2019-12-06/f645/10.1038@s41370-...

> “ Our study was conducted at one U.S. university, which may limit generalizability.“

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#393

Post by rdiddly »

Sidestepping for a moment the illness itself, and whether you call this panic or caution, or whether the panic/caution is well-founded, or how inconvenient it is... I love this and all the other examples of it. Greatly increased numbers of people, companies, schools and conferences etc. are suddenly exploring the possibilities of remote meeting & working technologies, some for the first time. Many will inadvertently demonstrate to themselves certain truths they might never have discovered otherwise. And when the epidemic is over, a certain number of them will be much more amenable to letting me, rdiddly, work remotely, which of course is always a plus, because commuting out there sucks balls and so do noisy offices!

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#394

Post by slg »

CydeWeys wrote: post #375
slg wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole chain of comments started out with the following prompt: >In what way are dorms worse than personal homes for diseases anyway? Are they not trusting their students to prepare their own food? Why don't they just close the dining halls instead? Dining halls are inherently a highly trafficked gathering of a large group of people. That is exactly the type of things people are being instructed to avoid. It is l…

All of that applies to dorms too, maybe even worse because the close quarters are for much longer periods of the day. You've got multiple people living in the same room in dorms, and sharing all the common areas. That's a great vector for spreading disease. The dorms are closing for exactly the same reason as the cafeterias are, not because the cafeterias are closing first and now students have nothing to eat.

I have no idea what we are even debating anymore. It sounds like we both agree that the school closing down was a good decision because there are too many avenues for the virus to spread quickly through the student population.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#396

Post by nradov »

souprock wrote: post #354
kyeb wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In what way are dorms worse than personal homes for diseases anyway? Are they not trusting their students to prepare their own food? Why don't they just close the dining halls instead? The dorms have shared bathrooms, often shared rooms with doubles, triples, and quads, and shared living spaces (lounges, study rooms, laundry, etc.) in addition to the dining halls. Moreover, in our dorms, we have effectively no way t…

Many decades ago, the health department should have shut down the shared bathrooms and shared bedrooms. We knew it wasn't OK as soon as we agreed upon the germ theory of disease. It would be great if this disease would finally put a stop to the madness of typical dorm living conditions. An extra benefit would be a huge reduction in conflict. Roommate conflict is stressful and often leads to violence.

Seriously? What kind of school did you attend where violence between roommates was common?

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#397

Post by JCharante »

vesinisa wrote: post #189
generationP wrote: post #144

> Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. This is strange. Isn't the travel they are forcing quite possibly a cure worse than the disease? And are they really expecting students (many of them…

Not a lawyer, but that sure sounds shady as hell. Where I live student housing, even in a dorm, is subject to normal tenancy laws - meaning eviction requires long notice etc. Even saying to someone they need to vacate their home in less than a week could turn out very expensive for the landlord in court.

I'm a college student in Massachusetts (but not Cambridge). We don't have a normal lease because we're in a "boarding house". This means that the school has the right to kick us out if we cease to be a student (e.g. expelled) which is useful when roommates need to be relocated if there's any violent incidents.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#398

Post by monadic2 »

generationP wrote: post #144

> Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. This is strange. Isn't the travel they are forcing quite possibly a cure worse than the disease? And are they really expecting students (many of them…

Not really sure what you’re expecting in a society that recognizes individual liability but not collective issues.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#399

Post by swader999 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #289
perennate wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Target barely has any groceries, it's a small general department store. But yeah there is Trader Joe's, H-Mart, and Whole Foods. Market Basket is a bit further but more like a real grocery.

Yeah, the point is there's a wealth of options for food within a an easy hour round trip of walking (not just specifically the one Target). And a lot more if you have access to a bike. People are not going to starve to death when the alternative is walking 15 minutes to a grocery store. Let's be real. Downtown Cambridge is NOT some food desert like what exists in other parts of the US, where you could walk for hours…

This is the point though, if things deteriorate none of these options will be viable.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#400

Post by s3r3nity »

aatharuv wrote: post #340
kelnos wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly restaurants nearby, but not sure I'd call them cheap. I imagine a lot of MIT students don't have the money to eat out every day. And since most dorms don't have any kind of kitchens or cooking implements, buying food from the grocery and cooking isn't really an option. Pre-made meals or other things from grocery stores that don't require cooking could work, but, again, I'd expect some/many student…

What dorms don't have kitchens? Certainly when I went to MIT, most (if not all) dorms at least had kitchenette's, 20 years back. Shared, of course, which is the main problem.

Only one does now, IIRC. Used to be two, but one was converted to a grad dorm in the past few years.
Post reply on HN