Student Union
More Universities to Close After Thanksgiving
As COVID-19 cases surge around the U.S., more universities and colleges plan to move all classes online after Thanksgiving break in late November, while others say they will allow students to return to campus.
The University of Pennsylvania, University of Arizona, University of California in Los Angeles and Berkeley, Syracuse University in New York, and the University of Michigan are among the increasing number of schools ending all in-person classes for the semester after Thanksgiving.
The University of Arizona will, too, switch to remote learning over the break, and like the University of California and many other schools, will make the dorms available for the remainder of the semester for those who don’t have alternate housing.
“It is such a major operation, safely, to get all the students back to campus, that you really cannot manage that more than twice a year,” explained Frederick M. Lawrence, former president of Brandeis University in Massachusetts and chief executive officer of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Washington.
“You bring them on board, [and] you keep them as safe as you can during the time they're there,” said Lawrence. “You send them all home [for holidays] … but then they stay home.”
In a non-pandemic year, students usually join their families for Thanksgiving, a harvest celebration involving a lot of food and televised college football games. Students typically return to campus for about a month until late December, when the semester ends for winter break. After three to four weeks of winter break, that include the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, students return to campus for the start of new classes in January.
But the pandemic has upended a campus calendar that has carried on for decades. Millions of students are normally on the move over Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, the most traveled U.S. holidays of the year, reported the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Because cases of COVID-19 are reaching record highs, schools are trying to mitigate the impact students might have on spreading the virus.
Most State University of New York (SUNY) schools will require students to submit a negative COVID-19 test before heading home for Thanksgiving. SUNY, with 415,572 students, is spread among 64 campuses around the state that hosts the second-largest population of international students, nearly 125,000. (New York University in New York City is the No. 1 destination for foreign students.)
"By requiring all students to test negative before leaving, we are implementing a smart, sensible policy that protects students' families and hometown communities and drastically reduces the chances of COVID-19 community spread," said SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras in a press release.
Indiana University (IU) will require its 48,514 students to have exit testing as they head home for the Thanksgiving break. Last week (November 11), some IU students were suspended for celebrating in the streets after a football win. The week before, the university shut down its Delta Upsilon fraternity house through summer 2021, for hosting a large, unmasked Halloween party.
“Students will leave a state with skyrocketing new COVID-19 cases and some might sit next to grandparents a few days later,” tweeted Matt Cohen, enterprise reporter for the Indiana Daily Student news outlet.
The University of Missouri, another large Midwestern state university, changed its plan last week to online learning for its 29,843 students. The decision, announced November 12, came after a surge in COVID-19 cases in Missouri, according to University of Missouri System President Mun Y. Choi.
Until the surge, Missouri considered limited internet access at home, finances, and their COVID-19 case count when deciding to keep the campus open after the break, said University of Missouri Spokesperson Christian Basi.
“We have many students who rely on on-campus work to provide them with a source of income and if we were to close the campus not only would many of the students not be able to return, but there are some of those jobs that simply would stop,” said Basi.
“We have been managing the pandemic here on campus extremely well. Our active caseload has fallen about 90% since it peaked over the Labor Day weekend” in September, said Basi.
The University of Maryland (UMD), which had planned to bring students back after the break, also retracted their decision last week and will be completely online after Thanksgiving for its 40,521 students, according to an email sent by UMD President Darryll Pines to students.
UMD and the University of Wisconsin are among other schools that have told students who travel for the break that they will not be allowed to return to campus. The university will switch to all online instruction, but campus will remain open for students who don’t have housing options.
The University of Georgia (38,920 students) and Youngstown State University (11,788) in Ohio will allow students to return to campus in person after the November 26 Thanksgiving holiday, they announced.
The University of Alabama (37,842 students), too, will resume classes after the break, and will offer exit testing for the Thanksgiving and winter breaks for students who request it.
Lawrence said testing and quarantine are key to controlling the spread of COVID-19 among college campuses.
“If students are going to be coming back, there has to be a combination of testing if they're going to be on campus, and quarantining, even if they're just going to be off-campus in off-campus apartments,” said Lawrence.
Lawrence said because of how quickly the virus spreads, universities returning after the break should implement a series of protocols for students.
“It's too much back and forth. That's too much interaction with people outside the bubble and coming back to campus,” said Lawrence.
“The model has to be a big break and then come January, February, a replay of the entire operation schools did in August and September, to bring students back to campus safely,” said Lawrence.
The American College Health Association issued an advisory in October to help colleges and universities navigate the end of the semester. The U.S. does not have a national plan for higher education and COVID-19.
Four sources are compiling information about colleges and COVID-19, including case-tracking maps: The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Davidson College’s College Crisis Initiative (C2i), and Inside Higher Education.
Most international students face holidays alone or without family. Some schools are encouraging all their students not to go home for the break, and are offering alternative activities and turkey meals, the typical centerpiece on most American dinner tables for Thanksgiving.
Iuliia Rychkova is an international doctoral student at the University of Mississippi, which will end its fall semester before the Thanksgiving break.
“I'm going to stay in Oxford,” where the university has its main campus, she said.
“Honestly, I'm an international student, right? So it's kind of pricey to go home for a month,” said Rychkova, who is from Novokuznetsk, Russia, which lies east of Kazakhstan and west of Mongolia.
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College athletes push for voter turnout while largely avoiding controversy as election nears
Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
