UK won’t have spring break. Student group pushes for more COVID-19 safety measures.
University of Kentucky students and faculty will not get a spring break next semester, the university announced in a release Thursday.
Thanks to a condensed academic calendar designed to discourage student travel outside of town mid-semester, students will get just a one-day academic holiday on March 26 to substitute for the break. Classes will also start much later than usual — Jan. 25 — and finals week will begin May 10.
Student and employee activists also continued their push to beef up measures the university is taking to limit the spread of COVID-19 on campus. Members of the Movement for Black Lives UK and the United Campus Workers of Kentucky laid out an array of 70 multi-colored backpacks in front of the Main Building — the university’s administrative hub where President Eli Capilouto and others have their offices.
The 70 backpacks symbolize the potential projected UK student deaths from COVID-19 should the virus spread without mitigation, said UK senior Khari Gardner, the founder of the Movement for Black Lives UK, a student group dedicated in part to pushing for racial equity on campus.
Gardner said the projection is from a Georgia Tech professor who estimated in mid-August that that 26,000-student Atlanta campus could see 75 virus deaths should proper measures like social distancing and mask wearing not be enforced. The University of Kentucky has about 31,000 students, however not all students are on campus this semester.
UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said the Georgia Tech model assumes no compliance to COVID-19-related guidelines.
“That’s not the case here,” Blanton said, adding that the “vast majority of people” of people on-campus comply with social distancing and mask wearing policies. Blanton said that 70 percent of students are completing a daily symptom questionnaire sent to students via their mobile phones.
UK student virus cases have increased rapidly in recent weeks, according to data from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department. Since Aug. 3, the department has reported 1,479 student cases. The local health department only reports UK students who are considered to be Fayette County residents, meaning they must live in Fayette County or choose to quarantine in Fayette County if they live elsewhere.
No students have been hospitalized in Fayette County, health department data shows, but according to the university, 81 students are in on-campus isolation halls as of Sunday. On-campus COVID-19-positive students can opt to complete their isolation in a specific dorm or back at their respective homes. Off-campus students are asked to isolate in their residences. According to data from the state, the university has 665 active cases as of Tuesday.
Student and employee activists demanded that the university mandate that all students be tested for COVID-19 repeatedly, provide hazard pay for employees working in-person and give employees working in-person an option to opt into remote work.
“We’re not just dollar signs, we’re not just percentages, we’re human beings, we’re lives,” Gardner said.
Matt Heil, the circulation manager at the College of Law library and a member of the campus union, said the ability for people like him to opt into remote work if they feel unsafe is important to him and many members of the union. Heil said he doesn’t want to visit his 70-year-old parents while he’s also working on campus out of fear that he may infect them.
“I don’t think any employer has any right to ask me to either endanger my parents or to not see my family,” Heil said. “That’s ridiculous.”
The university has taken measures to detect and limit the spread of the virus on campus. Prior to the semester’s start, UK mandated that all returning students be tested for COVID-19 within seven days of arriving on campus. After fraternity and sorority students registered a higher postitivity rate relative the rest of campus, those students were required to re-test. Now, the university offers voluntary student testing and has begun wastewater testing to try to detect the virus in residence halls.
“The health, safety and well-being of our campus community – students, faculty and staff – comes first,” Blanton said. “Units and departments have, for example, been instructed to provide flexibility to employees with respect to work arrangements and they are doing so. Dr. (Deborah) Birx, in her visit to campus earlier this week, applauded the rigor and comprehensiveness of our testing and screening programs, led by our Health Corps. We are continually relying on the guidance of our START team of health professionals to determine steps with respect to issues such as testing and other protocols. Data and science will inform and drive our decisions.”
Condensing the spring academic calendar is also part of those efforts. The condensed spring calendar is similar to this fall, where students didn’t have Labor Day off and didn’t get a fall break. Prior to heading home for Thanksgiving, students will only get Election Day off. After Thanksgiving, students will have an online-only finals week in early December.
“The idea is to compress the academic calendar and to encourage students to stay on campus as much as possible, once they arrive at UK for the spring semester,” the university’s release stated. “More specifically, the revised calendar creates a condensed semester in which students remain engaged in coursework on campus, rather than potentially traveling to other regions and returning to Lexington, which would increase the risk of spreading COVID-19.”
University officials said earlier this week that they’d handed out nearly 80 student disciplinary suspensions related to violating campus mask-wearing and social distancing rules. UK has vowed to enforce its student code of conduct on students who host or attend large off-campus parties and gatherings.
Gardner said he took issue with the university’s COVID-19 disciplinary process and thought the university should re-think the process.
“Kicking students out, taking their tuition after they brought them back to campus in a global pandemic,” Gardner said. “I can’t put all the blame on students for actions breaking social distancing rules. These are young adults. They’re going to do what young adults do. Some of the blame and responsibility has to fall on the university.”
The 70 backpacks used for the protest will be filled with donated school supplies and will be given to school kids in Kentucky who say they need them, Gardner said.
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 10:05 AM.