{"id":24717,"date":"2020-11-05T20:58:58","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T01:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=24717"},"modified":"2020-11-05T21:00:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T02:00:15","slug":"compliance-issues-continue-months-into-fall-semester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2020\/11\/05\/compliance-issues-continue-months-into-fall-semester\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 Compliance Issues Continue Months Into Fall Semester"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/924188458&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\" title=\"wtbu\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wtbu<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\/compliance-issues-continue-months-into-fall-semester\" title=\"Compliance Issues Continue Months Into Fall Semester\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Compliance Issues Continue Months Into Fall Semester<\/a><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By Grace Ferguson<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two months into the fall semester, BU continues to issue thousands of warnings every week to students who are overdue on COVID-19 testing or symptom attestation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAbout 80 percent of my job has become compliance,\u201d Senior Associate Dean of Students Jason Campbell-Foster said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The dean\u2019s office is bringing on a new full-time staff member to manage compliance issues.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The number of warnings issued each week for overdue symptom attestations has fallen from its peak of over 12,000 in late September.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But last week, BU issued 3,105 warnings, and that has been the lowest number yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe attestation continues to be a real concern with people. And it\u2019s the same for faculty, staff, and students,\u201d Campbell-Foster said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile, the number of warnings sent to students who missed or failed to schedule a COVID-19 test shot up to nearly 1,300 last week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s after BU had been issuing just 130 to 150 warnings for testing every week over the last month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Campbell-Foster said a lot of those students actually have stopped coming to campus, either because they were spending the week at home or they wanted to finish the semester remotely, but they didn\u2019t communicate their plans to the university.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other cases, he said that unforeseen circumstances might have prevented a student from making it to their appointment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is, with every one of those warning letters that we send out, we\u2019re hearing a thousand particular situations as to why they weren\u2019t tested,\u201d Campbell-Foster said. \u201cSo, even though that\u2019s the number in noncompliance, it doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s 1,100 students walking around a danger to the community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Campbell-Foster added that, overwhelmingly, students his office reaches out to are apologetic and motivated to get back into compliance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Overall, around 90 percent of students have been complying with COVID-19 protocols from week to week. That number is lower among students who live off campus, and the lowest among off-campus undergraduates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Campbell-Foster said that daily symptom attestations have been a point of confusion for off-campus students who aren\u2019t on campus every day. They still have to complete attestations seven days a week, regardless of which days they\u2019re on campus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BU has taken some measures to bring off-campus compliance up. The university has started requiring students to show green compliance badges at public places on campus, like the GSU and dining halls.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat\u2019s part of the reason why we went to the badge checks at some of the major public spaces on campus, so that we could get that number higher,\u201d Campbell-Foster said. \u201cAnd we have, we\u2019ve chipped away at the off-campus number quite a bit, because people still come into the GSU, they want to go to the library.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As of this week, Massachusetts has limited the number of people allowed at indoor gatherings to 10. BU has also lowered its gathering limit so that any student who hosts or attends a gathering of 10 people or more could face suspension. Before, BU\u2019s limit was 25.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Campbell-Foster said it\u2019s not about that magic number. He wants students to think about the size of their space, because cramming too many people into a small apartment can make it hard to stay six feet apart.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a lot of gatherings that are smaller, but just as problematic as if they were 25,\u201d Campbell-Foster said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reports of noncompliant off-campus gatherings have been in the teens most weeks, though the week of October 30th saw only eight of those gatherings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier in October, BU <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/articles\/2020\/12-bu-students-suspended-after-loud-parties-infractions\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">suspended 12 students<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for participating in a series of dangerous gatherings in Allston. These were the first and only suspensions of the semester, though some other students are just one violation away from being suspended themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Campbell-Foster said he takes no joy in sending students home for these violations. He went into higher education to help students make the most of college life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt is completely antithetical to my teaching and to my professional approach, to my work, to suspend students or to somehow interrupt their academic pursuit,\u201d Campbell-Foster said. \u201cI hate it. It doesn\u2019t feel right. But I also know that we have such an incredible duty to keep the state safe, to keep our people safe, and the families that we all go home to safe.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>wtbu \u00b7 Compliance Issues Continue Months Into Fall Semester By Grace Ferguson &nbsp; Two months into the fall semester, BU continues to issue thousands of warnings every week to students who are overdue on COVID-19 testing or symptom attestation. \u201cAbout 80 percent of my job has become compliance,\u201d Senior Associate Dean of Students Jason Campbell-Foster [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1597,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24719,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24717\/revisions\/24719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}