Herald Sun
August 6th
As UNC-Chapel Hill students return to campus this week, Orange County’s health director is asking the university to — at minimum — use fully online instruction for the first five weeks of the fall semester.
Health Director Quintana Stewart, in a letter to UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, said she would prefer that UNC consider virtual classes for the entire fall semester.
She also said UNC should restrict its on-campus housing to just at-risk students with no access to educational resources and those with true housing needs, including international students and low-income students. She suggests limiting housing to single-occupancy rooms.
Thousands of UNC students are moving into dorms and off-campus apartments this week, with a mix of in-person and virtual classes to start Monday.
The county has tried to control the spread of COVID-19 with a mask mandate and closing restaurants early to prevent the bar scene. But it wants the university to do more.
“While these are valiant efforts, I fear it will not be enough to contain the full campus community upon return for the Fall Semester,” Stewart said.
Orange County Commissioners Chair Penny Rich joined with Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger, Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle and Hillsborough Mayor Jennifer Weaver to send a follow-up letter Wednesday to UNC officials.
The letter noted steps the county has taken to control the spread of COVID-19 and concerns about the increasing number of cases being reported among younger people.
UNC needs to “take on a greater share of responsibility for the various aspects of the pandemic response related to campus re-opening,” it said, including following the recommendations that Orange County’s health director made in the July 29 letter “to the fullest extent possible.”
Thousands of college students returning to a ‘small town’
Stewart’s recommendations were discussed Tuesday at the weekly meeting of county and town leaders, and officials with UNC, UNC Health Care, public safety, health officials and others, Rich said. She declined to share what was said, stating some of the information is about individual cases and all of it is “confidential.”
Every county commissioner is concerned, but UNC does not have to follow the health director’s recommendations, and the university is not closing down, Rich said.
“If people are so afraid to be around the students, then don’t go near the university,” Rich said. “I know it’s difficult in some instances … but the university is going to open, the students are here, so we have to move past the fight of trying to get them not to open. We have to move past that and work with them to try to keep it safe.”
Stewart said it’s now up to the university and the UNC System Board of Governors to make the final decision, according to Orange County spokesman Todd McGee.
The town has a population of roughly 59,000, according to the U.S. Census. UNC has about 29,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students, about half of whom list Chapel Hill as their place of residence. Some students also live off campus in surrounding towns and counties.
UNC students are “coming back to what is essentially a small town,” McGee said at a news conference Wednesday.
”We have been told by UNC … that the number of students who are going to be on campus has diminished greatly, because the parents, I believe, have the concerns that everybody else has,” McGee said. “But all that means is they are going to be living … in an apartment or somewhere else.”
Health director’s recommendation
Stewart’s recommendation was based on increases and clusters of COVID-19 cases, the behavior of students off campus at bars and parties, a lack of testing supplies and contact tracing capabilities, public transportation issues and concerns from local residents and UNC faculty, staff and students.
“We could quickly become a hot spot for new cases as thousands of students from all across the country/world merge onto the UNC Campus,” Stewart’s letter says.
Orange County has reported nearly 2,000 confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and 45 deaths. Over the past month, daily case counts have nearly doubled, with record highs in early July, according to the health department. The county has also seen an increase in cases among 18- to 24-year-olds, which account for 22% of cases, and in the 24-49 age group, which is 37% of cases.
“Today we are seeing more cases with the younger age group and more community transmission and asymptomatic cases than originally seen,” Stewart said in the letter.
In the past week, 13 UNC students have tested positive for COVID-19, according to UNC’s dashboard of cases on campus. There have been a total of 175 coronavirus cases among UNC students and employees since March.
The recent outbreak among the UNC football team showed how challenging it will be for the student population to follow rules about washing hands, wearing face masks and staying 6 feet apart, according to the letter. Stewart said student athletes are likely “some of the most disciplined and motivated groups of students on campus,” yet the virus spread rapidly between teammates even with the precautions.
Stewart said students have not been cooperating with the county’s “communicable disease investigation and control measures” and that some staff resorted to suggesting legal remedies to get students to work with them, according to the letter.
COVID-19 spreading at social events
Stewart also noted growing activity at bars and restaurants on Franklin Street, which resulted in clusters of cases, as well as off-campus parties and gatherings at fraternity and sorority houses.
Some students have also expressed their concerns about others students, particularly in Greek life and on athletic teams, throwing parties and hanging out in groups without masks and social distancing.
“I’m on campus already for marching band and while we wear masks for 8 hours a day & participate only in outdoor activities to distance well, we’ve seen sororities, football players, swim team members, & students in groups, inside & outside, without masks,” one student tweeted. “THIS WILL NOT WORK @UNC.”
Another UNC student sent The News & Observer a video, which was also shared on Twitter, that shows a group of about 50 young women leaving what appears to be a gathering at a house on Ransom Street, just off campus in Chapel Hill. The video was taken around 11 p.m. Tuesday , and most of the young women were not practicing social distancing or wearing masks.
The student who took the video did not want to be named and said she did not know details of what was happening.
The home is not one of UNC’s official sorority houses. Sorority recruitment is being done virtually this year, according to the UNC Panhellenic Council.
On Wednesday afternoon, a young woman who answered the door of the house said she had no comment.
Video appears to show lack of social distancing/masks in Chapel Hill
A video shot Tuesday night, August 4, 2020, shows people in a large group apparently not practicing social distancing and mask wearing while at a house off campus in Chapel Hill, N.C. By Contributed/Instagram
In a statement late Wednesday, Amy Johnson, UNC’s vice chancellor for student affairs, said, “We expect students to follow our community standards to help protect each other, our campus and local community. … We are disappointed with the reports we have received regarding this event and will follow up, as we do with all reports that indicate our community expectations may not have been met.”
Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said a town-gown task force was going out Wednesday to talk with those students about the violation. It’s not the first report of parties to the group, which includes police, fire, campus and town code enforcement officials.
“We’ve had folks send us photographs of gatherings that appeared to violate the order. We go out every time,” Blue said.
Although police focused on educating students about violations off campus this summer, Blue said the focus going forward is education and enforcement.
Those who violate local or state rules on masks or limits on the number of people who gather can be charged with criminal misdemeanors, he said. Repeat and egregious offenses will be documented, and the information also will be provided to UNC, he said.
McGee said the number of complaints received about people not wearing masks has gone down.
“We think we’re getting good cooperation on this,” McGee said. “But, again, when you bring 30,000 people back into the campus that may be coming from areas that have different rules in place there’s going to be a learning curve.”
Chapel Hill wants more off-campus enforcement
Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger shared similar concerns in a letter to Bob Blouin, UNC’s executive vice chancellor and provost, on July 31. She asked him to require students to also meet health safety standards — handwashing, masks and physical distancing — when they are off campus.
Students who violate those standards off campus should face the same consequences as for on-campus violations, Hemminger said. Those sanctions range from being banned from campus to being unenrolled from a course or the university.
UNC needs “a more customized re-opening plan,” she said, including working with the town to encourage safe behaviors among students and to monitor what they do.
COVID surveillance testing for high-risk, off-campus areas, such as student apartments and neighborhoods with many student residents, also would help, she said, as well as clear ways to track and follow-up on violations and to expand testing and community contact tracing.
The Chapel Hill Town Council asked for similar steps in a July 29 meeting with Blouin, at which the provost said UNC has very little ability to enforce what students do off campus, including at sororities and fraternities, which are on private property.
Orange County’s decision to end alcohol sales and dine-in service at restaurants after 10 p.m. in July was in direct response to students who were hanging out in large groups at late-night restaurants that served alcohol, Rich has said.
What Orange County could do
Orange County could issue a stay-at-home order, which would force UNC to halt campus operations and move all classes online this fall. Such an order would also affect local business.
The UNC System has said chancellors have been told to comply with any order to delay or shut down in-person learning that comes from the institution’s county health department, The N&O previously reported. A UNC spokesman called to clarify that it must be an order from the county, not just a recommendation.
But without a stay-at-home order or the county declaring UNC’s campus an “imminent hazard,” forcing it to close, any decision is in the hands of the university, the UNC System president and the Board of Governors.
Rich said issuing a stay-at-home order just for Orange County “doesn’t make any sense.”
“If you can’t go to a restaurant or you can’t do something in Orange County, in 10 minutes, you could be in Durham County, so unless you have some kind of regional shutdown, shutting down just Orange County is going to be very, very difficult,” Rich said.
Declaring an “imminent health hazard” on UNC’s campus is a complex, difficult legal process with serious financial implications, said McGee. It’s unlikely the county would take that step and the university would make the decision to close before it got to that point.
UNC faculty committee has emergency meeting
UNC’s Faculty Executive Committee called an emergency meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss their concerns about the letter and what Mimi Chapman, chair of the committee, called a “serious breach of trust” by administrators for not sharing the letter earlier.
At the meeting, Guskiewicz said university officials met with local public health officials the day after the letter was sent to discuss the changes UNC was making to keep the campus community safe. Those changes included “de-densifying” residence halls down to about 65% occupancy and keeping in-person classes down to 30% of students in seats, according to Guskiewicz.
“They still had concerns, there’s no question,” Guskiewicz said. “But who doesn’t have concerns?”
Guskiewicz said he also talked to former UNC System interim President Bill Roper and new UNC System President Peter Hans about these recommendations from the county last week.
“We were advised to stay the course,” Guskiewicz said. “They were comfortable with the plan that we put forward.”
Guskiewicz also said that this was not a mandate from the Orange Health Department and that the university has been working closely with county health officials in making and adjusting their fall plans for months.
Demonstrators participate in a “die in” outside the South Building at UNC-Chapel Hill while protesting the university’s decision to hold in-person classes amid the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday, August 5, 2020.
While the meeting was going on, about 60 people gathered outside the UNC administration building to protest the campus reopening plan. UNC students, faculty and staff members organized the “die-in” Wednesday afternoon.
The group says under UNC’s plan administrators will be working in the safest conditions while the lowest-paid campus workers and Black, Indigenous, and people of color, including students and community members, will be placed at high risk.
Staff writer Jessica Banov contributed to this report.
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