New York University is the latest college to cancel events over a coronavirus surge.
By Sharon Otterman, Dec. 15, 2021, NY Times
New York University announced Wednesday that it was immediately canceling all “nonessential” gatherings and events both on and off campus, including graduations, holiday parties, study groups and athletic competitions, because of surging rates of new coronavirus cases in the community.
“It’s not a cause for alarm, but it is a cause for concern, caution, and appropriate actions,” the university’s provost, Katherine Fleming, said in a memo to the entire university.
New York University is the latest college in the Northeast or Midwest to cancel in-person gatherings as cases of the coronavirus suddenly climb. The increases are tempering optimism that American colleges can safely continue on their planned trajectories back to normal after the dispiriting remote experiences of last year.
New York University is also among a growing number of colleges that will mandate booster shots to return to campus for the spring semester, in an effort to better control the Omicron variant, which scientists believe is causing vaccine breakthrough infections and is already present on some college campuses.
Cornell University, which reported 930 positive cases this week alone, including some with the Omicron variant, has put its main campus in Ithaca, N.Y., on its highest alert level, Code Red. Cornell moved final exams online and canceled all in-person events as of Tuesday.
Princeton University in New Jersey has also moved finals online, to enable students to leave for home as soon as possible. Among Princeton’s rising cases are “suspected cases of the highly contagious Omicron variant,” Jill Dolan, the dean of Princeton College, the university’s undergraduate school, wrote in an email to students on Tuesday, explaining the sudden shift.
The surges are happening at universities with very high vaccination rates. At New York University, 99 percent of students and faculty are vaccinated. So is 97 percent of the on-campus population at Cornell.
Last week, Middlebury College in Vermont moved to remote instruction for the rest of the semester. DePaul University in Chicago and Southern New Hampshire University each said this month that they would switch to all remote instruction, at least for a time, when classes resume in January...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/nyregion/nyu-events-canceled-covid.html.
Meanwhile, UC's VP for Health, Dr. Carrie Byington, told the Regents today that her "optimistic" scenario was that everyone gets Omicron:
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