COVID-19 on Campus: How Should Schools Be Redesigned? Redesigning academic institutions so that they can re-open and function safely in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is a challenging problem. Part of the value from a traditional education in an elite institution is socialization as a member of the future elites in finance, business more broadly, law, government, and industry. You meet and become friendly with people who will work with you for decades to come, whose trust you likewise will need for decades. ............ We can already see that improper design, even suboptimal design, can be catastrophic. ........... We need to determine to what extent we can deliver services adequately through virtual online alternatives. We need to determine to what extent we can deliver traditional services effectively through safe redesign, which manages public risks and to convince the public that risks have indeed been managed. And we need to find the optimal balance. .......... In some industries there is no redesign that saves it from total economic collapse. Movie theaters represent the most extreme example. ........... The vast majority of movie theaters will never reopen. ........ Retailing will be transformed but that industry already is adapting. ........ Redesigning elite academic institutions provides a concrete example of the most difficult design problem. ........ Military academies understand that their missions are complex, and they must include discipline and trust in your future cohort of peer officers as much as they include tactics, strategy, and military history. ............... a significant portion of the value of attending an elite institution is the informal time spent with faculty and with other students, and much of this value can be destroyed by improper redesign of the campus before reopening ............. We can also assume that state, local, and federal governments will still be dealing with the massive debt created by the virus over the past several months. Further, we can assume that many families are still dealing with the financial hardship created by the lockdown. .............. three age groups, corresponding to Students, most Faculty and Staff, and the Oldest faculty and staff. .......... We assume that essentially all non-academic activities, from sports to drama and music, will have been canceled. ......... We model the transition of individuals from the Healthy population, into Exposed, Infectious Asymptomatic, Infectious Sick, Recovered Immune, or Deceased. ............ First is full PPE or other protection for faculty and staff. Second is mandatory social distancing for students in the classroom. Third is mandatory social distancing for students in dining and student housing. Fourth is social contact tracing without testing. Fifth is social contact tracing with frequent and regular testing. These interventions can be combined to yield various strategies for reopening a campus. ............ Reopen and change nothing is not a viable strategy. ......... Protecting only the senior staff and hoping for herd immunity among the rest of the organization is not a viable strategy. ........... Unfortunately, there are very few industries where mixing virtualization and traditional labor is effective. .......... It is difficult to double the spacing between employees in a meat processing facility without doubling the size of the building or reducing output by half. .............. The combination of protecting senior staff and blending virtualization with traditional service delivery is possible in some industries but not others. Moreover, it is not sufficient in settings where employees or students also live together in close quarters after work, like a university or an aircraft carrier. ............ Strategy 4: Protect the Vulnerable and Slow the Spread of the Virus through Virtual Instruction and Redesigned Dormitory Experience ............ Strategy 5: Protect the Vulnerable, Slow the Spread of the Virus through Social Distancing in the Classroom and Dorms, and Remove the Contagious through Test and Trace ........... Even in the presence of all forms of intervention described above, testing will need to be constant and universal, with effective contact tracing after the identification of infected individuals. Daily testing across campus will not be possible. And when a significant portion of infected individuals are asymptomatic, hot spots are likely to have grown quite large before they are detected. ............. take samples from entire living groups of maybe 100 or 200 students. .............. aggressive programs of testing and contact tracing will also be required. .......... If a university does choose to open in the Fall, it will need to adopt the following practices, all of which are contained in Strategy 5. ........... Frequent testing and rapid social tracing will be essential to slow outbreaks of the virus, which inevitably will occur. ........ Students are not going to see the risk of COVID-19 as severe for them. They will not be certain that violating a social distancing norm will expose them, or that exposure will lead to illness, or that illness would be severe for them. They are not going to give up seeing friends or lovers. Redesign of living on-campus units will be the most ineffective part of the transformation, and campus living will be the most vulnerable part of the redesigned campus. And students will — quite reasonably — resist tracking through their phones. Where they sleep, and who they sleep with, and how late they are up drinking, and who they drink with, are all data they will not wish to share with their universities or with anyone else. .............. Every student would have a unique RFD token. Without the token they would not be admitted to any classroom building. ............ Super-spreader events should be banned; there probably will not be giant on-campus parties in the foreseeable future. ........... Contact tracing will be essential and contact tracing must be automatic, secure, and private. ........ Testing must be frequent. Students who have contracted the virus, whether they are symptomatic or not, must be quarantined, and quarantine must be without stigma. Ideally, quarantine of students who reside in dormitories would be in facilities nicer than existing dormitory facilities. Students who live off campus will be expected to quarantine at home. Students who are quarantined will have their RFD tags noted and will automatically be denied access to classroom buildings and dormitories. ........... Contact tracing must be immediate, compassionate, and anonymous. Students who have been exposed must be notified. They must be told as gently as possible. And they must not be told the name of the individual who may have exposed them. .......... The entire process must be transparent. Students must know the reason for each measure that has been imposed. And they must be able to know the state of the disease on campus at any time
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