Through watching teachers and students alike ignore social distancing during classes, classes should only be online during this pandemic.
I’ve watched in my classes how little people actually social distance. A teacher goes around speaking with each student, patting their backs, and moving on while students gather around a table to get materials.
I imagine how many people a teacher could expose through each class they have, and how many students go on to study with other students who could also end up exposing others.
Nobody is used to the habit of avoiding touch or having conversations from awkwards distances and it shows in classes.
I’ve seen all too often people not avoiding physical contact. I watched a teacher playing with a trinket rolling off their arm then holding hands with a student to roll the trinket to them.
Teachers walk around to meet individually with every student. The six feet apart rule does not seem to apply during classes.
Even when someone tries to follow a six feet apart rule, it’s impossible to weave through the tables without getting close to someone.
Of all my classes that had discussed splitting the class into alternating groups of in person and in Zoom classes, I only had one class who had attempted this. After the first week, this plan was quickly out the door and now the entire class meets in person on the same day.
One solution for the students who are upset by the lack of distancing would be to only attend classes on Zoom. The only problem with this solution is that teachers don’t want their students on Zoom.
I overheard a teacher talking to a student from Zoom saying that they could not miss anymore in person days even though this student said they were in quarantine again. A friend of mine also shared a story of a teacher with similar sentiments.
Teaching on Zoom is understandably hard when it’s just talking to the black boxes with their names floating in the abyss. Even so, enforcing the risk of COVID does not seem like the best of ideas.
I have had three or four COVID scares just from group work in class. Everyone forgets to sit apart from each other and by the next class one member of your group is gone because they had potential exposure from the week before.
One COVID scare is enough stress to fuel finals week, let alone multiple scares. The amount of risk and stress put on by in person classes should be enough to make people realize that it is far better than the annoyance of staying home more often.
In a different encounter that was not in a class setting, there was a group of five people working on the landscaping in front of the Visual Arts Building. None of these people had masks on even though they were considered on campus.
Neither did Anonymous for the Voiceless when the group stood in front of the COE library. The animal rights activist group had plastic masks with cutouts for breathing that they didn’t even wear before they got to their demonstration.
Not everyone follows the rules set by UW and students are back on campus around other people who can expose them.
As creatures of habit, people have been notoriously bad at social distancing when we are around other people.
Bringing students on campus even when Zoom is technically allowed, but not encouraged, is too much risk. Online classes are the best option to keep people apart from each other and prevent COVID cases from being spread during class time.
