BREAKING: Ole Miss to Have In-Person Class, Will Bring Students Back to Campus
Ole Miss will be having in-person classes and will bring students back to campus this fall, despite the ongoing threat of COVID-19.
The University unveiled their "Campus Ready" plan on Tuesday evening, an extensive plan to be able to host in-person instructive classes from the start of the 2020-21 school year. This comes shortly after a recent announcement that the fall semester will be truncated to end prior to the normal Thanksgiving break.
“The plan is the product of extensive and exhaustive planning efforts designed to resume daily operations and return to instruction on campus safely,” said University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce in a statement.
For now, plans will continue as normal with the same, previously scheduled move-in dates from Aug. 15 to Aug. 21. Student housing on campus will be as usual.
The "Campus Ready" plan includes numerous safeguards and health protocols to protect both students and staff against the potential spread of COVID-19. Classroom sizes will be scaled down to as little as 50-percent, depending on the limitations of classrooms and more online and hybrid-online classes will be made available to students.
If an outbreak is to occur within a class, that class would then be taken offline for a minimum of 48-hours to have the spaces cleaned.
Of course, all of these measures were made with consultation of the Mississippi Department of Health, and it will be the MSDH that will be responsible for all tracing and testing.
“If we cannot achieve full compliance with the protocols across our entire community, and the university experiences prolific spread of the virus, we will have no choice but to scale back on-campus operations and take more drastic measures to prevent further spread,” Boyce's statement continued. “If we all do our part to prevent the virus from spreading using the protocols, our level of activity on campus in the fall can be greater.”
From the athletics side, this is significant positive news.
Despite the University's continued plan to hold sporting events in front of fans, it seemed that notion would be logically unlikely if they were not to bring students back to campus. Now, plans are in place to make sure that first step occurs.
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