A Yale Administrator Reportedly Told Students to “Emotionally Prepare” for COVID-19 Deaths
In July, Yale’s head of Silliman Residential College and psychology professor Laurie Santos warned students that they should “emotionally prepare” for COVID-19-related deaths and for residential life to look “more like a hospital unit.”
Since her memo, Yale has upped the amount of times it plans to test students on campus to twice a week.
Schools like University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Michigan State University, and Notre Dame have already had to transition to remote learning after major COVID-19 outbreaks on campus.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, many colleges decided to forge ahead with in-person learning for at least a portion of the school year. Predictably, campus life is going to look completely different this year if everyone actually adheres to social distancing (unlike that group of Syracuse students this week).
To warn students about the school year ahead and encourage them to be vigilant about safety precautions in part because vulnerable staff members were required to return to campus, Yale’s head of Silliman Residential College and psychology professor Laurie Santos emailed Silliman College residents and told them:
“We all should be emotionally prepared for widespread infections—and possibly deaths—in our community. You should emotionally prepare for the fact that your residential college life will look more like a hospital unit than a residential college.”
At the time of the email, which was sent in July, Yale had planned to test students only once a week. Since Santos’s email, Yale has upped its strategy to testing students twice per week and is working with MIT’s BROAD Institute and Harvard to ensure 24-hour turnarounds for testing results. According to Yale’s public health professor A. David Paltiel, who conducted research surrounding testing every two days, “Frequency [of the tests] actually makes up for a world of sins in regard to imperfect sensitivity [or accuracy].” Yale will also utilize a contact-tracing program, according to the Yale Daily News, which will help identify potential new cases during the incubation period.
Yale’s fall semester begins August 31. Already, schools like Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill have had to transition to remote learning after COVID-19 outbreaks on campus. Hopefully, Yale and other schools across the nation won’t suffer the same outcome.
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