Student Union
COVID Threatens Small Colleges, Small Towns
There's a lot riding on a kickoff set for 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12.
The Sterling College Warriors are scheduled to take on the McPherson College Bulldogs at home. If that familiar thud of shoe against football and cheer from the stands doesn't happen, the college that keeps the central Kansas town's economy humming, that gives it cultural vitality, and that separates Sterling from the hollowing out that defines so many other small Midwestern towns, might not survive.
The school, after 133 years, could die and doom the town that takes such pride in the football squad and embraces the student body like family.
"If COVID defeats the athletic season this year, it will probably defeat a lot of small colleges," said Jeb Miller, a non-traditional senior at Sterling College. "And, as a result, harm a lot of small towns. Badly."
Hundreds of small colleges dotting the country rely on students paying tens of thousands of dollars a year in exchange for a distinctive, personal, high-touch college experience.
Many of those colleges hung on year-to-year even before the pandemic. Now COVID-19 threatens to cut off the oxygen sustaining these schools, and the sports programs that drive enrollment, KCUR-FM reports.
But the very thing small colleges need to stay afloat — students coming in, spending money, playing sports — also poses a major risk to relatively isolated little towns that, so far, have dodged major coronavirus outbreaks.
Only about 2,200 people live in Sterling out on the flat, flat plains of south-central Kansas. But this small city boasts an almost idyllic downtown. New office buildings. Two good coffee shops. A nice grocery store, a bowling alley, you name it.
Sterling has good schools, competitive sports teams. Locals say school plays, games and concerts draw big crowds. Without the college, the money, diversity and energy that defines life in Sterling could evaporate quickly.
"There is just so much overlap," said Kyler Comley, a Sterling College senior who's lived in the town all his life. "The community supports the college. The college supports the community. You know, you just see how everything's intertwined and how people are just so overly giving and involved."
Every student attending Sterling College gets paired with a family in town. Those families speak endearingly about their adopted scholars.
The students left in March. Most haven't come back. Like many people here, Sterling criminal justice professor Mark Tremaine said that starting classes up again in person this month is make or break for Sterling College.
"The bottom line is, we've got to get students back to campus. If we're going to survive," he said."We have to accept whatever the risks are and do it."
And that's the plan. Sterling doesn't have much of a choice.
"We have committed to open up in the fall," Sterling College President Scott Rich said. "With face to face classes, face-to-face coursework, dorms and activities and full swing. But we're committed to doing it safely."
Rich said the school will quarantine students coming back to the dorms, test them liberally, and isolate those who come down sick in local hotels.
Rich said the freshman class looks strong, with about 200 new students. But he is desperately trying to woo 50 or so upperclassmen who haven't signed on this year. The school needs them because, like many other small institutions, Sterling College scrapes by from year to year.
"We're always dependent upon enrollment, always dependent upon that next year, always dependent upon persistence or retention," Rich said. "We have to get students to come back."
Other small-town schools across the country, and the communities tied to their fate, face the same existential crisis.
"Some of the people I know are looking at hundreds of colleges going out of business within the next several years, if this pandemic continues and if the economic devastation associated with it continues," said Scott Carlson with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Small liberal arts colleges have been shaky for years. Enrollments have slumped, endowments have been drained. Many schools have piled on debt in a building boom fueled by competition for students.
Most offer courses online, but online classes don't pay the bills. Small schools survive only by providing an expensive, in-person college experience. And Carlson said the pandemic shreds that business model, and threatens to trigger the higher education equivalent of a mass extinction.
"It's kind of sad," he said. "These colleges are unique, little entities all on their own, and each one of them provides a unique spin on higher education."
Sterling College, for instance, leans heavily on a particular interpretation of Christianity. Guarding the front door of the classic, old limestone building that anchors campus is a statue of Christ — not being tortured on the cross, but humbly washing the feet of a disciple. "Servant leadership," as anyone here will tell you, guides the campus ethic.
But Jesus doesn't keep the lights on here. Football does.
"We do have a good football team," said Sterling's athletic director, Scott Downing. "They've been fairly successful the last dozen years and been to the national playoffs, won the conference championship."
The team helps bring the students together, but more importantly, it drives enrollment.
"With a football team number of about 125 to 135 student-athletes, quite a bit of our student body is involved in that sport," Downing said.
That's an understatement. There are only about 500 students on campus in a given year, one in four is on the football team. And there are 20 other sports.
The chance to play college sports is a major selling point for schools like Sterling. It drives enrollment. But in a pandemic, sports can be vectors for disease. And Jed Miller, who's finishing his degree at Sterling online next year, says that's another vulnerability.
"If COVID defeats the athletic season this year, it will probably defeat a lot of small colleges," he said. "And as a result, hurt a lot of small towns ... badly."
So, the same colleges that keep some small towns vibrant now pose a particular threat to public health.
"The college probably is the most dangerous element for us in terms of COVID," said Kristina Darnauer, a family practice doctor in Sterling. "It potentially brings back students from all over the US who have variable levels of exposure."
Darnauer is torn. She loves Sterling, loves the college, and fully appreciates how important it is to the school and the town that college ramp almost as normal this fall.
But she's got patients to care for. And she said this county, with only one hospital and no intensive care unit is not ready for a cluster of coronavirus cases.
"If we have a huge outbreak," Darnauer said, "we're going to be out of resources very quickly."
Small colleges and college towns across much of the country face the same worries.
But some analysts say that a pruning of universities may prove inevitable, and that the coronavirus has only sped up the thinning of the higher education herd.
"I actually see the future of higher education, broadly speaking, as entering a new golden age," said Richard Price, a research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute. It's a think tank that presses for dramatic change in institutions.
Price said the pandemic may hasten the evolution to better online classes, and a public education system that's much more accessible and equitable.
"The traditional model, it was originally for the landed elite and it wasn't for all genders," Price said. "It wasn't for all races. And that is slowly getting phased out along with some older business models that aren't pivoting well."
And Price thinks many little colleges will adapt. Lots of them have cheated death before. But he said there's little doubt that this time next year the United States will have many fewer colleges. Folks in Sterling Kansas hope and, yes, pray, that Sterling College is among the survivors.
See all News Updates of the Day
- By VOA News
What types of graduate student housing are there?
Anayat Durrani of the US News & World Report breaks down the options. (April 2024)
Pro-Palestinian protests spread on US university campuses
U.S. university campuses are seeing pro-Palestinian protests daily. Students are demonstrating against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and demanding that humanitarian aid be allowed to flow into the territory. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
US police clash with students who demand colleges cut financial ties to Israel
Police tangled with student demonstrators in the U.S. states of Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
At the University of Texas at Austin, hundreds of local and state police — including some on horseback and holding batons — clashed with protesters, pushing them off the campus lawn and at one point sending some tumbling into the street. At least 20 demonstrators were taken into custody at the request of university officials and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
A photographer covering the demonstration for Fox 7 Austin was arrested after being caught in a push-and-pull between law enforcement and students, the station confirmed. A longtime Texas journalist was knocked down in the mayhem and could be seen bleeding before police helped him to emergency medical staff who bandaged his head.
At the University of Southern California, police got into a back-and-forth tugging match with protesters over tents, removing several before falling back. At the northern end of California, students were barricaded inside a building for a third day at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. The school shut down campus through the weekend and made classes virtual.
Harvard University in Massachusetts had sought to stay ahead of protests this week by limiting access to Harvard Yard and requiring permission for tents and tables. That didn't stop protesters from setting up a camp with 14 tents Wednesday following a rally against the university's suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war are demanding schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies enabling its monthslong conflict. Dozens have been arrested on charges of trespassing or disorderly conduct. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.
Columbia University averted another confrontation between students and police earlier in the day. The situation there remained tense, with campus officials saying it would continue talks with protesters for another 48 hours.
On a visit to campus, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, called on Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to resign "if she cannot bring order to this chaos."
"If this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard," he said.
Shafik had set a midnight Tuesday deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations, saying it was making "important progress."
On Wednesday evening, a Columbia spokesperson said rumors that the university had threatened to bring in the National Guard were unfounded. "Our focus is to restore order, and if we can get there through dialogue, we will," said Ben Chang, Columbia's vice president for communications.
Columbia graduate student Omer Lubaton Granot, who put up pictures of Israeli hostages near the encampment, said he wanted to remind people that there were more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas.
"I see all the people behind me advocating for human rights," he said. "I don't think they have one word to say about the fact that people their age, that were kidnapped from their homes or from a music festival in Israel, are held by a terror organization."
Harvard law student Tala Alfoqaha, who is Palestinian, said she and other protesters want more transparency from the university.
"My hope is that the Harvard administration listens to what its students have been asking for all year, which is divestment, disclosure and dropping any sort of charges against students," she said.
Columbia encampment inspires others
Police first tried to clear the encampment at Columbia last week, when they arrested more than 100 protesters. The move backfired, acting as an inspiration for other students across the country to set up similar encampments and motivating protesters at Columbia to regroup.
On Wednesday about 60 tents remained at the Columbia encampment, which appeared calm. Security remained tight around campus, with identification required and police setting up metal barricades.
Columbia said it had agreed with protest representatives that only students would remain at the encampment and they would make it welcoming, banning discriminatory or harassing language.
On the University of Minnesota campus, a few dozen students rallied a day after nine protesters were arrested when police took down an encampment in front of the library. U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, whose daughter was among the demonstrators arrested at Columbia last week, attended a protest later in the day.
A group of more than 80 professors and assistant professors signed a letter Wednesday calling on the university's president and other administrators to drop any charges and to allow future encampments without what they described as police retaliation.
They wrote that they were "horrified that the administration would permit such a clear violation of our students' rights to freely speak out against genocide and ongoing occupation of Palestine."
Netanyahu encourages police response
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on U.S. college campuses in a video statement released Wednesday, saying the response of several university presidents has been "shameful" and calling on state, local and federal officials to intervene.
Students at some protests were hiding their identities and declined to identify themselves to reporters, saying they feared retribution. At an encampment of about 40 tents at the heart of the University of Michigan's campus in Ann Arbor, almost every student wore a mask, which was handed to them when they entered.
The upwelling of demonstrations has left universities struggling to balance campus safety with free speech rights. Many long tolerated the protests, but are now doling out more heavy-handed discipline, citing safety concerns.
At New York University this week, police said 133 protesters were taken into custody and all had been released with summonses to appear in court on disorderly conduct charges. More than 40 protesters were arrested Monday at an encampment at Yale University.
Columbia University demonstrators in talks with administration officials
Officials at Columbia University were continuing talks Wednesday with student demonstrators from the Gaza Solidarity Encampment as the protest reaches a full week.
At 9:41 p.m. Tuesday, university President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik sent an email to the Columbia community setting a midnight deadline for an agreement to be reached about dismantling the encampment and dispersing the protesters.
“I very much hope these discussions are successful,” she wrote. “If they are not, we will have to consider alternative options for clearing the West Lawn and restoring calm to campus so that students can complete the term and graduate.”
As midnight passed, Columbia University Apartheid Divest posted a statement on X saying, “We refuse to concede to cowardly threats and blatant intimidation by university administration. We will continue to peacefully protest.”
The statement also said the university had threatened to call the National Guard. But after visiting the university earlier in the week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Tuesday she had no plans to deploy the National Guard.
As midnight approached on Tuesday, a student organizer announced that the deadline had been extended to 8 a.m. Wednesday.
At 4:09 a.m., the Office of the President sent an email saying the discussion deadline would be extended for 48 hours, given the constructive dialogue, and the university would report back on progress.
The email announced that leaders of the student encampment had agreed to remove a significant number of tents, get non-Columbia affiliates to leave the encampment and comply with New York Fire Department requirements. They also agreed to ensure that the encampment is “welcome to all” and to prohibit “discriminatory or harassing language.”
This development comes nearly a week after more than 100 students were arrested at the school on April 18, after Shafik authorized police to clear away protesters. Some of the students received suspension notices from the school.
Columbia’s action prompted an onslaught of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at other universities and responses from faculty and politicians.
Students at other campuses, such as Yale, Stanford and New York University, have also rallied around the Palestinian cause, calling for their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel and for a cease-fire in Gaza. Many also have put up tent encampments on their campuses. About 150 students and faculty were arrested at New York University Monday night.
Columbia also announced Tuesday morning that classes on the Morningside main campus, where the protests are taking place, will be offered in a hybrid format for the remainder of the spring semester. The last day of classes is April 29.
- By VOA News
Paper: International students faced extra pandemic challenges
Astrobites, which describes itself as "a daily astrophysical literature journal written by graduate students in astronomy since 2010," focuses on the challenges international students faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It examines a paper published in the Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education entitled The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on International Students in a Public University in the United States: Academic and Non-academic Challenges.
Read the Astrobites article here. (April 2024)
