The Numbers: How Well Are Students Complying with Campus COVID Rules?

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Weekly Compliance Report

The Numbers: How Well Are Students Complying with Campus COVID Rules?

29 reports of off-campus gatherings, 15 reports of mask violations, 2 parties canceled, and more

September 10, 2020
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It’s the question on everyone’s mind with the coronavirus in our midst. Are students abiding by the rules? Not partying. Social distancing. Masking up.

The question took on greater interest after Northeastern University announced it had suspended 11 students for failing to do those things. Each Friday we’ll share the numbers showing how compliant BU students are being and what’s happening to those who step out of line. “I want students to say to each other, ‘Don’t do that!’” says Kenneth Elmore (Wheelock’87), associate provost and dean of students. “They are saying, ‘We’ve got something good here, don’t mess it up.’”

Since August 26, here are some statistics:

3,040
Total students who were out of compliance
9
Students disciplined (next citation leads to suspension)
2,897
Students who did not submit their daily attestation
119
Students who missed or failed to schedule their COVID-19 test
15
Reports of students failing to pull up their mask when asked
24
Reports of students not social distancing in public
29
Reports of off-campus gatherings without face coverings
10
Reports of on-campus gatherings without face coverings
2
Fraternity parties reported in advance and canceled
2
Reports of guest violations

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 22 comments on The Numbers: How Well Are Students Complying with Campus COVID Rules?

  1. Thanks for the info BU! As a parent it’s nice to see just how closely these things are being monitored, and acted on. Can you explain exactly what a guest violation is? Appreciate it!

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    1. It would be helpful if these numbers were posted alongside BU’s public testing data dashboard. Despite these reports, the testing data shows that over 99% of students continue to test negative for COVID-19.

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    2. As a BU alum and current staff member, I’m assuming a “guest violation” is when a student has brought a guest to campus or to their dorm room, and the guest is the one who violated the social distancing or mask guidelines.

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  2. It is illuminating to note that while many in the nation are protesting policing policies, we have put ourselves in the situation where we have to quietly set up our own police state.

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    1. I feel like this comparison isn’t a fair one.

      The national protests about policing are about
      taxpayer-funded public entities who are disproportionately killing Black and Latino people, often without repurcusions, and which has been happening for generations.

      BU, a private university that people are very much choosing to be a part of, is publishing anonymous statistics about the number of students who aren’t abiding by a code of conduct they voluntarily agreed to as a condition of returning to campus during a once-in-a-century global pandemic. And at absolute worst, students are being suspended for a semester and only after they’ve already been warned. And I don’t think anyone believes the University is going keep spending all the time/money/resources that they are in maintaining this all once the pandemic is over (i.e. this is temporary).

      —

      A private university publishing 12 numbers once a week is emphatically not the same as people being shot and killed in the streets by government-backed entities. And setting up a false equivalency between the two isn’t a great look.

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      2. Can you please provide the source that shows blacks are killed disproportionately by police, because I am not seeing these facts anywhere. Genuinely curious. Thanks

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    2. Ari: just curious: Are you a BU student? A staff or faculty member? A “concerned parent” of a BU student? If you aren’t, why are you meddling? As a BU faculty member, I welcome the measures taken by the institution to protect *everyone* associated with it.

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    4. BU are doing a great job and I am very happy that my son is able to go back and attend in person classes.
      “Police state”- It isn’t- it’s a great lesson in how you adjust in order to get back to school which should be the priority.

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  4. This would be useful if qualitative information were also provided E.g., were infected persons at any of the gatherings? It only takes one to turn a party into a super spreading event. That’s what upended the University of Illinois elaborate mathematical model’s prediction, according to the NYT. A student who had been tested positive attended parties anyway.

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  6. Thank you. Please keep up and be as generous as possible to your students who came to BU because their love BU. And many of them just became an adult.
    They are still very young, and we should give them a chance to correct their mistakes without a severe consequence.

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  7. Once again BU takes the lead. Very transparent and following the science. And the students deserve a ton of credit for being accountable themselves and holding others accountable as well. The BU community are all leading the way. Others should take notice. Way to go BU.

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  8. I find it scientifically unsound how the testing is being ran here. If an individual is positive they are told to quarantine for two-weeks and return without symptoms; however BU refuses to re-test them for 90 days. This means a person could become re-infected, actually infected (due to a false-positive quarantine) and spread disease without knowledge of doing so. I position either continuing testing on said person or drastically reevaluate plans following a positive test.

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    1. This is how testing is being handled everywhere. Per CDC guidelines, individuals who test positive should not be tested within 90 days because they could still give positive results due to fragments of the virus still in their system, even though they are confirmed non contagious.

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      1. I would agree with you if that was what BU is doing-they are not. A positive test is considered a Ct value under 40 via RT-PCR at BU; this is beyond the realm of realistic detection. Using the CDC guidelines for a positive individual (1000 copies of viral genome using the N1 primer) the Ct value of said positive would need to be 99% likely to be negative based off of this system. This system shows that this method of testing is not only ineffective but not useful for contact tracing as the CDC guidelines are not followed. One more interesting point-a building who has had “positive” cases at BU has 40 times the incidence of the rest of the county; yet all of their follow up tests with a PCP were negative.

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    2. There have been almost no confirmed cases of reinfection anywhere in the world. A person who is COVID-postive may continue to test positive for 90 days (despite not being sick and not being infectious). This is probably why it doesn’t make sense to retest someone who has tested positive.

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    3. BU says on their COVID-19 testing data dashboard that “A positive result may indicate the presence of noninfectious viral genetic material that a person may continue to shed for up to 3 months post-infection, according to the CDC.” So, even if they did test these students and they did not have COVID at the time, they would come back positive, no matter what. If that’s the case, then it’s useless to test them (if they’re just going to come back positive, even if they’re noninfectious).

      BU has other ways to test if a student is infectious for COVID after they’ve tested positive–it used to be on the testing data dashboard, but now they’re just under “recovered”. Not only that, given the current numbers, it’s really unlikely that a student that gets COVID once will get COVID again.

      Basically, I’m sure that BU has their own contingency plans in place for the fact that a student may get infected again in the following 90 days–they’ve been really thorough so far, and I don’t think they’d let these students who have tested positive before slip through the cracks.

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  9. Attestations would be so much easier if BU created an app for it and timed notifications better. Having to log in everytime on your phone’s browser or your computer is really slow. Additionally, getting an email or text reminder at 4pm to do your attestation when it is already done for the day is wasteful. There has to be a better way to coordinate the data to prompt notifications and emails when it’s only necessary.

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