UC Santa Barbara will continue offering most courses remotely through Winter Quarter 2021 with a small increase in the number of in-person classes, Chancellor Henry T. Yang announced in a campus-wide email Wednesday afternoon.
Any student who attends in-person classes or plans to live in university housing for winter quarter will have to adhere to campus testing protocols. Max Abrams / Daily Nexus
In addition to the few labs, performance-based courses and field experience courses that are already in person as of fall quarter, the majority of the newly available classes offered in-person for winter quarter will be upper-division and graduate courses, Yang said in the email, adding that remote alternatives will be available for classes held in person.
Any student who attends in-person classes or plans to live in university housing for winter quarter will have to adhere to campus testing protocols, Yang said in the email, which involve “physical distancing, face covering[s], and other required mitigation protocols.”
Yang’s email comes a day after Santa Barbara County moved back to the most restrictive COVID-19 reopening tier, once again shuttering non-essential indoor businesses and pivoting schools to remote instruction, according to Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
The university will prioritize housing for students who already signed a contract for this fall, Yang said in the email, adding that housing will be limited to one person per room.
Individuals who plan to move into university housing will be required to get tested for COVID-19 prior to moving in, isolate themselves for one week once they arrive, be tested on a weekly basis, to take an educational module on COVID-19 and to agree to a community compact.
The compact asks that students agree to taking precautionary measures, such as having a flu vaccine unless exempted and responding appropriately should they be exposed to COVID-19, Yang said in the email. Though the winter quarter housing is contingent on changes in the county’s public health orders, he added, the university is prepared to house students in the event that public health orders change after move in.
“Our plan to offer more campus housing is a cautious but important step forward to address the needs of our students and to begin to resume campus life,” Yang wrote in the email. “By opening some campus housing for fall and winter quarters, we are incrementally ramping up occupancy, which we plan to increase for the spring and summer quarters if the local public health situation allows.”
This is the dumbest thing I’ve read all year. All of these morons on campus will go home for Thanksgiving and the holidays to spread it to their families, and also bring back more virus to others here in town. Great job Yang, you idiot.
How would Yang stop people from going home and coming back to mostly privately owed residences?
He’s supposed to be an educator. A leader of educators. The science and public health policy indicate that going home could lead to increased hospitalizations and deaths. A proactive leader would create alternatives.
Dont be stupid they are having a virtual thanksgiving diner. you are just looking to be whiney and complain about stuff. What else do you want the man to do. He has also sent emails asking people to respect the science and avoid going home to prevent what you are whining about
Huh, didn’t know Thanksgiving was during winter quarter.
For a world-class research institution, you’d think people would know how to read. It’s literally in the title. One single sentence to comprehend.