As the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill deals with the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak, students quickly scrambled to move off campus Monday and reevaluate academic plans for next year.
A message that wasn't well-received from the schools' administration to the over 30,000 student who came back to campus — it’s not safe to be here.
The fallout comes after the UNC governors' issued a re-open mandate against the advice of some experts. UNC-Chapel Hill was one the largest institutions in the country to open back up with full student engagement. Those plans are now scrapped in-favor of a virtual class model with all non-student-athletes moving off campus.
For the week of Aug. 16, 135 new Covid-19 cases were reported at Chapel Hill. Most students have mild symptoms, and hundreds of other are in isolation or quarantine, according to the university.
“We are working with the UNC System office to identify the most effective way to further achieve de-densification of our residential halls and our campus facilities,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and provost Bob Blouin said in a statement.
Many people are questioning the exemption for athletes to be on campus, along with why the university is putting them in danger to keep the impending football season alive. Several UNC student-athletes took to social media asking those same questions in an indirect response to Guskiewicz and Blouin.
North Carolina basketball player Garrison Brooks’ tweet Monday addressed the issue at-large. “So what’s the difference in student-athletes and regular students? Are we immune to this virus because we play a sport ?” His teammate took the statement further with Armando Bacot tweeting out “Student-athletes? Amateurism? Or employee?”
The 2020 football schedule remains unaltered, as of now. UNC coach Mack Brown believes a bubble-type atmosphere can be secured without a classroom environment in-play. "The NBA model is working. They've had very few distractions. And that's what we're trying to do is make sure that our players and our staff understand that we've got three months here where we cannot go outside for social reasons or to eat or anything else if we want to have our football season."
One major problem with Brown's analysis is amateurism in college athletics. While the NBA experience in Orlando's Disney bubble remains a success, the life on a college campus is not the same.
If all goes to plan, UNC football starts the 2020 season in less than a month. A rare ACC home opener vs. Syracuse on Sept. 12.