New Chapter Begins At CU Boulder As In-Person Learning Resumes
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) – Students at the University of Colorado Boulder are settling in for the way learning will likely be done for the remainder of the semester. As of Monday, more classes went back to in person learning.
The university planned it to allow a month of classes with greater remote learning to get through what was feared might be a significant holiday spike in cases.
"I'm definitely excited for it to be over. I'll still have my math classes and all that online," said freshman ROTC student Kaitlyn Freeman. "It's a lot different when you're in person because when you actually get to see someone face to face. You're actually working on what you're going to be doing when you're actually going to be doing in the military."
Mask wearing is required, and students will be taking daily health questionnaires. There will be a weekly COVID-19 test requirement for students, faculty and staff who will be on campus.
It's been especially tough to be remote for students who just arrived on campus for this school year.
"It's so difficult to meet new people and make new friends," said first year grad student Tavishi Priyam, who is a foreign student from India. Even in her major of computer science, in-person is better and she was glad to have some coming up. "I think we have two in-person classes across the week"
The university says it has no plans to further change which classes are operating as remote and which are in-person, but generally those stated as in-person when they were booked are now in-person. Those that were considered remote, will stay that way,
"Unless there's a spike," said a university spokesman.
The question of vaccine protocols is a topic of discussion on campus and at the state level.
"I love teaching in person, I love what I do. I'd love to get back, but we can still do a great job with classes like mine on line," said philosophy lecturer Alex Wolf-Root.
Wolf-Root also serves as president of a union active on campus, United Campus Workers. He believes campus workers like those in food service and custodial work should be vaccinated sooner.
"And if we care about racial justice, which I know Boulder says it does, not about how it acts, then we need to also go out of our way to make sure that we're doing everything that we can, to go out of our way for our front line workers."
The university says the state was still considering whether to change vaccine protocols.
