AMHERST — A two-week postponement of in-person classes for the youngest children in Amherst and Pelham schools is prompting the local school committees to request that the University of Massachusetts step up enforcement of COVID-19 protocols designed to protect the community’s health and safety.
With a significant rise in COVID-19 cases attributed to students testing positive at UMass, and the triggering of health metrics to keep remote instruction in place, the Amherst and Amherst-Pelham Regional school committees Tuesday approved sending a letter to UMass Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy asking for adjustments to the UMass Amherst Community Agreement, which was signed by students living on- and off-campus.
The letter, sent Wednesday morning, tells UMass officials to “clearly communicate and consistently apply disciplinary consequences for violations of the Community Agreement, including suspension or expulsion depending on the circumstances and egregiousness of the actions.”
“We now ask you to consider that education and encouragement alone is not sufficient to ensure the level of compliance needed to prevent COVID-19 from further impacting our schools and our community,” the letter reads.
Amherst representative Peter Demling drafted the letter and made the argument to his colleagues from Amherst, Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett that college students need to be held accountable. The regional committee voted 7-0 to support the letter, with Amherst representative Benjamin Herringon absent and Pelham representative Sarahbess Kenney abstaining, and the Amherst committee voted 4-0.
On Tuesday, the university confirmed that 195 students are involved in the campus conduct process coordinated by the Dean of Students, but no actions have been publicly announced, and it’s also uncertain how many of these cases are related to violations of safety protocols.
UMass spokesman Edward Blaguszewski wrote in an email this week that UMass has determined the most effective public health practices to deter the spread of COVID-19 are education and frequent testing, and that emphasizing a confrontational approach can be counter-productive because it might discourage participation in contact tracing efforts.
In the committees’ letter, the university’s role and presence of students in supporting the local economy and the high quality instruction in public schools is affirmed, and gratitude is expressed for the vast majority of university students following the guidelines of the agreement, such as wearing masks, distancing and avoiding social gatherings.
“However recent events demonstrate that even a small number of individual actions can have serious consequences for the larger community when it comes to the spread of COVID-19,” the letter states. “Amherst is now in the ‘red zone’ of the state’s school reopening metric, and our public schools are now closed for two weeks as a direct result of the recent UMass outbreak.”
The reopening of Amherst’s public schools for all primary and secondary grades have been pushed back 14 days, meaning that middle and high school students won’t be in classrooms until late November.
The letter also points to other colleges and universities in Massachusetts that have already set out clear and strong expectations for disciplinary consequences for unsafe gatherings, and the language used by them, such as students and student organizations committing violations “can expect” suspension or losing recognition.
“This kind of clear cause-and-effect policy is appropriate given the serious nature of COVID-19,” states the letter to the chancellor.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
