Harvard University has moved its “J-Term,” or January Term, online due to a rise in COVID-19 cases, but athletics activities are not expected to be impacted.
The J-Term is a three-week period between the Fall and Spring semesters. University President Lawrence S. Bacow announced on Saturday that most of the university’s “learning and work” will be moved to remote status for the first three weeks of January. During that period, only students who have been previously authorized to remain on campus, or those who receive authorization to do so, will remain on campus. When possible, faculty, staff, and researchers are being encouraged to work remotely, and only limited library facilities will be available.
The goal is to combat the rapidly-spreading Omicron variant by “de-densifying” campus as much as possible during the first three weeks of January.
In an email to student-athletes, though, athletics director Erin McDermott said that athletics activities are planned to continue as scheduled for winter sport student-athletes, including swimming & diving.
From McDermott’s email:
As of now, competitive seasons will continue as planned. Winter sport student-athletes will train and compete as scheduled. Training trips and other travel are still permissible. Spectators are still allowed per current requirements of showing proof of vaccination and wearing masks. We will continue to monitor as the situation evolves – particularly the spread of the Omicron variant – and will need to remain flexible and adapt to changing circumstances.
For those student-athletes who will be on campus, protocols will be strictly enforced, McDermott says – including masking mandates indoors, three tests per week, and no team meals or social gatherings. Athletes were encouraged to “go back to being in team bubbles when on campus.”
“As I have said to all of you, our primary focus for this year was to keep you engaged in training and competition,” McDermott’s email continued. “The Omicron variant was not a factor when we started this year and it is proving to be our latest challenge. Our best defense is strictly following protocols to keep you and everyone in our community healthy. Please do your part in helping us get through this time.”
Colleges and universities across the country are scrambling to move finals and classes online, driven by uncertainty over the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The variant, which was first identified by labs in southern Africa, is believed to be much more viral than previous variants, but early research has shown that it produces more mild symptoms as well.
In the Ivy League, Cornell last week shut down training and competition briefly during finals because of a spike in cases, while Penn moved the last half of its finals online and has banned indoor parties on campus.
Yale, Princeton, and Columbia have also moved finals and instruction online for now. Dartmouth and Brown have not announced remote learning, but both have put in place vaccine booster mandates, with mandatory testing for unvaccinated employees and students who have been given exemptions.
The Ivy League was the biggest Division I conference to cancel all intercollegaite athletics during the 2020-2021 academic year.
As of Saturday afternoon, Harvard had administered more than 41,000 tests over 7 days and reported 344 new positive cases. That equates to a test positivity rate of 0.83%.
Even the short period of remote learning for Harvard could be valuable in stemming spread of the virus on campus – researchers in South Africa believe that new cases of the Omicron variant have already peaked just a month after first detection of the variant. December 17 saw South Africa’s highest daily case count of the entire pandemic, with 23,437 reported cases, but by December 19, that number had already dropped to 20,083 – a decrease of over 14%.
The Harvard men won the last Ivy League title in swimming & diving in 2020, while the Harvard women finished 2nd. Led by projected NCAA scorers Dean Farris and Umitcan Gures, the Crimson men are the #16-ranked team in the latest SwimSwam Power Rankings.
They scared scared
Nobody cares we want to swim
please dont have a repeat of 2020 🙁