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Orange County Health Director to UNC-Chapel Hill:Go online as default for Fall semester,restrict on-campus housing I The Progressive Pulse official start of the Fall Semester we've experienced a small fraction of what we will see if the campus fully reopens and all the students return for in-person class. In the last 4 weeks we've seen positive COVID clusters among UNC staff and athletic teams. We've experienced the increased activity and gathering on Franklin Street that resulted in clusters that visited a couple of local restaurant/bar establishments. We've seen the off campus parties and gatherings at Greek Houses. We've also experienced the lack of cooperation from students with the communicable disease investigation and control measures mandated by NC General Statute §130A-144. For multiple cases staff had to spend several hours trying to gather information and cooperation from students. As a last resort, legal remedies were suggested to gain cooperation. This is absolutely not the desired outcome for our campus students. Due to the reporting structure for positive cases, our data does not necessarily capture each of these cases as they are attributed to the home county of residence, however the reality is Orange County Health Department Staff and UNC Campus Health Staff have been tasked with the monitoring and investigation of these cases here in Orange County. UNC-Chapel Hill students are already reporting invitations to large house parties organized by student athletes and in-person fraternity and sorority rush events that do not include masks or social distancing. On Monday a UNC-Chapel Hill student posted a video to Twitter depicting what he said was a large group of young women engaging in a sorority rush event. None were wearing masks or practicing distancing. While fraternity and sorority recruitment is officially entirely virtual this year, sources in Greek organizations at UNC-Chapel Hill confirmed to Policy Watch last week and again this week that a number of unofficial Odirty rush0 events are being held off campus. The events are promoted via word of mouth, closed social media groups and text messages, several of which have been examined by Policy Watch. UNC Faculty have also noticed the lack of distancing and mask compliance to exhibited by students returning to campus and around town in Chapel Hill. OI hope all will go well,6 said Deb Aikat, associate professor in UNC-Chapel HillOs school of http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/...e-county-health-director-to-unc-chapel-hill-go-online-as-default-for-fall-semester-restrict-on-campus-housing/[8/18/20,8:36:31 AM]