COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.]
Of course everyone is free to leave Yale if they so choose - in fact I know of a family from SC whose child transferred from Harvard(!) to Clemson this year for this exact reason, and the kid is 1000% happier. True story. And its sort of my point - the smarty-pants schools are shooting themselves in the foot. I'm sure they will survive but its going to have an impact, just like k-12 closures and remote learning is going to have an impact.
My oldest is a college kid at a top liberal arts college and their 2020-21 school year was like this (all online, lockdowns/roving campus cops writing up students without masks, expulsions for "illegal gatherings") and it was a disaster. Students and parents revolted and eventually the board stepped in to right the ship. But she basically got zero out of her freshman year of college. This year has been as close to normal as can be and it's been like night and day.
My HS junior has excellent grades and resume and wont even look at any school that is north of Virginia or west of Texas. He's seen these same things happening to his sibling and older peers and is not willing to risk it.
She was a freshman...she still has 3 ( or 6 more years if like me LOLOL ) of school left. She can still pledge a sorority. She can still attend functions going forward.
Now, if your complaint is with what you paid for by way of tuition, and not getting the "full experience" - i understand that. We went thru similar with 2019-2020 High School year ( Junior year for our oldest ) . I had a real issue with the fact that we paid, in advance, full tuition only to have them on lock down/virtual learning from MArch 10, 2020 thru May 22nd 2020. They went virtual, so i understood that a good portion of tuition would be lost, but expected some sort of pro-rata return because we ultimately send our kid(s) to a certain institution for much more than just the "book" aspect. Shoot, the WEBSITE brags about it lol.
But then i step back and understand that teachers are salaried. Some thru contractual agreements. I bet most of the school purchasing ( breakfast/lunch ) was contractual and they werent going to get out of those either without litigation.
IT took me a while to get over the aspect of all that. What i quickly saw was just how resilient the kids where. Zoom "parties" on Fri/Sat nights....movie night...one would play movie, rest would watch on Zoom. Hang out with each other social distanced etc. etc. My child just fine. I suspect many are.
But then there are those whose kids arent fine, right? Dealing with whatever issues this presented them.
Sounds like COVID decisions.
This was a mess on a global scale. Hopefully has awakened the powers to understand just what a novel virus can do and be better prepared.