Despite having the smallest population of the four Beanpot schools, Boston College has the highest advertised cumulative COVID-19 positivity rate since the beginning of the academic year by almost double.
The Beanpot schools––Harvard, Northeastern University, Boston University, and BC––would normally face off in a hockey tournament at TD Garden in February, but this year has looked widely different for each of these comparable schools. Harvard chose to utilize fully remote learning for undergraduates, while the other three have used varying combinations of in-person, hybrid, and remote instruction. Boston College seems to have the most on-campus, in-person activity.
Since reopening in August, Boston College has performed 320,634 tests, including both symptomatic and surveillance testing. Of that,1,253 total BC community members have tested positive––meaning that the school has reached a cumulative positivity rate of 0.39%.
BU has a positivity rate of 0.20%, while Harvard currently has 0.167% and Northeastern has 0.191%––all less than half of BC. Correlating with the sizes of the schools (as Boston College is by far the smallest), both BU and Northeastern have performed around one million tests, while Harvard is just over half a million.
The Problem With These Numbers
The amount and frequency of testing at these schools makes it hard to compare them. Although each school has advertised their cumulative positivity as the total positive tests out of tests performed, a more accurate assessment of school performance would be the positive tests out of the whole school population. Thus, measures like Harvard’s fully remote decision, show through in terms of lowering positive test counts.
With this method, BC is only the second highest positive rate with regard to the whole school community size––behind Northeastern by less than a percentage point and followed by significantly lower numbers at BU then unsurprisingly Harvard.
Interestingly enough, Boston College at the time of publishing has 22 students currently in isolation, second lowest only to Harvard’s current 18 students. Despite having a much lower positivity rate over the course of the year, Northeastern currently has 83 students in isolation––reflective of the vast difference in population sizes of the schools.
Although reopening universities in the midst of a pandemic proved tedious, these four universities hosted an impressively low positivity rate in comparison to the City of Boston’s cumulative rate of 11.1% positivity––although this number includes cases starting at the very beginning of the pandemic whereas schools did not start facilitating testing until mid-summer at the earliest.
Although the schools took different stances on the prevalence of remote learning––Harvard being completely remote for undergraduates, and BC having a healthy balance between in-person and virtual––the schools are united on the next step: mandatory vaccination for faculty and students.
On April 23, BC University President Fr. William Leahy, S.J. informed the school community that the federal government had made 4,500 doses of the Pfizer vaccine available to Boston College. On a first-come, first-serve basis, undergraduate students could sign up to receive their first dose in the beginning of the week of April 26 and their corresponding second dose the week of May 17.
Fr. Leahy also announced that it will be required for students returning in the fall to be vaccinated against COVID-19, unless they have a “legitimate religious [or] medical reason.” This announcement follows the decisions of Boston University and Northeastern to require it as well. As of an announcement on April 19, Harvard has not made it a requirement but rather a strong encouragement, although they have received a limited number of vaccines from the state to distribute.
What Does Catholicism Have to Do With This?
As Boston College is the only Catholic university amongst the Beanpot schools, the university’s high positivity rate bears a special weight and responsibility for an institution that prides ourselves on being men and women for others.
“I believe that morally everyone must take the vaccine,” Pope Francis remarked in an interview shortly before receiving his own vaccine in January. “It is the moral choice because it is about your life but also the lives of others.”
With only a few short weeks left in the BC semester, Fr. Leahy concluded his announcement saying, “I ask that we continue to help and care for one another as the spring semester comes to an end and planning for another academic year moves forward.”
Previously the Campus News Editor and Catholicism 101 Editor, Olivia dabbles in The Torch’s writing and photography. She is a senior studying theology and applied psychology and human development with a minor in journalism. She is unashamedly passionate about youth ministry, Haiti, all things charismatic, the Oxford comma, and CatholicTV––where she can often be found as an on-camera news reporter or host of the To the Heights podcast.
- The Beauty of A Marathon - March 27, 2022
- A Tale of 5,000 Cookies and A Rare Disease - February 28, 2022
- Signing Off As Your Editor-in-Chief - December 25, 2021