College students on high COVID alert ahead of return to campus
23 August 2021
With the Delta variant surging, college students are not ready to resume campus life as normal, according to a new Generation Lab/Axios poll.
Why it matters: For four-year students who enrolled in 2019-20, there is just one year remaining to enjoy something resembling a regular college experience.
Out of a list of activities that included going to an indoor party, dancing with others, and close conversations without masks, 55% of students considered none of the above to be safe.
- 60% sayrestrictions should be imposed on large social gatherings.
- 45% say they would only feel comfortable at indoor gatherings where everyone had been vaccinated.
Driving the news: Already, tens of thousands of students across different education levels across the country are isolating after testing positive of being exposed to COVID-19.
College students are also big fans of vaccine mandates — in many cases, bigger fans than their university administrators.
- 73% say their school should implement a vaccine mandate for those on campus, while 52% say their schools are doing so.
- 86% say they are fully vaccinated, while 6% say they definitely won't get the shots.
Many staff and professors share the concerns about a return to campus.
- "You're putting me in a petri dish for an hour and 15 minutes when I'm teaching," Youngstown State ethics professor Mark Vopat told Forbes.
Methodology: This study was conducted August 11-13 from a representative sample of846 students nationwide from 2-year and 4-year schools.The margin of error is +/- 3.4 percentage points. The Generation Lab conducts polling using a demographically representative sample frame of college students at community colleges, technical colleges, trade schools and public and private four-year institutions.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.