Alabama universities go all-in with COVID-19

This is an opinion column.

If you’re going to sit down at the poker table, first you’d better decide how much you’re willing to lose. If you don’t draw a hard line that you’ll never cross, the temptation will always be to sit for one more hand, just one more shot to win it all back.

And then another.

Until it’s all gone.

Behavioral economists call this phenomenon chasing sunk costs, but the rest of us have a more common term for it — throwing good money after bad. It’s how addicts go into a casino thinking they’ll gamble just a little and then walk out without a way to pay the mortgage.

Right now that same thing appears to be happening at Alabama’s two major universities. Only they’re not just playing with money. Those institutions are taking risks with lives — the lives of students, the lives of faculty and staff, and the lives of the residents adjacent to Alabama’s two newest hot zones.

Ahead of the fall semester, Alabama set up a screening program for students before returning to campus. With a lot of fanfare, they announced that less than one percent of students had tested COVID positive.

But then students returned to campus and all that changed.

Since then, the University of Alabama has had more than 1,000 students test positive for the virus.

On Tuesday, Auburn University reported 517 new cases in the last week, more than twice as many as the week before.

To give you a sense of whether that’s good or bad, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill suspended in-person classes after about 400 positive cases, and other universities have pulled the plug after seeing even fewer.

Auburn and UA officials have pointed out that they’ve had no hospitalizations — yet.

The University of Alabama has already crossed softer lines it drew for itself. Ahead of the semester, the university set up 450 isolation housing for COVID positive students, but as cases began to rise, the university abruptly shifted a dorm full of students to free up more quarantine space.

At the same time, students at Auburn have reported long wait times to get tested and some parents have said they are frustrated with the lack of information coming from the school. While Auburn has released its positive case count, it has refused to say how many students have been tested.

Neither administration thinks its numbers are bad enough to get up from the table yet.

They need to draw that redline now. And they need to make that redline public.

Both universities are refusing to do so.

More than once now, UA President Stuart Bell wouldn’t give an answer when asked, and neither did Auburn University officials this week.

“Auburn does not have a defined point for such a decision but will continue to monitor campus, city, regional and statewide data to help guide us on best approaches in ensuring the safety and well-being of our campus community,” a university spokesman said.

In other words, deal us in.

When pressed on it again Thursday, the University of Alabama system released a statement from one of its top researchers, Dr. Michael Saag.

According to Saag, what might be worse than keeping the students on campus would be sending them home where they could infect their parents or other family members.

“As long as universities have risk mitigation strategies like masks, isolation/quarantine and contact tracing in place, it is better for students to stay on campus where they have immediate access to health care services and other support resources,” Saag said. “The risk in closing a college campus and forcing thousands of students home at once is that the virus then has the opportunity to spread more widely to other geographic locations and possibly more vulnerable populations.”

All that makes sense, but for two things.

First, this was entirely predictable three weeks ago — when UA should have told parents they were checking their kids into the Hotel California.

And second, they should have told the students before some wandered off, anyway. UA says it has had more than 1,000 students test positive, but as of Friday, it had 214 living in its isolation housing. So where did the other 800 go?

It’s understandable why university presidents don’t want to fold. A lot is riding on keeping students in the classroom. Local economies depend on it. College football depends on it.

But just because you can’t stand the thought of losing doesn’t mean a winning hand is waiting for you deeper in the deck.

Sometimes “all-in” is what you say before it’s all-gone.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram.