Editorial: Pitt's plan is proactive

Everyone is getting caught in a conundrum.

How do you plan ahead when you don’t know what is going to happen with the coronavirus pandemic?

Sports leagues are doing it as they try to find a way to salvage a season and satisfy fans while still keeping people safe. Restaurants and retailers are doing it as they get back to business. And schools are doing it as they try to figure out what’s going to happen with the 2020-21 school year.

Yes, most of Pennsylvania is in a more permissive green state on Gov. Tom Wolf’s color-coded chart. But there are still new cases of covid-19 every day and deaths in the state have topped 6,000. There are frequent reminders that a second wave could be coming and it may very well fall during flu season come the fall and winter.

So how does a school plan for that?

The University of Pittsburgh is doing it by changing the calendar.

The university administration announced a “compressed” fall schedule that will actually start sooner than normal. It’s not much. Just a week. Classes will start on Aug. 19. That was the day “Welcome Week” started in 2019, when students came early to get acclimated to the Pittsburgh campus, while all campuses started on Aug. 26.

But nudging things a week early is just part of the plan. Classes on Labor Day instead of having the holiday off. Classes ending early, too. Finals moved up or held remotely. Education happening in a combination of in-person and digital presentations. All of that is designed to skirt another shutdown like the one that radically changed the spring semester.

Let’s hope it works because the thing is this: No one knows what’s going to happen.

It’s easy to criticize Pitt or any other organization that is making plans for what will happen come fall. Is this ideal? Of course not. Will aspects be disappointing for students or more challenging for staff? Undoubtedly.

But the university is responsible for the welfare of about 35,000 students and around 14,000 faculty and staff. They have to keep them as safe as possible while fulfilling the educational and research missions. They have to continue to be the economic engine that drives so many other businesses in Pittsburgh and Greensburg and other campuses.

And like every other school from pre-K to post-doc, they’re doing it in the dark.

Some people have had issues with lackluster communication from the university when it came to letting people know about the new schedule, and that’s a valid concern. We have had harsh words for Wolf when it came to that, and we believe the best thing for everyone in uncertain times is keeping communication as clear as possible.

But we can’t expect our government or our schools or even our sports teams to be working with crystal balls. The unpredictability is frustrating, but we can’t blame the organizations dealing with the pandemic for the problems caused by the pandemic.

When the 2020-21 school year is over, maybe all of this juggling will have been unnecessary, and that will no doubt lead to huffing and hindsight. It won’t change the fact that planning ahead is as important as fire drills and car insurance because we just don’t know what might happen.