Vaccinated or not, here they come.
College students are flocking to campuses across the country for a school year they hope will mark a full return to the academic and social life so often denied them for the past year and a half of the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet the delta variant’s summer surge, driving viral infections and covid-19 hospitalizations higher from coast to coast, now looms as a dangerous threat over what many had thought would be a celebratory moment for higher education. It raises the stakes in the divide between schools that mandate vaccination against the virus and those that do not. And it has inflamed debate over whether and how long students and professors must wear masks indoors.
