The Surveilled Student

2 min read Original article ↗
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New ways of monitoring health and academic performance won’t just disappear when the pandemic subsides.

The 2021 Trends Report

The message, tucked in a routine fall-planning email to Oakland University students, took Tyler Dixon by surprise.

Along with wearing masks and social distancing, students living on campus would be expected to wear a coin-size “BioButton” attached to their chests with medical adhesive. It would continuously measure their temperature, respiratory rate, and heart rate, and tell them whether they’d been in close contact with a button wearer who’d tested positive for Covid-19. In conjunction with a series of daily screening questions, the button would let them know if they were cleared for class.

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A version of this article appeared in the February 19, 2021, issue.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

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About the Author

Katherine Mangan writes about campus diversity, student activism, government efforts to shape higher education, and how colleges are responding and sometimes resisting. Follow her @KatherineMangan, or email her at katie.mangan@chronicle.com