?Please don't kill him?: Fall college classes kick off with COVID-19 warnings, miles of Plexiglas

– After months of planning and preparation for a new semester under the coronavirus pandemic, Molly Coomes was nearly as eager as Purdue University officials to resume in-person classes this week.Some of the details, though, would still have to be worked out.As the masked sophomore, coffee in hand, headed to her first class on the West Lafayette, Indiana, campus where masks are mandatory and lecture halls are socially distanced, she realized her mistake.“I thought, ‘Why did I do that?’” Coomes said of the coffee. "To tell (students), 'Sorry, we are too incompetent or too fearful to figure out how to protect your elders, so you have to disrupt your education,' would be a gross disservice to them and a default of our responsibility," Daniels wrote in May for an opinion piece in the Washington Post.Over the summer, Purdue piled up five miles of Plexiglas for classrooms and dining spaces, purchased 1 million face masks, outlined 783 social distancing plans for instructional spaces, delivered 50,000 wellness kits to faculty, students and staff, tested roughly 40,000 students before they arrived, hired dozens of contact tracers, converted dining halls into grab-and-go operations and found ways for 65% of university staff to work remotely.Still, Daniels confided with faculty this month about the prospects of pulling off a semester that on paper is scheduled to last in person until Thanksgiving.“If you're worried about the next 13 weeks, join the club,” Daniels said. "While some may relax a bit if things are going quite well, I think the vast majority will behave in the careful manner that got them to that point.”Jeff Maconi, a senior studying mechanical engineering technology, started Monday with an 8:30 a.m. class on the west side of campus – “Surprisingly, all went well there,” he said – before a dead sprint back to his apartment east of campus for a 9:30 a.m. online lecture.“Barely made it,” Maconi said.