Community lots are completely empty

I reverted to an earlier save before the uni org events broke, and they seem to be functional for now. I think once they break, the game got stuck in a state where it could never schedule a new one again, so I'll have to keep watch and exit without saving if I see it happen again.

For some of the other lots, I've taken my sims there and seen no other sims, but then managed to bring them to life by quickly flicking into build mode and out again without making any lot changes. That seemed to trigger the lot zone director and things like bartenders and other sims started slowly showing up. But I think that's more of a workaround than an actual solution to the lot not loading with people already on it.

One avenue to investigate while I was trying to troubleshoot is that the broken lots I was noticing contained objects that have their own object based scheduling - like the VIP rope door from Get Famous that summons a bouncer if placed, and the community NAP board from Eco Lifestyle which summons voter sims to gossip around the board. I have those placed on my student commons at both universities which were broken. The TDESCs for the latest version of the game say that the tuning for object based scheduling is being deprecated, and replaced by a new method called object situation shifts, but the VIP rope object and NAP board still have the older tuning. The cafeteria object used at uni commons also has these built in object scheduling, but interestingly the ZoneDirector for student commons has the new method built into the ZoneDirector for the cafeteria object, which is why even though I see no other students or professors visiting, it always summoned a cafeteria worker just fine.