Annette Berntsen
Lantern Staff
As the 2020 school year begins, administration has been looking for ways to open campuses without causing another spike in COVID-19 cases. To do this, colleges use a combination of the recommendations provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American College Health Association (ACHA) and Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) to form campus policies.
Many of the new policies include social distancing students and faculty, sanitizing desks after each class, limiting the number of students allowed in the classroom at one time and requiring masks to be worn on campus. So far, these measures have seemed to keep the classroom environment safe for learning.
“I think they’re doing as much as they can while keeping face-to-face classes available with the masks and distancing,” Garrett Robinson, a freshman, said. “And I noticed all the teachers disinfect after each class, so I think it’s good.”
While most colleges follow these policies, the extent to which they are followed varies from school to school. For example, while Butler requires social distancing at all times, some Cowley Community students can avoid the requirement in certain instances.
“If two students have the same ‘team family,’ then we do not have to social distance,” Cowley sophomore and cheerleader Jaylee Meyer said. “It helps when working on homework because you actually have another person able to support you.”
After Gov. Laura Kelly’s mask mandate took effect on Friday, July 3, businesses and schools could require masks without approval from the county, especially when there were large gatherings of people and six-foot distancing was hard to achieve. Even with this mask requirement, though, individuals still faced exposure to COVID-19. Some colleges have seen an alarming rise in cases since starting school. Students who moved onto Benedictine College’s campus from Saturday, Aug. 8 – Sunday, Aug. 16 were tested for COVID, but when the results came back on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Benedictine discovered there were 40 positive cases during that move-in period. As of Thursday, Aug. 27, Benedictine reported that there are 61 positive cases of COVID-19.
“The numbers worry me a little knowing how fast it could have spread because these results are from the day we tested,” Stephanie Brozovich, a freshman psychology major at Benedictine, said. “Who knows how many people currently have COVID from those 40 people spreading it around after testing, not knowing they had it.”
Brozovich also voiced her concerns about Benedictine’s orientation week, when approximately 500 new students gathered in small groups and participated in team activities and competitions. One of her biggest worries was the number of people participating in activities where materials were shared, which intensified after receiving the email notification that there were 40 cases on campus since day one.
While cases at Butler have not reached such numbers, administration implemented the use of contact tracing to ensure that anyone who has been in close contact with an individual who tested positive for COVID is notified and quarantined until it is certain they do not have it.
“I don’t know how effective it’ll be,” Robinson said. “But I like that they’re trying when it comes to confirmed cases.”
Another policy that is consistent between schools is the requirement that students living in the dorms are required to wear masks whenever they are outside their rooms and are unable to have guests inside the building.
As the school year begins and students figure out how to navigate this new world, many students still question what the year will look like in terms of COVID.
“I’m not sure how the rest of the school year is going to go,” Brozovich said. “We all want to stay here and do everything possible not to be sent home again like last semester. That being said, we’ve seen multiple schools already do that after just a week.”