Laura Barnhill
Contributing Writer
Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely grateful to be back on campus, and I completely understand that we are living a reality that none of us have ever experienced before which makes it difficult to find ways to operate safely in the midst of a pandemic. However, a lot of the decisions made by the College to respond to COVID-19 simply don’t make sense to me.
Before coming to campus, I had every intention of making a COVID pod with two friends and staying completely socially distant from everyone else. That plan went out the window very quickly as I realized that there was simply no way to maintain that bubble while living on campus.
The main issue I have with the College’s COVID-19 response is the change in dining services. I understand the decision to eliminate self-serve options, and I think it is wise to not allow students to handle the food-serving utensils in Lowry. My issue is with the physical space of Lowry. While capacity has been reduced, the chairs at the round tables are not placed six feet apart, so if you want to eat in the dining hall, you cannot maintain social distance. Additionally, because it takes so long to get food now, Lowry gets so crowded that even if you decide to get food to go, you can’t social distance even when trying to get food. I also don’t understand the decision to close Mom’s on the weekends. This means that there is only one viable meal option on weekends, forcing even more people to congregate in Lowry. This seems contradictory to the intention of reducing crowds on campus. To really reduce social contact on campus, there needs to be another dining option open every day of the week. My suggestion would be to reopen Kittredge.
Another part of the COVID response that I didn’t understand was the decision to put campus on “lockdown” for the first few weeks of the semester, but still allow tours to go through campus buildings. I found it exceedingly frustrating that, after coming to campus, I was not able to pick up my textbooks to use in class because I hadn’t gotten my test results back, all while visitors were allowed to walk through Knowlton on tours. The only logic I can see behind that is that the school wants to make money, and that makes me as a current student feel secondary in their eyes.
At this point, I want nothing more than to be able to stay on campus and have some semblance of a normal senior year, but I am also worried that if anyone gets coronavirus, we will all get it. Campus is so small that even if we maintain social distance where we can, there are too few degrees of separation between people. Be it standing in line at Lowry during the dinner rush, or going to a class where there are more students than there are socially distanced desks, I hope the school recognizes that students will not be solely responsible if there is an outbreak on campus, and the last thing we all want is a repeat of last spring.
