Plans Tweaked For Campus Return

University of New Haven students will return to campus dorms to take five times as many tests — not for their courses, but for the coronavirus.

After a fall semester of trial and error, the university has decided to screen more than five times the number of students it tested weekly at the beginning of fall.

Students at UNH, Quinnipiac University, Southern Connecticut State University, Yale, and Albertus Magnus College stayed home after Thanksgiving break to finish the fall semester remotely. As they log into class and take finals from behind their computer screens, administrators are looking ahead to what pandemic public-health rules to keep and which to alter when students return here next month.

After a semester of uncharted pandemic obstacles, the colleges have gained at least some sense of what works and what doesn’t as they plan tweaks and strategies.

Among the changes: Some plan to start the semester later, when it’s warmer; help students access Covid tests at home before returning to campus; and eliminate spring break.

Meanwhile, students whose stories we have been following reflected on their first full pandemic semesters on campus — what worked, what didn’t, and what they’ll expect when they return.

UNH started out in August by testing 5 to 10 percent of residential students every week. After contending with a Covid-19 outbreak in October, it increased testing to 20 percent of students weekly.

In the spring, the university has announced, 50 percent of residential students, 10 to 20 percent of commuters, and all student athletes will be randomly selected for Covid-19 testing each week.

Unless other colleges announce comparable increases, UNH will have one of the most comprehensive asymptomatic Covid testing systems in the area — a dramatic difference from the beginning of the school year, when UNH tested among the fewest students.

What Comes Next

Students at UNH who hail from states flagged by the state’s travel advisory (currently, anywhere other than Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, or Hawaii) will need to take a Covid-19 test five days before arriving on campus.

In mid-November, as students prepared to leave for home, UNH’s Covid-19 task force instructed them to ​“purchase an at-home COVID-19 testing kit or make an appointment NOW for a RT-PCR test for five (5) business days prior to your return to campus date.”

Those students will move into campus dorms on January 17 and will undergo a two-week quarantine, taking classes online. Students from states that aren’t on the travel advisory can move into campus dorms on January 31.

When classes move back to an in-person format at the start of February, UNH plans to add a 20-minute break in between class periods so that class dismissals can be staggered.

The university’s new testing protocol reflects a notion that robust asymptomatic screening, particularly targeted at student-athletes, is key to containing Covid-19 outbreaks on campus.

UNH joins Yale, Albertus, Southern, and Quinnipiac in eschewing spring break and requiring a negative Covid test shortly before coming to campus.

At Yale, even students from the Connecticut area and other states not flagged by the travel advisory will be required to quarantine for two weeks if they live in campus dorms. However, the arrival ​“quarantine” at Yale permits students to leave their rooms and wander about their own dormitory complexes after two days, provided that they receive a negative Covid-19 test result.

Three quarters of Yale’s undergraduate population will be allowed to live on campus in the spring. Yale is the only local college that de-densified its campus by limiting particular class years’ access to in person activities. Sophomores, who were not allowed to live on campus in the fall, will be moving into dorms for the first time this academic year, while first-year students will need to study remotely from home.

Albertus Magnus, the smallest of the New Haven-area schools with approximately 240 students living on campus and 225 commuters, is planning to approach the spring semester without ​“radical changes” to its Covid-19 protocols, according to spokesperson Sarah Barr.

The college will continue to test 20 percent of students each week; athletes get tested most frequently, every other week. Barr said that the college might resume athletic competitions in the spring, which would entail additional staff and health resources.

Southern Connecticut State University plans to continue mapping and tracking patterns of detected Covid infections. When students affiliated with a particular dormitory or building test positive for Covid at a rate of 5 percent or more, ​“that is a signal that we need to keep a close eye or pause and test all students in the building to see if there is a bigger issue,” Covid-19 Coordinator Erin Duff wrote in an email to the Independent. Duff anticipates that 1,400 students will return to campus housing next semester.

Quinnipiac’s Orlofski: Enforcement Is Key

As the universities look ahead to the next semester, they will need to strike a difficult balance of ensuring that students are properly social distancing while also promoting students’ emotional well-being.

Julia Orlofski, a senior nursing student at Quinnipiac, said she believes her university could do a better job of enforcing social distancing on the ground.

In November, Orlofski found herself packing up her dorm room belongings two weeks before she had planned to leave for Thanksgiving break. Quinnipiac confronted New Haven County’s most sizable university Covid-19 outbreak in early November, pushing all classes online for the rest of the semester.

Droves of students left for home early as a result, including Orlofski. As a nursing student, Orlofski had been taking courses with in-person clinical components. Once she heard that those courses would be moved online for the rest of the term, she said she ​“pretty much checked out.”

While a few students who attended a massive party at Anthony’s Ocean View earlier in the semester were sent home from campus, Orlofski posited that ​“there needs to be more direct consequences for things that are a little bit smaller.”

Social distancing was ​“mostly on the honors system, unfortunately,” Orlofski said.

She recalled frequently walking outside her dorm and encountering peers congregating together without masks. She wishes Quinnipiac had employed staff or students designated to instruct students to wear masks properly, perhaps with the threat of a fine.

UNH’S Thompson: Reach Out To Trusted People

On the other hand, Covid safety measures can be intrinsically alienating to students.

Nicholas Thompson, a student the University of New Haven, recalled temporarily being placed in an isolation unit after contracting strep throat. The prospect of living alone in that room for two weeks weighed on him, even though he ultimately tested negative for Covid-19 the next day.

“I think it did not help us mentally in terms of how restrictive things were,” he said.

His advice for students experiencing loneliness and stress from heightened social isolation?

“Find somebody you can trust in. It’s very critical in these times. It’s good to have people check up on you and it’s good to have people look out for your mental health.”

One element of the semester that worked well, Thompson said, was that his classes seamlessly transitioned between in person and online formats as Covid cases on campus rose and fell. One of his political science courses temporarily shifted online when students felt uncomfortable attending class in person during a period of rising infection rates on campus, he recalled, adding that the use of the online software Blackboard to upload coursework and files throughout the semester made this flexibility possible.

Yale’s Payne: Culture Shock

Orlofski and Thompson both expressed relief at the chance to study at home, away from their campuses’ high Covid rates. Jacob Payne, a senior at Yale, felt differently as he arrived back home in an Arizona suburb, where residents don’t seem to take the pandemic as seriously.

“Going to the grocery store, lots of people don’t wear their masks, or if they are, it’s pulled down to their chins,” he described. ​“It’s stressful.”

It’s also been odd to step outside the house — walking to his car, for instance — without wearing a mask. ​“I feel like I’m breaking some sort of rule,” he laughed.

In the middle of the pandemic, the fall semester hadn’t been as bizarre as he had expected, Jacob said. His dorm, Timothy Dwight College, never had to quarantine. He didn’t know very many people who contracted the virus. He could still go to work in person, and some of his architecture courses took place in physical classrooms. He could still see friends, just with a mask and from a six-foot distance.

“Things will stay the same if you let them,” he reflected. College life during a pandemic requires a more active effort to maintain connections with other people. ​“You can just choose to [keep] yourself alone in your room the entire time, but there are safe ways to interact.”

SCSU’s Guerrucci: It Felt Normal

Meanwhile, Jess Guerrucci, a senior at Southern, is wrapping up her final semester of college from her off-campus apartment in Hamden. She’s taking finals in her room, on her laptop. She anticipates that it’ll be an anticlimactic end to this chapter of her life.

The fall semester surprised Guerrucci, too, with a sense of normalcy. She spent countless hours with her friends at Southern News, the student newspaper that she edits. ​“We were still able to connect, hanging out all the time,” she said.

At the newspaper’s final in-person meeting of the semester — Guerrucci’s last ever — the other reporters and editors threw her a socially-distanced party.

“They got me gifts, did little speeches,” she said. ​“I had actually a lot of opportunity to spend time with people and still get to do the things I love.”

This story was produced with financial support from Solutions Journalism Network.

Previous stories:

• Yale Spends, Tests More; Practices Vary
• Students Play The Covid Heavy
• 2 Campuses, Week 1: Zoom vs. Zip
• Albertus Continues Convocation Tradition, With A Twist
• Yalies Begin 14-Day Dorm Quarantines
• ​“K.I.S.S.” Keeps Auto Cohort Humming After Covid Scare
• Mechanics’ Dream Rounds A Final Lap
• Future Mechanics Return To Class In Person
• In Car Lab, They’re Geared Up For Covid
• Prof, Students Forge ​“Hybrid” Routine
• Coronavirus Takes A Seat
• Despite An Outbreak, Colleges Stay Course
• Covid-Positive Chef: UNH ​“Bats Blind Eye”
• Classes Move Online As Outbreak Spreads
• Colleges Confront Climbing Covid Cases
• Covid Outbreak Moves QU Classes Online
• QU Locks Down; Yale Quarantines Dorms
• Covid Thwarts Booze, Party Policies
• 60 Watch Albertus Tree-Lighting From Home