The coronavirus pandemic has severely altered many aspects of traditional college life, dating included. Social distancing guidelines have made it increasingly difficult to meet new people — something that usually happens in class — at parties or during extracurricular activities. While dating is still possible during COVID-19, it can be somewhat of a high-risk activity to invite a new person into your social circle.
One reason for dating in general is to combat feelings of loneliness. As social distancing separates people and discourages physical contact, some students at the College of William and Mary have noted intensifying feelings of isolation. “I definitely feel much more isolated and lonely than a normal semester,” Olivia C. B. ’23 said in an email. Will Sambrook ’21 said that it’s difficult to find a balance between protecting others’ physical health and prioritizing their own mental health. “I have become very lonely away from campus and the people I love,” Sambrook said in an email. “I try to just keep reminding myself that the choices I made were for the best of my family and my health, but it’s super hard nonetheless.” Despite feeling lonely, especially when college encompasses both a social experience and an academic one, Miso Park ’21 is still trying to date for the right reasons. Read the full story by The Flat Hat HERE.
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After a round of campus-wide COVID-19 testing that began the week of Oct. 18, the College of William and Mary alerted students Sunday, Nov. 1 that 19 students received false-positive results. The affected students were contacted by the College’s case managers and subjected to quarantine protocols. Though the results have been confirmed to be false positives, the students will remain in isolation housing until they have been cleared by a case manager.
In an email to the campus community, COVID-19 Response Team Chair Sam Jones said that the positive results appeared to be outliers when compared to the results of census testing and ongoing wastewater testing. Jones noted that over 20 positive tests yielded from this round of testing did not align with the number of positives yielded from the two previous rounds of campus-wide testing. The College requested that both Kallaco Health and Technology and Wisconsin Diagnostics Laboratories perform integrity reviews of the tests. It was determined that Kallaco accurately reported the data it received from Wisconsin Diagnostics. Ultimately, Wisconsin Diagnostics announced that 19 of the tests were reported as false positive as a result of a lab error. The 19 tests were repeated using the original specimens and all yielded negative results. Read the full story by The Flat Hat HERE. There was no shortage of contentious situations on the campus of the College of William and Mary this semester, from the shaky reopening to the suspension of Tribe Athletics. Despite everyone’s best efforts, the number of cases on campus has been slightly increasing over the past few weeks. One would think that the College’s COVID-19 dashboard would give some students peace of mind, as they are able to check up on the number of positive cases on campus.
Instead, many students began noticing that there were some suspicious things popping up on the dashboard. No one could make sense of the it, creating panic among students; they were right to be worried. Until recently, there was no distinction between the total cases since August and the number of active cases on campus. Furthermore, students noticed odd changes to the pre-arrival positives and fluctuations in the numbers, even after all students arrived on campus. The number of cases never went down, despite the fact that many positive students had recovered from COVID-19. The recent outbreak among the football players begs the question: what will happen if a future, and possibly worse, outbreak occurs? The school hasn’t been very clear about what its next steps will be, or even what would require a campus shutdown to occur. With the end of the semester finally approaching, it is imperative that everyone, including the administration, stay vigilant. The College needs to be more transparent about the next steps during the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters, should conditions on campus look similar come next January. Read the full story by The Flat Hat HERE. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dining Services at the College of William and Mary has had to implement several changes, including new food offerings, safety regulations, events to increase safety and promote socially distant dining. Some of the most noticeable differences from year prior include the introduction of Sadler Express, a new take-out dining option and safety measures such as plexiglass barriers, increased take-out options and directional signage throughout the dining halls. Additionally, Dining Services is trying to respond to student concerns by encouraging more outdoor eating and maintaining cleanliness within the dining halls.
Dining Services Marketing Director Melissa Strain and her team: Retail Director Jason Vercammen, Sadler Operations Director Steve Moyer, Marketing Coordinator Monica Moyer and Associate Director of Marketing, Communications and Licensing, Auxiliary Services Eden Harris spoke on the changes implemented within the dining halls this fall. “Some of the major changes this fall include physical distancing and directional signage throughout the dining operations, touchless payment options, reducing seating in dining rooms due to physical distancing measures, and more robust to go options,” said Strain and the Dining Services team. Dining services began using a new technology to allow students to pre-order food, check nutritional and allergy information, and examine the dining hall menus. Read the full story by The Flat Hat HERE. At the beginning of the semester, The College of William & Mary tested all on-campus students for COVID-19. With the recent increase in concerns over testing, The Flat Hat went behind the scenes at Kaplan Arena to learn more about the testing process.
Read the full story by The Flat Hat HERE. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about the College of William and Mary’s mistakes with regard to operating in the COVID-19 pandemic. To be clear, there are plenty of things that we, as a community, should address. As students — and in some cases taxpayers — contributing hefty amounts in tuition, we should be open to pointing out the College’s errors when we see them. At the same time, though, it is important for us as the College community to acknowledge successes where we can.
At the beginning of September, a COVID-19 outbreak at James Madison University led to the decision to send their on-campus population of over 20,000 home, as all instruction moved online. In Blacksburg, the number of positive cases at Virginia Tech have recently climbed up to about 1,000. Closer to home, and less dramatically, one percent of on-campus students at Virginia Commonwealth University have been reported as having “active cases” of COVID-19. Meanwhile, here at the College, our number of on-campus positive cases reached the teens this weekend — of the almost 7,500 students tested, .18 percent received a positive result. That number is one-fifth of one percent of the student population at the College. Just looking at these numbers should give us all some relief, as well as some hope for the rest of the semester. Of course, our relatively low numbers do not justify disregarding any of the rules the College has put in place. Practices like social distancing and mask-wearing are what is protecting the other 99 percent of us from contracting COVID-19, and by extension protecting our families when we return home and even people we’re walking past at the grocery store in Williamsburg. Low COVID-19 rates do not constitute an excuse to be thoughtless or inconsiderate. In addition, for all I know, we could be at the precipice of a COVID-19 outbreak. Just because positive tests are scarce now does not mean they will stay that way. Read the full story by The Flat Hat HERE. Monday, Sept. 14, student representatives from several Virginia universities met over Zoom to discuss their reactions to colleges’ reopening plans for the fall semester. The forum was organized by New Virginia Majority, a non-profit organization based in Richmond, and featured representatives from Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, George Mason University and the College of William and Mary. Organizer of the New Virginia Majority Kalia Harris introduced the forum’s purpose and explained her work with New Virginia Majority and the Virginia Student Power Network, another advocacy group connecting student activists from across the state. She began the forum by illustrating COVID-19’s severity on university campuses since they began reopening during late August and early September. Harris than emphasized the importance of hearing directly from students as they experience COVID-19 response plans firsthand at their respective institutions. After Harris’s introduction, VSPN Director Ibby Han provided an overview of student activists’ movements and demands throughout Virginia and contextualized these demands by reminding viewers of rising case totals at several universities across the state. “… THIS IS A REALLY URGENT PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS. WE’RE NEARING OVER 2,000 CASES ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES STATEWIDE. I DON’T THINK THIS CAME AS A SURPRISE TO ANYONE. WE KNOW THAT COLLEGES, COLLEGE CAMPUSES, DORM LIFE, WOULD ALL BE INCUBATORS, AND FRANKLY, SUPER-SPREADER LOCATIONS, FOR THE COVID-19 VIRUS.” “… This is a really urgent public health crisis. We’re nearing over 2,000 cases on college campuses statewide,” Han said. “I don’t think this came as a surprise to anyone. We know that colleges, college campuses, dorm life, would all be incubators, and frankly, super-spreader locations, for the COVID-19 virus.” Read the full story by The Flat Hat HERE. |
SourceThe Flat Hat |