Most of Quinnipiac University’s students chose to return home after 247 positive COVID-19 cases at the university were announced.
From the beginning of the semester to today, 480 students have tested positive, leaving members of the Quinnipiac community with questions about the integrity of the COVID-19 protocols.
Many students believe that Quinnipiac tried its hardest to contain the virus given the circumstances, but they still have questions.
“Yeah the school itself did a good job, the students were at fault,” said Jon Livsey, a senior civil engineering major who was living in Eastview on the York Hill campus. “I think they could’ve made testing easier to get done, I don’t think you could just get tested if you wanted to. But they warned people, and they still went out anyway. But living on campus I felt very safe, content in my own room.”
Some students said that while the communication was fairly clear early in the semester, there was some confusion as the year went on.
“I think it was successful for a while,” said Kaitlyn Kelly, a senior occupational therapy major who lived off campus. “They did a good job of making sure everyone knew the rules. They made an Instagram page for it. I think Halloween was the thing that really messed us up, which was avoidable. I don’t know if there is anything else the school could’ve done in terms of that.”
Kelly also explained that the communication has been especially sub-par within the past week.
“Recently I’ve been getting so much mixed information,” Kelly said. “I wanted to get tested before I went home. Yesterday they told me you could only get tested before next Monday if you had symptoms. But today I went and they told me that I could just get tested for being there, so there’s a lot of information that’s either not correct or confusing.”
Though there may have been some questions and even complaints from the Quinnipiac community in terms of testing and containment of the virus, it’s now commonly believed that the spike in early November isn’t without fault from the student body.
“That spike was 100% student fault,” said Dean Ringos, a junior Biomedical Science major who was living in Crescent on York Hill. “I think the school did as much as they could with the situation. As a matter of fact I think the school went beyond what they were expected of, which is better than other schools.”
Ringos added that although the school isn’t at fault for the spike, it doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t make mistakes.
“Some rules were very overbearing,” Rigos said. “And If you’re going to make protocols that are overbearing, you can’t have any loopholes. We shouldn’t be having tours if I can’t bring people on campus. Little things. They took away all the chairs on York for a weekend before the spike apparently because a student made a comment. So in my eyes, there’s no point in doing this if you’re not doing to be 100%. You’re either all or nothing.”