As University of Kansas returns to class, community wrestles with COVID-19 anxiety
Brad Mathewson was visiting a friend when his phone rang. University of Kansas officials were calling to say he needed to return to his residence hall immediately, gather his things and move into a special dorm — where he could quarantine for 14 days.
Another student had tested positive for COVID-19, and he and more than 10 others may have been exposed.
Despite a litany of safety precautions announced by KU, with class set to start Monday, Mathewson is concerned he’ll be trapped in a holding pattern of going in and out of quarantine until the semester ends. Or until students are sent home to learn online.
“I think that a lot of what KU has done so far, whether it be good or bad, is at its core posturing,” he said over the phone. “I feel like I’m being shorted out of one, my money, and two, my time.”
As students have returned to campus in the past few days, the traditional air of excitement has given way to one of trepidation. Students are moving in at a slower clip, with many unsure how long they’ll be allowed to stay. The student paper’s editorial board is already calling for the school to reverse course.
Last week, a Kansas State University fraternity reported 13 COVID-19 cases, and Kansas’ health secretary called that the “tip of the iceberg.” The University of North Carolina abruptly moved all classes online after 177 students tested positive and photos and video circulated of students congregating without masks.
Around Lawrence, the scene is mixed. Many college-age people are in masks, making sure to stay away from those they don’t know. Others gather in groups, without masks, walking around town or playing beer pong or cornhole in yards.
Students, staff and administrators are preemptively pointing fingers, predicting who must take the blame in the event of an outbreak or a return to fully online classes.
Though many say they hope students can remain on campus without incident, most say that it is not likely.
“I’m going to get COVID. It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of when,” said Andrew Wagner, a fifth-year senior. “Because everyone’s coming back and because of the age group, not everyone’s doing the things that are recommended.”
As part of the university’s COVID-19 protocol, each student, faculty and staff member is being tested for the virus. On Wednesday, the early test results came in: 89 people, 87 of them students, have tested positive so far, the university announced. A large majority were from fraternities and sororities, where students moved back early.
KU’s protocol also allowed some students to move back early into Stephenson scholarship hall, where Mathewson lived, even though they hadn’t yet received their COVID-19 test results.
He and some of his hall mates are quarantined in Gertrude Sellards Pearson dorm on a floor designated for students exposed to the virus. The student who tested positive, Mathewson said, is in a separate isolation facility.
He said he has received relatively little information about what happens next. He was directed to monitor himself for symptoms, but if he wants to get another coronavirus test he thinks he’ll have to pay for it himself. He does not have health insurance.
Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, a KU spokeswoman, said students were asked to bring their belongings to campus, get tested and then move back home until right before class starts. Students who came early, she said, were tested as they moved in.
“KU Housing has protocols for its residents that promote health and safety, including wearing face coverings, limiting elevator occupancy, spaces for quarantine and isolations as needed,” she said.
Barcomb-Peterson did not have an immediate answer for whether the university would provide additional testing to students exposed on campus but said the campus health center would offer testing by appointment.
Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, said it is “almost inevitable” that there will be outbreaks linked to colleges this semester. He said it is good that KU is testing its students, among other safety measures.
KU is also requiring students to use an app to check for symptoms and wear masks on campus. Signs and classroom setups encourage social distancing, and hand sanitizer is placed around campus. Students who violate guidelines will be punished through Student Affairs.
But Michaud said students will have to comply.
“It’s a very challenging situation for colleges and universities,” Michaud siad. “Because the broader public effort to contain and suppress the coronavirus has largely failed up until now, we see the impacts on colleges and universities.”
Calls for closing
After the University of North Carolina and the University of Notre Dame quickly fell back to online classes, an editorial in KU’s student newspaper, the University Daily Kansan, called for a change of plans.
“It appears that the science used to build the Protect KU plan is economics,” the editorial says. “Students have become the revenue KU needs to stay open. Health and education, meanwhile, are subverted for the sake of a few weeks of cash.”
The editorial claims the university places much of the responsibility for safety on students’ shoulders, asking them to report violations to Student Affairs and supplying only one free test and mask. The university, the editorial said, has given few answers on how an outbreak would be handled.
“It’s going to have tough implications for all of us, and for us we were just thinking of the damage we could cause in the community. It seemed evident that the risk was too much,” said Editor-in-Chief Nicole Asbury (a former Star intern). “Yes, college students are probably less vulnerable to COVID-19 than other demographics, but with that being said, the people who we could spread it to who just live around here is way too much of a cost.”
Trey Duran, a second-year law student and student senator, said he’d like to see the university go online only. Actions of the state and federal government, Duran said, forced the university to make a “hopeless decision” to either “hold the fall semester online and risk the financial solvency of the school or hold the fall semester in person and risk the health and safety of our community.”
Thus far, Duran said, he’s seen social media images from sororities and fraternities flaunting social distancing and mask guidelines. Though the university has said there would be consequences, Duran said those consequences aren’t clear.
KU, he said, has failed to be transparent in telling students what to expect.
Neill Kennedy, the president of the Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition, said KU has set students up to fail.
“We as a country when adults cannot stop a pandemic I don’t know how we are expecting 19-year-olds to stop it,” she said.
“When was the last time you were 19? We should not be judging teenagers and young adults for making poor decisions in regards to this when adults who are 40 are making even worse decisions than they are.”
The organization, Kennedy said, tried to talk with administrators about working conditions but was “left out of the decision-making process.” Now, she said, the events at other schools make the needed response clear.
“With similar institutions not making it basically, we need to not think KU is special,” Kennedy said. “We believe now, the only morally right thing to do is to move online.”
Barcomb-Peterson, the university spokeswoman, said the school’s “best efforts” have created a safer campus environment.
“It’s up to each and every member of the university community to commit to the personal responsibility pledge we have put into place,” Barcomb-Peterson said. She pointed to a message from Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer to students, staff and faculty asking them to commit to guidelines.
In a message to the campus community Friday, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod said the university has created a framework for decisions on whether and how to stay on campus. The framework, his message said, includes five levels of campus operation, from the current “new normal” to essential personnel only.
The levels, he said, are based on 30 pandemic related indicators.
Cautiously optimistic
Patrick Miller, a KU political science professor, has been watching the University of North Carolina closely. He earned his doctorate there and still has connections to the community.
“I think there’s obviously a concern for every university that we’re going to be headed in that same direction,” Miller said. “Looking at North Carolina, I was really disappointed and sad to see what was happening with the party scene, which really appeared to be continuing unabated.”
Miller said KU is doing what it can in a tough situation, and he called the initial positive test results, and their concentration in the Greek community, “alarming.”
“I know we’re dealing with young people, and the social life aspect of college is a huge thing,” Miller said. “But on the other hand I completely reject the argument that a lot of people are putting out on social media that students bear no responsibility for making this work.”
“Everyone needs to be doing everything possible.”
Though Miller is starting his classes online for health reasons, he said he hopes to return to the classroom before the end of the semester.
And he hopes the students who flout guidelines are a small minority. But a small minority can have a big impact.
Miller said he wants parents to pressure the students to act appropriately.
“Parent your 22-year-old kid from a distance,” he said.
Many students sat in a similar boat, glad to be back on campus and hoping to see the university keep the virus contained.
Sarah Gillerlain, a sophomore, said she was impressed with the measures she had seen from KU so far.
“I’m not too worried about it,” she said. “I love coming to campus. I live off campus this year. I plan on taking my precautions wearing a mask so I can keep it a little bit normal.”
She said she was not surprised to see coronavirus cases and, though she’d like to stay, she expects the semester to be shifted online eventually.
“I think that we should do our part not only for the safety of kids but also Lawrence in general,” Gillerlain said.
Student conduct
After KU administration disclosed that most of the COVID-19 cases involved fraternities and sororities, many eyes pointed in that direction.
In an interview with CNN Thursday, Lee Norman, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said he has “kind of given up a little bit on fraternity and sorority members” and that the responsibility lands on their national governance.
“If you ask them what should you do to curtail the spread of coronavirus they can cite it line and verse what is the right thing to do, but they’re not doing it,” Norman said. “Young people think they’re invincible.”
Outside the Greek houses Thursday, some students were walking in and out, careful to keep their distance and wearing masks. Others piled into cars or walked in groups without masks on. This was also true for other houses in those neighborhoods.
Outside the Sigma Nu and Kappa Sigma fraternities, young men gathered nearly shoulder to shoulder, chatting and playing basketball. Few wore masks.
Members of Kappa Sigma declined to speak to The Star. A representative of Sigma Nu declined to share his name but said the fraternity had multiple “virus restrictions and differences and changes.” He declined to specify those and pointed out that the members were in open air. Local mask regulations don’t apply outdoors.
KU’s Interfraternity Council and Panhellinic Council, which govern the school’s Greek houses, did not immediately respond to The Star’s request for comment.
Wagner, the fifth-year senior, is an alumnus of the Alpha Tau Omega, a fraternity that does not allow alcohol in its house. He said Greek houses bear the brunt of cases partly because some parties lack social distancing but also because members returned to Lawrence earlier than most others.
But some students believe they cannot get the virus, he said, and won’t see the impact until they’re personally affected.
Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, a sophomore member of a Latino fraternity, said he was frustrated by what he’d seen in Lawrence. He said he believed KU was doing everything in its power to keep everyone safe but has no control over what students do off campus.
“I don’t have much hope that we’ll make it past September,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking because it’s my second year of college and I like Lawrence and I like being here.”
Sitting outside near a strip of Greek houses, Amy LeMert, Melody Gatti and Joe Gatti said most of the students who walk by their homes wear masks and social distance. But the sororities, LeMert said, seem more careful than the fraternities.
“I think everybody is anticipating a spike in the COVID rates so I think people are cautious about their activity and mobility,” she said. “The majority of students but not an overwhelming majority of students are showing cautiousness and respect.”
The three say they chose to live where they did because they enjoy the energy students bring.
They like seeing student’s joy at coming back together and said they hope it will be possible to finish the semester on campus. However, LeMert said, she worried that COVID-19 on campus could spill into Lawrence schools.
Sonia Jordan, director of infomatics for Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, echoed that concern.
“KU is immensely interwoven and interconnected to the fabric of this community,” Jordan said. “So what happens at KU has large ripple effects throughout the community.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
