By Margaret Kelly ’24
Despite being almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, many people still have a difficult time staying above water on what the science of the sickness really means. This difficulty extends to the collegiate level, where students do their best to juggle schoolwork, stay healthy, and understand what they need to do regarding COVID and why.
Recently, Brian Anderson, Executive Director of Emergency Management and Environmental Health and Safety here at Pace released an email notifying our community that the COVID alert level had been demoted to yellow. While the effects of this change were briefly described in his email, there appears to be a lack of “why” and more of an emphasis on the “now what?” While this isn’t a bad thing, I know that myself and others at the NYC campus wonder what exactly prompts this change in alert levels.
“I’m pretty sure that it means we’re doing better in terms of cases,” said Josh Vergara, a sophomore at Pace’s NYC campus, “but I really don’t know what each level means.” While the simplicity of students’ understanding of alert levels could be seen as concerning, it does accurately reflect the basic nature of Pace’s elaboration on the alert level system.
After visiting the Pace COVID Dashboard, I learned that the school’s definition of what prompts a yellow level alert is when “Incidence[s] of the COVID-19 remains low, but indicators show increased, or potential for, increase in transmission.” While this seems a little self-explanatory, the breakdown of what parameters the COVID panel uses to decide our community’s freedoms was rather helpful. According to the Pace COVID dashboard, as of the week of 2/13 – 2/19, there are three new positive cases on the NYC campus, therefore confirming the accuracy of the newly assigned alert level yellow.
In addition to misunderstandings of the intentions behind the university’s actions, many students are dissatisfied with Pace’s COVID response overall. “Pace’s response to the pandemic could be a lot better,” sophomore Sophia Traub says when regarding COVID protocols over both years she’s been at the university, “they’re wanting [the student body] to put in the work, but they’re not really telling us what they want us to be doing.”
This semester, the University kept the availability of free testing for students and brought back random selections of student testing each week. “I like that [Pace] offers testing…and the fact that we don’t need an appointment or [have] to pay.” Traub elaborates, “however I wish [Pace] made more people test and more frequently.” The optional aspect of community testing does bring the school’s COVID response down a couple of pegs in terms of effectiveness, as the chances of someone unknowingly (or purposely) coming onto campus while infected increase significantly when only a small percentage are required to test or willingly choose to do so.
Living through a pandemic has been overwhelming, to say the least, and for college students, it’s a whole other beast in itself. Knowing what’s happening and what’s necessary is a right we all have, and within our school community it is more crucial than ever. Universities need to focus on the accessibility of information for all their students, not just those with the desire to find more.