By Meredith Lyverse
As concerns about the delta variant and breakthrough Covid cases rise, members of the Bellarmine community are wondering, “What happens if I get Covid this semester?” The university is not offering online courses as it did in 2020-2021, making the protocol different from this academic year.
Bellarmine’s Covid task force meets every other week to discuss how to handle the virus on campus. “We reversed some of the decisions we had made for the fall because of the delta variant and this fourth wave [of Covid],” Nancy York, assistant provost and professor of nursing said.
If a student or staff–vaccinated or not–is exposed, he or she should get tested at a testing site on or off campus. Bellarmine offers testing on Mondays in Fraizer Hall and PCR tests daily in the Health Services office in Newman Hall.
“They’re both good gateway tests if you think you might be sick with Covid,” York said.
Despite the CDC’s recommendation to quarantine for 10 days with a positive test, Bellarmine students must quarantine for 14 days in accordance with the Jefferson County Health Department’s guidelines.
Symptomatic students and staff or those exposed to Covid are in quarantine until their test comes back. If it’s positive, they must isolate.
Dr. Sean McGreevey, dean of students, said the university is not providing mass quarantine spaces as it did last year. University officials prefer those students whose families live in Kentucky leave campus and quarantine or isolate at home.
“Last year we did a bunch of quarantine and isolation on campus. We’re not prepared to do as much of that this year,” McGreevey said “So we’re asking folks to go home or off campus if they have a safe place to do so.”
Bellarmine will provide a place for international students or students with special housing circumstances to quarantine or isolate for two weeks. The university has hotel rooms, dorm rooms and off-campus houses for students to use.
“We’ve built a system that basically sends an order email to the dining hall every day three times a day so we pick up their food and deliver it to them,” McGreevey said.
Last year, online and hyflex classes provided a safe way to attend live class for students who tested positive for or were exposed to Covid. This year, the protocol is for students and professors to make agreements on an individual basis.
Dr. Paul Gore, vice president for academic affairs and provost, said online classes were not an option this year. “It wasn’t quality education,” Gore said “It was hard, nobody liked it, and it wasn’t very effective.”
Before Covid, students and faculty had extenuating circumstances every semester that caused them to miss class for long periods of time. “You can’t be a faculty member for more than a couple years without having had to do this,” Gore said “There’s always a student that something happens to.”
It’s up to professors to decide how they want to teach students in quarantine, but Gore said many of the same tools used last year will be used again. “Now, we have more strategies because we’ve taught online for a year, and we’ve supplemented on digital platforms like Moodle,” Gore said.
Senior Tyren Johnson tested positive for Covid on the first day of classes. He quarantined at home in Owensboro, Kentucky, for 14 days. He said adjusting to new classes on Moodle from home was stressful.
“I couldn’t do any of my readings because I hadn’t picked up my textbooks at school yet,” Johnson said.
He said he felt cared for by his professors and that all of them were more concerned about his well-being than schoolwork.
“My professors really did make it feel like they were there for me,” Johnson said “That kind of reaction toward it was very comforting.”
Johnson said he didn’t do much work during his isolation because he was sick and his professors wanted him to feel better and not worry about school, but the work he did complete was on Moodle and easy to access.
“I had to do some reading for Spanish, but it was easy,” Johnson said “All my teachers wanted me to focus on my health before school.”