CC students on looking forward to living on an in-person campus
Plus, how some CC student workers got the jump on the vaccine
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pandemic date last year, former President Jill Tiefenthaler posted in the President’s Blog about summer 2020 programming, cancellations, and adjustments to Blocks A and B. (This year, Colorado College is offering three summer blocks — Blocks A, B, and C, as well as a Half Block during Block A — as part of the billing plan for the “more flexible” 2020-2021 academic year.)
Today, we report on CC’s plans for housing next academic year, as well as how students are feeling about living on an in-person campus. Plus, how some student workers were eligible to be vaccinated before other CC students.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. The Q-and-A section featured Zoe McLaren, an associate professor for the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who explained the role of young people during the pandemic.
✉️In Your Inbox:
On Wednesday, two students living on west campus received positive test results, with one student having recently been in Tutt Library.
On Thursday, CC Communications sent out an email to the CC community about April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month, along with resources and events to learn about the role each person plays in ending sexual violence.
Also on Thursday, Campus Safety released more information on CC’s March 28 lockout, which was prompted by an attempted carjacking in which three suspects fled on foot toward CC’s campus.
Yesterday, the college announced that it had received its largest donation ever from a single donor with a future estate commitment of $33.5 million. Robert Moore, acting co-president of the college, noted that the donation would serve “the future of the college and the Fine Arts Center.”
Also yesterday, two on-campus staff members and one on-campus student received positive test results for COVID-19. One of those staff members was recently in the Lloyd E. Worner Campus Center, while the other was recently in an office on east campus. The student that tested positive lives in housing on east campus.
🚨On-campus vaccination clinic
Yesterday, Colorado College announced that on April 17, it would be hosting a vaccination clinic with Optum, its on-campus health partner, at the Cornerstone Arts Center between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
The college said that students will be allowed to register for the clinic before CC employees and their families. Only students can sign up for the clinic before April 9, at which point appointments open for all CC employees and families.
All appointments must be made before April 14 in order to ensure an accurate number of doses.
Maggie Santos, CC’s COVID-19 Emergency Manager, told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project that she is “ecstatic” for the clinic.
“I think it’s important because it will get us to the point where we have herd immunity, and we’ll be able to open up the campus more than it is now,” Santos said.
In order to limit the amount of vaccine clinics necessary to reach students, Santos said CC is looking to use the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine in its clinic. If the college is unable to procure that vaccine, Santos said CC will likely have to hold another clinic.
“What we’re trying to do right now is get the J&J vaccine,” Santos said. “The reason why is if we provide the vaccine on the 17th, some students may go home after the next block, and we want to get as many people as possible.”
CC students, faculty, and staff can sign up to be vaccinated in the clinic here (we highly recommend signing up).
Photo courtesy of Esteban Candelaria ‘21
🏡 A pandemic Residential Experience
After the lockdowns of Loomis, Mathias, and South Halls last fall, Colorado College moved to de-densify its campus through increased remote learning and living. Many students had to change their housing plans, and many had to return home, with a few exceptions.
And with the pandemic still affecting most college operations, the unpredictability of student housing plans will likely continue into the next academic year.
Assistant Vice President for the Residential Experience Edwin Hamada told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project that given the unpredictability the pandemic has brought to making plans for student housing, students will have “maybe a week or two” to make their plans for housing next year
“In the next couple weeks, once we make that decision, it’s going to be a mad dash to ‘I gotta sign up for housing,’” Hamada said.
Building on finicky foundations
Fiona McLaughlin ‘24 said she started the year on campus in Montgomery Hall. But after being quarantined early on, McLaughlin decided to take the year off and left campus.
“I haven’t been living in one place for more than a month,” McLaughlin told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Meredith Kuster ‘23 also said she had to change her plan for housing twice this year, moving to a house off-campus after the Mathias Hall quarantine.
“I changed it when Mathias got sent into quarantine and then they released an email saying that students on campus were gonna have to go home unless you had in-person classes,” Kuster told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “So then I had to immediately find a place to live off campus, and that was because of the pandemic, and then I had to find a different place to live for the second semester because my lease was up for the house in the first semester.”
Planning for an in-person fall
But even after the tumultuous year they’ve had, many CC students are still planning to live on campus next academic year.
According to a survey sent to rising juniors and seniors regarding their preferences for residence next year, 62% of students are “definitely” or “more than likely” to live on campus.
“To be honest, I think we all want to live on campus,” Kuster said.
For Hamada and the Residential Experience team, the survey’s results were reassuring.
“This reinforced that students, even if given a choice to live off campus, still prefer to live on campus,” Hamada wrote in an email statement. “We anticipate being at full occupancy for the fall and have limited housing.”
Of course, the option to live off campus would not be available to rising sophomores and incoming first years, who are still bound by CC’s on-campus housing requirement to live on campus. According to CC Housing’s website, the college will “reassess the 3-year or 2-year residential requirement for future academic years, taking COVID restrictions into consideration when making that decision.”
In terms of safety protocols and precautions for those living on campus, Hamada said things will likely look very similar to what has been going on during the spring semester.
“There will be some level of enhanced social distancing,” Hamada said. “It may not be 10 days like we had in the spring.”
Hamada said that the Residential Experience will take “the most conservative approach” to health and safety procedures next year.
“I think everyone’s optimistic that things could go back to a little bit more normal where you have a roommate, or you have more friends to connect with and you’re able to actually do activities together,” Hamada said. “Heaven forbid, you might be able to hug each other.”
Craving a campus community
As students wait to hear about CC’s plans for housing in the coming weeks, Hamada said the Residential Experience wants to make sure the decisions they make are based on science and do not endanger any students.
“We don’t want to make a rash decision where we’re too dense or we called it too early, and now we’re spiking, and we’re not able to keep our students safe,” Hamada said.
As for CC students, many are hoping to come back to campus, especially those who were unable to to have their first full year living on campus.
“I just want to be around other CC students all the time — I haven’t even lived on campus for a full year,” McLaughlin said. “This is a sentiment that is shared by pretty much everyone, but this year has been super, super lonely, and I’m really looking forward to just being around people again.”
For Kuster, the CC community was a major draw for the college, so returning to living on campus was important.
“I think the reason we all came to CC was because we wanted to be a part of the community and I feel like it’s really hard to build that community without being on campus and being around a lot of people,” Kuster said. “I think a lot of people choose to live off campus senior year, and I feel like I’ve had my year off campus and I’d rather have the next few years back on.”
💉The CC students who worked for their vaccination
Last Monday, Gov. Jared Polis announced that effective April 2, all Coloradans 16 and older would be eligible to receive a vaccine for COVID-19.
The change meant that all CC students, faculty, and staff in that age range became eligible to be vaccinated. But as of March 19, some of CC’s front-facing student workers had already become eligible under Colorado’s Phase 1b.4, which was a result of higher-education institutions being made a priority for the category.
“So if you worked at, say, the Athletics department and you were working at the front desk, they were eligible,” Maggie Santos told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “People in the library who were working the desks, they were eligible.”
Early eligibility for higher education
On March 17, the college announced that its on-campus health partner Optum was accepting appointments for anyone who fell into Colorado’s Phase 1b.4, or an earlier one. Then, on March 19, CC sent out another message to those eligible about the variety of options for vaccination available to Coloradans.
But in order to target student workers that were eligible to be vaccinated, Santos said that she began individually emailing around 250 students on March 19 to notify them that they were eligible.
Santos said that she and local health officials left decisions about which students were eligible to be vaccinated up to those students’ supervisors, but that most of the student workers that were eligible were front-facing employees.
Santos said she thought it was “fantastic” that some student workers were eligible to get vaccinated earlier.
“The more students and staff and faculty we have vaccinated, the sooner we’ll be back to a more normal environment post-COVID,” Santos told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “So the sooner we can get that there the better.”
Santos said that after the initial wave of emails to eligible students, roughly 30-50 student workers reached out to her asking if they could be vaccinated due to their jobs.
Santos added that the college has been working with Optum to get vaccinations on campus — which has now come to fruition. CC’s vaccination clinic will occur on April 17 at the Cornerstone Arts Center.
Breathing easier
Because her job can entail close contact with students who have not been vaccinated, Kiara Butts ‘23, a residential adviser in South Hall, said it was like “a breath of fresh air” when she found out that she was eligible to be vaccinated as a result of her job.
“I had been stressing about not getting it until the summer,” Butts told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
At times, Butts said she or other residential advisers had to go into their residents’ living spaces for inspections or other emergencies, which she said potentially exposed her to the virus more.
Max Sandweiss ‘22, a route setter and monitor at the Ritt Kellogg Climbing Gym, told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project that he was “pretty excited” to be among the student workers eligible to be vaccinated, despite the fact that the gym thus far has been “very, very safe.”
Isabel Hicks ‘22 was also recently vaccinated for one of her campus jobs. That vaccination, she said, came with some mixed emotions — on one hand, Hicks said she felt confusion about why she was able to be vaccinated, but on another she said she was relieved to feel less anxiety about being able to leave her bubble.
“My parents are pretty relieved — I was like the last person in my family to get vaccinated and so they’re pretty happy that we’re all safe,” Hicks told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
It’s the little things
Despite being pleased about being vaccinated, some student workers feel their jobs will likely not change in terms of what they are able to do as the college remains under pandemic safety precautions.
“We have like a block and a half left,” Sandweiss said. “I really don’t think that it’s gonna change that much.”
Others considered the vaccination statuses of the people around them to be too unpredictable for them to be comfortable going back to normal.
“I think it’ll stay the same,” Butts said. “[I’m] probably more conscious about, or self-aware, of other people who have gotten their vaccinations or not.”
Still, some student workers are feeling more comfortable in some of their normal activities as a result of being vaccinated.
“I’m not fully vaccinated yet, but I still feel a little less like I’m gonna get COVID when I go to the store or whatever,” Hicks said. “I also feel like I will just start to feel more comfortable like seeing other people outside of the house.”
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear every Monday.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get the newsletter in your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or news tips by emailing ccreportingproject@gmail.com.