‘That was exhausting’: CC students and administrators react to the end of dorm-wide quarantines

Plus, a recap from last week’s Town Hall on Housing

Good morning, and happy fourth Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2018, the Colorado Springs Philharmonic was performing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 at the Pikes Peak Center. (The Philharmonic canceled all large live events through the end of the year.) 

Today, we talk with Colorado College’s COVID-19 Emergency Manager Maggie Santos and some students about life during the two-week quarantine in South and Mathias Halls. We also recap last week’s information session on housing and residential life. 

➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained why researchers paused a COVID-19 vaccine trial. 

🏒Hockey Postponed: The National Collegiate Hockey Conference, which CC men’s hockey team belongs to, recently announced the season will begin around Nov. 20. The 2020-21 season was originally scheduled to begin Oct. 9. 

📚Curbside Pickup: Tutt Library at Colorado College is offering curbside pick-up for students living off-campus. Students can request materials and schedule a pickup time on the library website.

✉️In Your Inbox: Time to declutter the inbox. Here are some email updates from CC you might have missed this week.

• Colorado College employees are now entitled to benefits under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act. This includes up to two weeks of paid leave if they are seeking a COVID-19 diagnosis, have been ordered to quarantine or isolate because of COVID-19, are caring for someone else isolating or quarantining, or taking care of a child whose childcare is closed because of COVID-19. 

• Acting co-president Mike Edmonds and El Paso County Public Health Deputy Medical Director Dr. Leon Kelly made a video to talk about the partnership between CC and the county’s public health department. “We support CC in making the most informed decisions,” Kelly said. 

• Students living on or near campus are allowed to access Tutt Library, Worner Campus Center, the fitness center, and the student health center. Students must complete the daily self-check on the CC app before entering any buildings. 

Photo courtesy of Colorado College student Cam Mongoven ’21, who took this photo just last week. Yesterday, Colorado Springs was back to a high of 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

South and Mathias Halls finish two-week quarantines, but not without some stumbles along the way

For around 24 hours over the first weekend of the academic year, all three large dorms at Colorado College were under quarantine. 

On Aug. 30, the college released the quarantined students of Loomis Hall, which the college quarantined for 14 days after one student tested positive and the college’s enhanced social distancing protocols “were not followed.” A day prior, a campus-wide email announced the beginning of a 14-day quarantine for the other two halls, South and Mathias. 

Rochelle Dickey, acting dean of students and acting vice president for student life, and Brian Young, vice president for information technology, wrote the quarantine came from the “strong recommendation” of El Paso County Public Health and Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment. 

Maggie Santos, CC’s COVID-19 emergency manager who also leads the Campus Safety department, asked public health officials if they had heard of similar instances where an entire dorm had to be quarantined. At the time, they told her they had not.

“The biggest problem with the contact tracing is we need to have clear and honest information to begin with, and that way we can identify people quickly and quarantine and isolate those,” Santos told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “It becomes a problem if they’re like, ‘Well I only hang out with two people,’ and then when they’re confirmed they said, ‘Well, maybe there’s 10 or 15.’ So then that will change, and those people have now been out in the population.”

As of 12 p.m. Saturday, only one student was in quarantine at Bijou West, one of the college’s supplemental housing options, because they displayed COVID-19 symptoms. South and Mathias Hall residents were released Saturday at noon when the quarantines lifted. Now, they are required to follow the college’s “regular virus risk mitigation protocols,” which include wearing a mask outside their bedroom or apartment and staying at least six feet apart from anyone else. 

“Everybody else is wandering around campus,” Santos said. “I was wandering earlier, they all have their masks on. Hopefully we’ll keep it that way.” 

Where things didn’t go according to plan

When both South and Mathias Halls began the 14-day quarantine, there were a lot of logistics to consider. Perhaps the most pressing was how to get food delivered to the nearly 300 students who all of a sudden were hardly allowed to leave their rooms, and definitely couldn’t access the on-campus dining facilities. The road to figuring out how to do those deliveries was a bumpy one.

CC’s food-service provider Bon Appétit prepared meals for the quarantined students, and CC staff, dressed head-to-toe in personal protective equipment, delivered food to each student once a day. The deliveries included lunch, dinner, and breakfast for the next morning. 

Santos said that early on in quarantine, students were sent a survey about their dietary restrictions that also asked whether or not the student would be on campus for the quarantine. The only problem? 

“If they didn’t fill out the survey, we didn’t deliver food,” Santos said. She also noted that some students had filled out the survey and then gone home, so volunteers were delivering food to students who weren’t on campus anymore. 

The miscommunication meant some students didn’t receive food deliveries for a day or two. Ben Greenly ’23, a Residential Advisor in South, said one day his entire hall was left out. He sent an email to Campus Safety, and all eight of his residents called. The next day, they didn’t receive food in the morning, but it came in the afternoon, he said. 

He knew the school said they sent out a survey regarding food, but he and some of the other students in his hall said they didn’t receive it. “We were pretty much left blind,” Greenly told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “It was just a little error, and we got it all figured out,” he added. 

Annie Seymour ’24, another South resident, said she didn’t receive food for two days. She’d heard of people who hadn’t gotten meals delivered before, including her roommate, so she wasn’t initially that concerned, she said. But on day two, her mom called Campus Safety, who told her they had it marked that Seymour left campus. 

“I don’t really want to blame anyone, of course, because ... people are like, coming in in these big suits, and cleaning up all the time and doing their best,” Seymour told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “But it is pretty chaotic here.” Seymour was able to share the meals delivered to her roommate and eat ramen that she’d picked up at the store before quarantine, so she didn’t get too hungry. 

Philip Gisler ’24 also missed out on food deliveries for two days. Both days, his roommate saved his lunch and gave it to Gisler for dinner.

“They provided surveys at the beginning with dietary restrictions and stuff,” Gisler told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “To my understanding, I filled them out, but they said that one of the issues may have been that the responses didn’t submit, or something like that. So I just wasn’t on their list.” 

Santos acknowledged what she called the “coordination disasters” at the beginning of quarantine. Some days, staff stayed until 8 or 10 p.m. to deliver food. They started out with about 300 students in quarantine, but by the end, only about 220 students remained after some left to quarantine at home, according to Santos. 

“Once we determined who was actually here, who hadn’t gone home — I think the last week was much better,” Santos said, noting they had no meal misses the last three days.

There was another communication blip surrounding students’ allotted outdoor time. At the very beginning of the first dorm-wide quarantine of Loomis Hall, students were allowed to be outside for 20 minutes under RA supervision, which was soon lengthened to one hour. 

But on Sept. 3, in a virtual information session about the rest of the semester, acting co-president Mike Edmonds said the students in quarantine could go outside as often as they wanted, as long as they were supervised. For Greenly and some of the other RAs in South, this announcement came as a surprise, Greenly said. 

“We didn’t really receive any follow-up information for it,” Greenly said. “So basically what happened was, there was a promise of this extended outdoor time, and they didn’t tell us anything about it, so we just kept with going with ... the regular schedule.” 

Ian Widmann ’23, an RA in Mathias, said they started extended outside time last Monday from 9–11 a.m. and 1–6 p.m., which was “quite a bit” more time than students had before, he said.

“They said they could have as much outdoor time that was supervised,” Santos said. “So I think the biggest issue was finding people that could be part of the supervision that they needed, but I wasn’t a part of that.” 

How the college is looking ahead toward the spring semester

Colorado College became the latest higher-education institution to scramble their plans for fall and embrace online learning on Sept. 1, when the college announced most classes would be online for the rest of the semester. Only students in the following categories may return to campus starting Sept. 17: students experiencing hardship, international students already on campus or traveling to campus, Bridge Scholars, Residential Advisors, the men’s ice hockey team, and students enrolled in an in-person course, hybrid lab class, or senior art seminar. All other students must leave campus by Sept. 20.

Santos estimated there are about 1,000 students, which is below 50% of the student body, approved to be on campus for the fall semester. With a de-densified campus, Santos said the college hopes to spread students out across residential buildings to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 spread among the remaining students.

“I know for sure that they don’t have any more triples after this block,” Santos said. “Because if I have a confirmed case and they only have one roommate, it’s much easier to quarantine and isolate two people than 200. We don’t want any more of those. That was exhausting.”

Over the next month, the college plans to add rapid-testing capabilities through an on-site lab and establish cohort protocols with hopes to return to on-campus classes starting in J Block. A decision about plans for the spring semester will come in October. According to the college’s FAQ page, officials from El Paso County Public Health recently completed a campus walk-through where CC administrators shared the college’s COVID-19 protocols and procedures. Campus leaders are also meeting weekly with local and county health officials. 

Santos said one of the factors in determining spring plans will be what the COVID-19 caseload looks like after approved students return to campus this week. 

“I mean if we have an outbreak and we have 100 students with COVID, ... that’s going to make a difference,” Santos said. “But if we can keep a reasonable level of students, isolate them, quarantine, use the contact tracing to control, mitigate the spread of COVID, I think we can go ahead and continue into the spring.”

Town Hall on Fall Housing: Supplemental housing is still available and Block 2 move-in begins this week

Last Thursday, Colorado College held a Virtual Information Session about housing and residential life for the remainder of the fall semester with the following panelists: Rochelle Dickey, acting dean of students and acting vice president for student life; Edwin Hamada, assistant vice president for the Residential Experience; Lori Seager, associate vice president for finance; Shannon Amundson, director of financial aid; and Brian Young, vice president for Information Technology. Here are the highlights:

• REFUNDS: Any student who already paid for the fall semester and is not enrolled in classes or living in campus housing must request a refund by Oct. 1. While Student Accounts staff are adjusting bills, the amount listed online may change. If this happens, students should wait two days to see if the amount changes before contacting the office, Amundson said. There will not be any late fees during September. 

• TESTING: Young is working with Abbott Labs to acquire rapid testing equipment for the college’s on-site lab. He said the rapid tests will increase the college’s testing capability, and they will also continue to offer the nasal swab tests. Young also said the college has access to wastewater testing kits to test for COVID-19. 

• MOVE-IN: Approved students will begin to move-in for Block 2 on Sept. 17. The college is planning to align move-in slots with available testing times so students can be tested for COVID-19 before they move in. Testing will be available on campus Sept. 17 and 18 from 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Other move-in times are available, but students must receive their test results before attending in-person classes. The test turn-around time is about 36–48 hours. 

• OFF-CAMPUS HOUSING: All students are permitted to live off-campus during the 2020-21 academic year. Dickey said the college will reexamine the requirement for 2021-22 in the spring. Students who receive financial aid will have the same cost of attendance as they would for living on campus if they stay in Colorado Springs. Students who return home will have an adjusted cost of attendance. The college is planning to offer “off-campus prep workshops,” which will include information about reading and signing lease agreements. 

• SUPPLEMENTAL HOUSING: The college is releasing some of the apartments and townhomes they held back to the leasing offices at The Lodges and West Edge. Students can work directly with the leasing offices to rent units at either location, but the college prefers students not to “mix” within a unit, or have some students’ agreements through the college and some directly with the leasing office. 

About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project

The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, and Isabel Hicks, 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 from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.

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.