By Ryan Signorino, Associate Editor
What started out as a bit of a joke between my housemates and me has turned into a daily series of questions: “Did anyone see any rumors on social media? Did anyone check the website? Did they send out an email with information?”
The whiteboard in our kitchen reads “Days since last COVID-19 case” and has been hovering in the single digits the past week. While the total number of positive cases since Aug. 1 just broke into double digits, the days-since counter has become an ominous reminder of the danger on the horizon if we let our guard down too much.
Mandatory masks, socially distanced classrooms and sanitized desks have been talked about since classes began, but now that COVID-19 is present in our community, the real conversation should be how do we know the number of active cases.
On Tuesday, Bonaventure emailed a Notice Board clarifying changes made to the COVID-19 resource page online.
“We realized that maintaining a site on the intranet [my.sbu] and internet [www.sbu.edu] didn’t make much sense,” said Tom Missel, chief information officer. “The information that was only on the my.sbu page could just as easily be located on the public page and moving everything to the public page made access to COVID information much easier for parents and community members.”
The page, www.sbu.edu/COVID-19, contains “the campus visitor policy, student community compact, fall reopening plan and forms for permitted visitors or vendors and confidential non-compliance concerns” among other resources, according to the email.
One of the main features of the webpage is the COVID-19 Tracker located in a column along the left side. This displays total positive cases since Aug. 1, active cases and recovered cases. This information is important to know about and stay updated on, but it is not enough to only display positive cases online. Students and faculty should be notified of active cases on campus.
“We made it clear in the release about the first case this semester that subsequent cases would be reported to the tracker,” said Missel. “But having a public tracker on page that’s linked prominently at the top of the university website’s homepage and the top of the daily Notice Board was a more practical solution as sporadic cases arise.”
I know many students hardly read the Notice Board emails and some I asked were even unaware of the existence of the tracking website. This leaves tracking the cases up to social media. Students are checking Snapchat stories or looking at Mike Hogan’s Twitter page for updates rather than the school’s website.
A solution to this problem could be to include information about cases in the “Daily COVID-19 screening reminder” students, faculty and staff get every morning. Having positive cases from the past day and week displayed at the top of the email, pulled from the New York State website, could be important information for people on campus to know. Then if anyone wants to know more information, they could check out the tracker website.
“When a positive case arises, the county Health Department immediately begins contact tracing, with the aid of university officials,” said Missel. “Any student who is deemed as a result of that investigation to be a close contact of a positive COVID case will be contacted by either the county or Student Affairs, and often both.”
I mean no ill will towards the administration who have worked tirelessly over the past six months to ensure we are even in the position we are right now. However, it’s important that everyone in the Bona community is updated on cases. Even if it only takes a click, that is an extra page to load that might prevent that information from getting out to people.
signorra15@bonaventure.edu
