Around last week, the Mount experienced a small surge in COVID-19 cases. That brought us closer to the level-two category on the COVID-19 dashboard.
Elena Rittie (C’21), a Residence Assistant in McCaffrey believes that students can sometimes think they are in their own bubble and that the virus would not affect their friends’ group until it does.
Rittie explains how it can be hard for the first-year students to not have a normal year, but they are grateful to be here because they know what it is like to have school taken away. She thinks that it is important for everyone to work hard to keep cases to a minimum in order to be able to stay here for as long as planned.
“As a first-year student, the social aspect of college has been very difficult. It can be hard to make new friends during COVID-19,” shares Mackenzi Furlong (C’24). Furlong also spoke about the adjustment from senior-year remote learning in high school to in-person classes in college. She thinks she missed an important semester of high school that was made to prepare her for a college education.
According to the dashboard, the Mount currently has five student cases and four employee cases (as of March 2), with 8% of isolation beds in use. On Feb. 26, there were 31 student and four employee cases respectively, which caused some alarm in the community.
In President Timothy Trainor’s recent email updates, he shared that some of the COVID-19 rules have changed to align with CDC guidelines. With these changes, face shields are no longer optional without a mask around campus. On Feb. 19, Trainor sent out an email asking everyone on campus to redouble their efforts to stop the slight surge of cases.
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