As the upcoming school year is approaching and students are coming back to campus there are a lot of unknowns, fears and excitement. But most importantly there is a pandemic.
In March, universities across the United States shut their campuses down and switched to online courses abruptly. I remember sitting in my Spanish class and asking my professor questions that she did not know the answer to. I could see the fear of the unknown and uncertainty in her eyes despite her calm demeanor. This was when there were less than a thousand cases in the country. Now the United States is at about 278,000 active cases as of Friday.
When Winthrop announced that we were switching to remote learning in March I had a mixture of feelings. But I distinctly remember sobbing on my mom’s shoulder when the news broke. I couldn’t finish the school year the way I wanted.
But I also knew that Winthrop made the right decision and truly cared about the community. I was upset but respected and understood why they had to make such a tough decision. This was not about how I felt personally, but for the safety and health of those around me.
Now my feelings towards Winthrop and the way they have handled this pandemic of the upcoming school year have changed.
Interim President George Hynd recently announced the steps that will be taken to inform the Winthrop community when there are positive cases on campus: none.
“We will not be posting a daily count of how many COVID cases have tested positive on campus. That information will be reported to DHEC and the public health people. If [anyone] tests positive we will immediately do contact tracing,” he said in an interview with The Johnsonian. “In other words who have they been in contact with in the past few days and then we will notify those individuals. The one thing that really has become apparent [is] as we move to bringing students back on campus it is very clear they are going to have a responsibility to do everything that we are recommending.”
The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill recently shut down due to the number of positive cases on campus. Although this was an unfortunate circumstance the university did report to the community the number of positive case clusters. They did not try to hide the truth from the community even though they may not have specified the number of cases. I feel that Winthrop should follow suit into doing a similar daily report.
Although, I also understand why the university may be hesitant to report these cases because it may cause panic across campus. This panic may cause many students may feel unsafe and will want to leave which in turn can affect revenue for the university.
However, we should not come back to campus if Winthrop is not being transparent about the number of positive cases on campus. We as students should not be the only ones responsible for how this school year will proceed.
I am asking Winthrop and the Rock Hill community to consider these questions and decisions moving forward. Transparency is the number one form of trust and I have lost that for Winthrop as I am sure some are feeling now.
