I contracted COVID-19 for the first time two weeks after moving to Binghamton University this year. Very quickly, I became frustrated by the school’s lack of preparation for an outbreak. After waiting for over 24 hours after my positive test result, the school informed me there was no more isolation housing left, and that the only options I had were to stay in my dorm or isolate myself back home. Both of these choices were impossible. I could not rely on someone else to bring me food three times a day, nor could I use the communal bathroom without risking the spread of COVID-19 to the others on my floor. I also had a roommate I did not want to infect. Returning home, too, was not an option, as I would risk infecting my immunocompromised mother. I felt stuck and overwhelmed by the situation. In the end, I went home, but my family and I had to take great precautions to ensure everyone’s safety. For many other students like me, the inability to stay in isolation housing made an already stressful situation even worse.
During a time when infected students are still expected to isolate for around five days, it seems illogical to have extremely limited isolation housing available. This may be due to decreasing urgency surrounding COVID-19, as many professionals have compared COVID-19’s current severity to the flu. However, while COVID-19 is becoming more normalized in our daily lives, we cannot normalize a lack of care for safety precautions and for those infected.
COVID-19 is obviously still affecting our community — as of Oct. 12, 2022, Broome County reported 399 new cases in five days. Ten people in Broome County died from COVID-19 in September. We cannot ignore the need for diligence and competence in preventing the spread of COVID-19, as future outbreaks may require a large volume of students to isolate. Still, the school’s drastic reduction of isolation housing this year certainly does not reflect this prominent need. Last year, BU had 601 beds available in isolation housing, even making accommodations for sick students to stay at local hotels. The “isolation” page on BU’s “Fall ‘22 Guidance” website advises students to isolate at home, within their normal residential hall room, or at a friend’s house off-campus. The school also appears to have no desire to make any changes or meet the need for more isolation housing, with the Fall ‘22 Guidance page stating, “Should the need expand beyond available beds, students will be strongly encouraged to return home for their isolation period, or, if that is not possible, will be required to isolate in place where they reside on campus”
The isolation meal plan for students staying in their rooms was disappointing and subpar. Students had to place pickup orders a day ahead of time and go to the Appalachian Collegiate Center to pick them up. The school even suggested students order food from delivery services like DoorDash, with no mention of compensation for the extra expense this would create. For many students, these options were unrealistic, so resident assistants (RAs) took it upon themselves to start their own student-run meal delivery service for isolating students. This is something that the school should be responsible for, not students.
It is hard to believe that the school expected students to order so far ahead of time and walk the distance to the dining hall while sick. It was also challenging to rely on others to bring meals to your dorm. I felt like I was burdening those around me by asking them to bring me food and risk their health even after only one day of isolation in my dorm. During the spring semester of 2021, the College-in-the-Woods Dining Center was closed on weekends to prepare isolation meals, and students isolating during their birthdays even got a cupcake and a phone call from President Harvey Stenger. In response to an outbreak that spring, meals were delivered directly to students and the school established a meal hotline for newly quarantined students who did not have the chance to order their meals ahead of time. It is surprising that such an effort was made previously in the face of rising COVID-19 cases when so little has been done this year.
The school has supplied little information on what to do when infected, and their lack of consideration of students’ circumstances is startling compared to the past. Not everyone has people around them that can bring them food, and not everyone has the option of going home. If the school still expects students to isolate when they are infected with COVID-19, they must implement practices that accommodate students’ circumstances. The school should expand isolation housing and give students more options than just going home if they get sick. If more housing is not possible, a restructured isolation meal system that relieves responsibility from students should be implemented. The school’s diligent past responses to COVID-19 show what the school can do for students who get sick. The need for this diligence has not changed, but the school’s consideration and care for infected students certainly has. We all want to put COVID-19 behind us, but an effort has to be made to ensure we are taking the right measures to do so. Moving forward with negligence will only create more problems and set us back in the long run.
Antonia Kladias is an undeclared freshman.