LATEST NEWS: SUNY Oneonta announced Thursday that it will send all students from campus home and avoid categories and activities in person for the rest of the fall semester.
ONEONTA – Grey clouds and calm hovered over the SUNY Oneonta campus on Tuesday afternoon.
No student piled up on stone benches to share their lunch. No one ran to the concrete steps, to their next class.
A rare silence loathed here, a stark contrast to the swarm of weekend occasions that replaced the college of liberal arts’ fall semester course.
On Sunday, New York State University officials temporarily completed face-to-face learning on the Oneonta campus after 105 academics tested positive for COVID-19 since academics began moving on August 17.
Since then, the number had risen to 389 on Thursday, forcing SUNY Oneonta to the first school in New York to close its doors since welcoming academics for the fall semester amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Students on campus, more than 2,000 of them, were asked to be quarantined, unable to leave campus unless their parents picked them up and took them home. They have food delivered to campus refectories. Gather in teams of 3 or less.
Faced with containing the beast COVID-19, SUNY Oneonta has an experiment in the ability of heads of state and campus to restrict a group on campus that threatens to plunge the semester into chaos.
It’s a not enviable task: schools waiting for a similar destination will stick to each of their movements up close, as will the giant Oneonta network and academics locked in their dormitories for the next two weeks.
“Until last night, it was very manageable,” senior Emily Hallenbeck said Monday, a day after the closure was installed, “but it was a little chaotic. “
SUNY Oneonta, 6,000 enrolled, is a state school in Otsego County, about halfway between Albany and Binghamton and part an hour from Cooperstown.
During the summer, President Barbara Jean Morris and other campus officials developed a plan to move approximately 97% of courses absolutely online for the fall in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. The remaining laboratories and study rooms requiring face-to-face commands had to be held in larger spaces to reduce density.
Despite the virus, SUNY Oneonta, like maximum schools, has chosen to allow life and food on campus during the fall semester; however, the school did require all resident students to be screened for COVID-19 upon return to campus, unlike near SUNY School at Binghamton University and some other schools.
Instead, students were asked to quarantine at home for seven days before moving out. Once on campus, they were asked to stick to a protection plan that included a social distance commitment and an online questionnaire to monitor potential symptoms.
That replaced Friday when, after a few dozen students tested positive, the school began evaluating all students on campus, getting more than two hundred positives since then.
Jillian Davis, a third-year student living on campus, said she felt confident returning to school and calmed down through some of the campus regulations: mask is required, no visits, but when COVID-19 cases increased at school, she wondered why she and her classmates didn’t have to be evaluated before returning to campus.
“There are still a lot of unanswered questions we have,” said Davis, who said he would stay on campus for two weeks, but that he could come home if it spreads.
When asked Tuesday why SUNY Oneonta did not require students to be evaluated when they returned to campus, the school’s spokeswoman, Kim MacLeod, highlighted the protection protocols students agreed to follow.
“Unfortunately, our construction in some cases is the result that some academics followed the protocols they were asked to follow,” MacLeod wrote in an email.
Morris said Sunday that most oneonta academics were aware of following campus precautions and restrictions designed to deter the virus.
“We know some of them didn’t, and now we know the consequences,” he said.
Campus leaders, SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras and even Gov. Andrew Cuomo have partly blamed primary parties for the spread of the virus. Five Oneonta academics and 3 student organizations have been suspended for hosting parties, according to SUNY.
The challenge of the party is limited to Oneonta.
Students, fraternities or student organizations of SUNY Plattsburgh, SUNY Cobleskill, SUNY Geneseo and Marist College have been suspended for having organized COVID-19-era parties. At UNY New Paltz, a student tested positive after playing basketball.
“We perceive that other people need to have fun,” Malatras said Sunday, “but individual duty plays in the collective good, so their individual movements have huge consequences for all other members of their university community. “
Hallenbeck, SUNY Oneonta’s senior, looking ahead to spend her senior year on campus.
A primary in theatre and fashion design, Hallenbeck struggled to complete her categories, many with elements in person, remotely during the spring semester and says she can focus more around campus than at home.
On Sunday afternoon, Hallenbeck began to see reports informing him of THE suspension through SUNY Oneonta’s categories in person. Cuomo announced the two-week recess at a conference call with journalists before the school alerted students.
Six hours later, he won an email from the school. He had three hours to buy and meet before recess came into effect at nine o’clock at night.
Meals would be delivered to university residences, as campus buildings would be closed to the fullest. Hallenbeck and all his campus colleagues would be quarantined for two weeks.
Hallenbeck’s first meal on Monday was a field day: a turkey wrapper with an apple, two biscuits and a cup of pasta salad, delivered in its construction at 1 p. m.
SUNY Oneonta is a central part and a major economic driving force of the community of Oneonta, a city of approximately 14,000 inhabitants.
Cathi Abatemarco Wiltsey, a 46-year-old Oneont resident, said she “went through the full diversity of feelings as I watched it unfold. “
Prior to the campus grouping, the Oneonta network had followed a slogan: “Survive, then prosper. “Wiltsey said it was glorious to see and be a part of it.
“Now I’m more than worried,” she said. “I am afraid, I am frustrated and angry. Everything that we have worked for and maintained as a network is in jeopardy. “
Cuomo’s administration has deployed what it calls a “SWAT team” to verify COVID-19 in Oneonta to temporarily verify and identify whether propagation has reached the community at large.
Three transitional control sites were opened on Wednesday and are expected to be operational until Saturday. A quick check will be done, with effects in 15 minutes, so that any member of the Oneonta community can lose their rhythm.
Residents can call 833-697-8764 to make an appointment.
Whitley said he became involved in the physical, emotional and economic condition of his community. “And yes, that includes students,” he says.
“Is it me that this happened? Absolutely, but we can’t go back and cancel it,” he said. “What the vast majority of people need to know is: what can we do to prevent it?”
Jon Campbell is a new York State government reporter for USA TODAY. You can be contacted JCAMPBELL1@Gannett. com or on Twitter at @JonCampbellGAN.
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