By Gabrielle Lewis
University of Maryland students share a desire to stop the spread of COVID-19. But some had mixed opinions about last week’s sequester-in-place and the college’s mitigation efforts.
On Feb. 20, University of Maryland President Darryll Pines sent out a campus-wide email announcing “urgent interventions,” including students on campus sequestering-in-place and all in-person classes moving online, to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 after a recent spike in cases, which Pines emailed about a few days prior on Feb. 18.
The email said the actions would be in place until at least Saturday, Feb. 27. Pines sent out an announcement Saturday lifting the sequestering guidelines and scheduling in-person instruction to resume on Mar. 1 — but students in residence halls and Greek life alike have mixed feelings about the implementation and quick reversal of those initiatives.
Pines’ announcement about the spike in cases said that UMD has seen several clusters and outbreaks — three or more cases in a defined area and five or more cases in a defined area, respectively.
Alyssa Salud-Benipayo wasn’t shocked because she knew the university’s case numbers were rising. When the freshman cell biology and genetics major found out about the sequester-in-place guidelines and classes with in-person instruction moved online, she figured it was a necessary step to prevent more cases.
“I thought that’s what needs to be done to help contain cases,” she said. “It’s also just really sad because now, we have to really spend time in our dorm basically the entire day.”
Salud-Benipayo lives in Easton Hall, and while sequestering, she would only leave her dorm to get food. She doesn’t have any in-person classes, either, so the guidelines didn’t drastically affect her routine aside from preventing her from going on walks.
She also said students on her floor tested positive for COVID-19 and moved into isolation housing. During the week the university’s initiatives were in place, her floor had two more positive cases.
Amy Lin, a freshman general biology major, also lives in Easton Hall on Salud-Benipayo’s floor. She said those cases were the first their floor ever had. The dorm didn’t have any positive cases last semester, and it scared her to hear about them.
Lin said she thought the sequester-in-place guidelines and online classes switch were necessary because of increased opportunities students may have had this semester to see people in person — and she thinks these initiatives were lifted too soon.
“I definitely think it should’ve gone longer, even though it sucks,” Lin said. “I just feel like a week wasn’t enough to show if this really worked out or not.”
However, other students disagreed that sequestering and online classes would do much to help contain the disease’s spread. Some took issue with the limits on gatherings the university implemented days before putting the sequester and online classes in place.
In his Feb. 18 announcement, Pines restricted indoor and outdoor gatherings to only five people. Prince George’s County guidelines state indoor gatherings are limited to 10 people and outdoor gatherings to 25 people.
Adam Rosenbaum, a junior computer science and finance major, is the housing chair of Sigma Alpha Mu.Rosenbaum lives in an off-campus house with his brothers when he’s in College Park.
Rosenbaum said the university implementing stricter gathering guidelines than the county could confuse students off-campus because they are not sure what to follow.
“Housing isn’t cheap in College Park in general … students overcrowd houses off campus and put more than five people into them,” Rosenbaum said. “If [sequester-in-place is] how the administration wishes to slow down the spread of COVID, that’s fine, but they also need to be taking into account the unique situations the students off campus are in.”
Pines lifted the limits on gatherings in his Feb. 27 email and said indoor and outdoor gathering limits would match those of Prince George’s County.
Rosenbaum said he did not think sequestering would make a big difference if the guidelines lasted beyond Saturday because the university can’t force every student to sequester. But they can mitigate the spread by bolstering their testing and enforcing testing requirements, he said.
“You don’t know when somebody’s not sequestering in place unless you catch them. You’re also not going to turn the University of Maryland into a prison and have guards patrolling around for students,” Rosenbaum said. “What you can do is require everyone to get tested, and then you’ll know when somebody isn’t getting tested.”
Featured image: Prince Frederick Hall was one of the on-campus dorms affected by the sequester-in-place. Photo by Sarah Natchipolsky.