COVID-19 and Ohio's College Students

As COVID-19 has torched 2020 history, everyone seems to have questions. Whether the questions are related to work, school or sports, they are all surrounding the pandemic. My question, however, has to do with college students and how they have been affected.

Universities shut down in March of 2020 when there were just over 30,000 cases. Since then, universities have opened back up for the fall semester when the case count is now in the millions. Why? Well, it is safe to assume that colleges lost a ton of money when they shut down, so opening back up allows them to generate revenue. Some students think it was not a bright decision to open back up, while others believe that opening back up was inevitable so there was no point in postponing it. Universities in Ohio have opened back up, so how has this changed the college students’ experiences?

When asked about how the move in process worked and what the criteria was for safe openings, a student from The Ohio State University answered, “We all had to wear masks and each kid was only allowed to have their parents help them. We had to sign up for a two hour period on one of the days to move in weeks before that day. Once we were in the dorm room, we could take the masks off but everywhere else they were mandatory. As an Ohio State student, I had to sign a ‘Buckeye Pledge’ ensuring that I would adhere to the rules of not letting anyone else who did not live in my dorm in there and that I would wear a mask in group settings of over ten people. Ohio State also said they would suspend people who were caught not following the rules and I have heard of people getting suspended.” Ohio State also set up a COVID-19 dashboard for the faculty and students to show how much the virus is spreading.

However, the University of Cincinnati has not been following the same protocols as Ohio State. When asked the same question, a student from UC stated, “Well, we did have to sign up for a specific day and time to move in and we only had two hours to get everything from the car to my dorm. There are rules about who is allowed in each dorm, but some buildings have stricter RA’s than others about it.” This student also said that “UC doesn’t really have a dashboard and testing is not mandatory, unlike Ohio State where it is. I actually had a bio lab when I was supposed to get tested but I skipped getting tested for the lab.”

So, students are having different experiences at different universities, which makes a certain amount of sense, but does it? Should all Ohio colleges be following the same guidelines? Does that make it safer for the cities the kids go home to? Sending kids home who could be sick would make it spread like wildfire into their communities, so the safest option would be to test kids who are planning on making a trip home. Do kids know how this disease is doing at their college? When posed this question, the OSU student stated, “I mean, it’s been manageable, but I know a few people who have gotten it. The online dashboard makes it look really bad sometimes, especially now that our spring break was cancelled, but it makes sense.” The UC student answered, “I don’t really know how it’s going at UC, I just hope they do not send me home but I do not know how bad or good it’s going.”

It seems as if each college is different when it comes to providing their students with the knowledge of how schooling during the coronavirus is going. So, some kids are happy being on campus, some are not, some classes are online, some are not, and Ohio does not really know how much worse it could get before there is a vaccine available. However, college kids are pushing through and trying to make the best of the circumstances.