COVID-19 Developments: WWC Loses Off-campus Quarantine Space
Emily Chebli | December 9, 2021
Special to The Echo | Emily Chebli
Students at Warren Wilson College (WWC) have expressed outrage and confusion over the announcement that the school will not offer guaranteed COVID-19 quarantine space for students, starting next semester.
Student Life notified students in an email on November 22 of the Pandemic Response Team’s decision to end the availability of the Blue Ridge quarantine facility come spring semester and to give the responsibility of finding a location to quarantine in to the students themselves.
Students took to the WWC app to express their grievances with this announcement.
“Going to stay with relatives, with friends, or at a hotel/airbnb etc., even if these were in fact feasible options for the whole student body, are not the same thing as quarantining,” wrote Zoe Morris, a junior math major at WWC. “None of these options facilitate isolation, so instead of endangering the campus community, they endanger the people we go stay with. … Community extends beyond the bounds of campus.”
This post garnered 40 likes. Autumn Corbin, a senior who is majoring in conservation biology, echoed similar feelings.
“As someone who theoretically has a more ‘accessible’ homespace to quarantine (because my parents’ home is close), god forbid that I’d have to quarantine, given the choice, I would NOT go home to quarantine,” Corbin wrote. “Why? Because I’m putting my family in danger, especially my immunocompromised sister. Because if my family came in contact, they couldn’t work for at least two weeks and that’d financially devastate the whole family.”
Many students are aware of the developing COVID-19 situation in Buncombe County, and are worried that this decision being made by the Pandemic Response Team doesn’t take that information into account. The largest most recent single-day spike in new COVID-19 cases was on November 29, with 264 new cases in Buncombe County alone. On December 6, the seven-day average was updated to 84 cases.
Students are also concerned that these new quarantine protocols will discourage people with symptoms from being honest and going to the Health Center. Cisco McMullin, a freshman at WWC, said that they had a negative experience at the Health Center during the beginning of the semester.
“Two of my first year seminar classmates tested positive during the first week, so we all went to the Health Center trying to figure out what to do ... and we were offered no support,” said McMullin. “They just told us that we needed to get tested and then gave us no resources to do that, so that was really unhelpful and really frustrating honestly.”
In the email, the Emergency Response Team and Student Life teams were also concerned with students hiding their symptoms from the Health Center.
“(This announcement does not mean) that you hide in your room and not get checked out by Health Center staff when you are feeling ill (or) that you try to quarantine on campus!” wrote the Emergency Response and Student Life teams.
This email also expressed a few reasons for making this decision, including dislike of the Blue Ridge facility.
“Several students have complained that the off-campus location provided is not a place they want to stay,” wrote the Emergency Response Team and Student Life teams. “Many students went home or to another location off-campus as students had that option this semester.”
A junior environmental science major, who was unvaccinated for the majority of this semester, shared their experiences with quarantining in Blue Ridge. They said that they received a call from the college a week after they were exposed.
“They told me I would have to be quarantined for a full 14 days … I panicked because this was 13 days before my flight home for fall break … so they said ‘well I guess you’re just going to have to figure that out,’” they said. “Within an hour and a half an ambulance was there for me.”
They also continued to describe the negative aspects of their quarantine experience.
“Even after my results came back I still had to stay over the weekend (due to my vaccination status at the time), even though I had definitive negative results. … We were told that Nurse Pat would check in with us once a day, but no one checked in on me from Friday to Monday. … After that it was just pretty isolating… I was there for one full week after getting the call.”
Though this student expressed an overall negative experience at Blue Ridge, they also expressed their concern regarding the loss of guaranteed quarantine space.
“I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I have a meeting set up with Student Life to talk about it, but I have no friends or family anywhere nearby,” they said. “I would not be able to afford an AirBNB or a hotel room for an indefinite amount of time, just out of the blue like that, and I’m largely supporting myself while I’m here.”
McMullin shared what they wish housing and student life would do to follow-up on this decision.
“I want them to be more open and transparent about what students can do to talk to them about options … because if there are exceptions to this rule, then students need to know what those are without that being a conversation that happens behind closed doors — that should be shared with all students.” McMullin said. “My only real options would be putting others at risk. It’s kinda scary.”
The most recent update that has been given to the student body was on December 2, through an email sent by President Lynn Morton. This email included updates on various concerns that students have collectively voiced throughout this semester, including a section on hybrid classes and another on quarantine space. In the latter section, Morton clarified that there will be some housing available for students, on a case-by-case basis.
“While we are still not planning to have off-campus quarantine space next semester, we are holding limited space on campus,” wrote Morton. “We need (students’) help in ensuring the limited on-campus space would be available for international students and students who don’t have an ability to quarantine anywhere else by creating a plan for the spring. I’m sorry the message didn’t land in a way that felt respectful or community-oriented.”
Students can contact Tacci Smith (tsmith@warren-wilson.edu) or RJ Chittams (rchittams@warren-wilson.edu) with their questions regarding the changes in quarantine space.
While this issue is far from resolved, students should expect more discourse during the next few months as WWC transitions into a spring semester with these new quarantine guidelines.
