On Monday, Apr. 4, there was one question on many students’ minds: who has grown a mustache during the last two years of intense masking on campus? Masking is now optional in many spaces on Connecticut College’s campus, including popular student gathering spaces such as the Library, academic buildings where no sign requiring a mask is on display, athletic buildings, and residence halls.
While students are required to have a mask on them at all times, this return to a pre-pandemic norm is refreshing for students who had tired of such guidelines as cases went down across the nation.
“I’m happy about masks being optional in some places. I think it’s freeing. I don’t think it makes too much of a difference because I don’t see sitting in Shain [Library] as different from sitting in Harris [Dining Hall]… actually [the library is] more spaced out than Harris. In class I’m happy we’re keeping masks on. I think it’s a good balance of required and not required,” said Jordan Westlake ’22.
The college had attempted to make these changes earlier in the semester but had to put plans on hold after a spike in cases before spring break. “I think we look at where we are in the pandemic and the low number of cases in the state and in our region… we’ve been monitoring those numbers and talking to Hartford Healthcare and identified that this was a good time to start making changes in our protocol. We had hoped to do this earlier before spring break, but we had a rise in cases and felt that it would be wise to wait a bit longer to make that change,” said Dean Victor Arcelus when asked about the move to looser guidelines.
Students will also now shift to once-a-week testing, and employee testing will become optional. This optional testing will also include employees who have exemptions from taking the vaccine or the booster. As of August 2021, the College had anticipated that less than ten percent faculty and staff would not be fully vaccinated. “I think it’s interesting that faculty testing is optional when they’re more likely to leave the Conn community. [But] I think we’re moving towards an appropriate trajectory” said student Luci McGlynn ‘22. Westlake agreed, “We’re in more of a bubble than they are,” she added.
“The optional testing in general for employees is…Students live in congregate settings.. Students have much greater contact with a larger number of people than employees do. As we are creating an offramp from our protocols this is a way to be doing it.. Employees who have less contact with large numbers of people take them out of testing, students go down to once a week, we will evaluate over the coming weeks to see if we will continue to make more changes, as far as exemptions. We consulted with medical experts who said we didn’t need to have different protocols for those who weren’t vaccinated,” Arcelus explained.
Conn community members will have the option to test on Mondays or Thursdays moving forward. Rapid tests will be available Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays in the Alice Johnson Room in Cro, and in the Office of Student Life on Wednesdays.
While it is still likely too early to see if there has been an increase in positive cases since the College’s guidelines have been changed, the College expects them to remain the same as they have been all semester, which has been around 15-20 cases per week.
“We’ve had a pretty consistent amount of positive cases. Though it looks like percentages will be higher because we are testing less people, however the tests themselves should reflect the rest of the semester. We’ll continue to monitor circumstances and make adjustments,” Arcelus concluded.
Students on campus are watching cases with caution, choosing to wear masks or not based on the circumstances at hand. “I think being mask friendly is a positive way of looking at health ramifications for a small community [like Conn],” said Daniel Angel Varela ‘22. When asked to elaborate on the matter, he said: “I think knowing our status is important but the amount of testing was a lot. We should build our Covid status into our daily lives not just for ourselves but for others’ health too.”
