top of page

As the U.S.’s third wave of COVID-19 cases approaches critical mass, few places are being hit harder than college towns. Millions of young adults converged in August on towns built with them in mind, coming from cities and countries with wildly differing restrictions and distancing measures, many willing to sacrifice anything for the “college experience.” Around the country, university policies have been important in keeping students, faculty, and non-university residents safe — some more effectively than others. But once the spread begins, what are universities doing to mitigate the damage?

 

For students living in any of MU’s 27 residential halls or apartments, this answer includes off-campus quarantine housing.

 

MU has secured spaces across Columbia for students who have contracted or been exposed to COVID-19. Gaining access to these spaces is not always easy or advantageous for students and, once they arrived at their quarantine housing, many students found it inadequate.

 

Quarantined residents took to Twitter and TikTok in early September, sharing stories of unsafe and unclean living environments. Some students also claimed the university forgot to bring them food for multiple days. These posts were compiled and publicized by University of Misery, a satirical and political Twitter account centered around the university. MU would draw national media attention when Mun Choi, MU chancellor and UM system president, blocked several students on his personal Twitter account after they criticized the university’s response to COVID-19. Students were eventually unblocked.

 

COVID-19 takes between five and 14 days to incubate, so when students go into two weeks of preventative quarantine, the countdown begins on the date they could’ve contracted the virus. But time elapses between the point of contact and the entry into quarantine. The COVID-positive person discovers symptoms, decides to test for the virus, gets a referral, gets tested and reports their results to MU; then, the contact tracers need time to track down everyone who could have picked up the virus.

 

In the intervening days, students who later have to enter quarantine attend classes, go to work, see friends and have numerous chances to expose others on campus.

 

Nine of the SEC’s 14 schools provide data in their pandemic portals as to how many students are isolating on campus and how much space there is left to manage any future outbreaks. MU is not one of them. Of the nine SEC schools whose COVID-19 dashboards provide data on current active cases, MU ranks sixth-best. 

 

Dozens of schools around the country took the summer break to plan and implement rigorous testing and isolating procedures for the fall semester and beyond. In the SEC alone, at least five schools implemented randomized sentinel testing. Two of those schools — the Universities of Alabama and Kentucky — also required entry testing at the beginning of the semester for its 25,000-plus student population.

 

MU has not provided entry or sentinel testing. Instead, it decided against “widespread testing of asymptomatic individuals because of… the low prevalence of the virus in Boone County,” according to the Show-Me Renewal Plan published in June. MU also does not publicize the number of tests its students, faculty and staff have received.

 

As of the publication of this film, MU has 62 active student cases and 25 active staff and faculty cases. The university has reported nearly 2,000 COVID-19 cases since Aug. 19, 2020.

bottom of page