With the rise of coronavirus cases in the United States, universities across the country have sworn to reduce the number of cases on campuses. Many schools promised to test their students, to prioritize safety and to do what they could to ensure a good campus experience amid the pandemic.

University administrations failed to uphold this promise.

SUNY Oneonta was the first SUNY school to fail at delivering its promise. When SUNY Oneonta reopened for the semester, it let students know that they were not going to test those who were returning to campus. Five-hundred students tested positive for COVID-19 in the first few weeks of school. The university originally had its students in quarantine for two weeks. When cases got too out of hand, campus administration sent all their students home.

Cooper Levine, a sophomore resident assistant at SUNY Oneonta, discusses his experiences of being a resident assistant during the pandemic. According to Levine, the school placed an aggressive amount of responsibility on the RAs to enforce COVID-19 guidelines within their dorms students following COVID-19 guidelines within their dorms. 

When quarantinestruck on campus, RAs were delivered a box of prepackaged food. Without instruction, RAs were forced to figure out how to distribute food evenly to their residents. Without communicating to their RAs, SUNY Oneonta expected them to know how to deal with transporting infected students, feeding infected students stuck in their dorms and acting as officials in guiding residential students.

“I know an RA who had to give so much food to students in quarantine that they went into quarantine in fear of having it,” Levine said. “Another RA ended up testing positive from his residents continuously getting it and having to take care of them.”

Despite being the only ones to directly interact with infected and high-risk students, RAs were not given hazard pay. Students found out through the media that they were going into quarantine before the school announced it. They were given three hours to go to the store and get supplies. However, most students were in class and were not able to stock up.

The lack of transparency from administration and those making decisions led to adisastrous semester. Instead of taking responsibility for their actions, SUNY Oneonta President, Barbara Jean Morris, blamed the increase of cases on parties. When students found out that the campus was not requiring COVID-19 testing, many knew what was to come. The promise of safety being a major priority was broken quickly. With deflecting the failure onto the students, it has left much of the community with little faith in their college.

Universities that have opened have only opened to make money Schools, such as SUNY Oneonta, did not want to spend the finances to test their students. With its weak excuse being that the CDC did not advise testing a campus, it leaves the question: how do we expect to trust our universities when it is becoming more and more evident that all they care about is our finances?

Photo from Flickr