What Cuomo’s New COVID Restrictions Mean For Campus
photo courtesy of @syracuseu Instagram
It’s been roughly a year since the thing which will not be named started. In the beginning, colleges were completely evacuated and the plans for next year were foggy. However, with some ingenuity and plenty of blood, sweat, and spit (mostly spit), New York schools were reopened for the Fall with some heavy restrictions. Almost every class was adapted to an online format and any in-person learning was to be put on hold if the institution reached 100 positive COVID cases within a 14-day reporting window. For a school as large as Syracuse, that was a tall order that we nearly failed at. The school had 99 active COVID cases post-Halloween and probably would’ve gone on pause if the 14-day window hadn’t ended that Saturday.
A new semester comes with new regulations, and Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced that colleges and universities won’t have to go on pause unless their total positive COVID-19 cases exceed 5 percent within a 14-day reporting window. There are two big changes here: the first being that we would now have to reach 880 positive cases to mandate a shutdown, and the second being that the two week period is continuous instead of fixed, so just because we hit the second weekend of the month doesn’t wipe our slate clean. Syracuse currently has 29 active COVID cases, and our friends at the Daily Orange calculate that it would take 63 new cases per day for 14 days straight for the University to surpass New York’s new threshold. It’s a lot more equitable than the flat rate of 100 and it also means there’s a lower likelihood of campus being shutdown this semester. This is great for anyone who wants to do literally anything on campus, and if you listen closely enough, you can hear Vice Chancellor Haynie breathing a sigh of relief.
However, these aren’t just numbers we’re dealing with. It also means that 780 more students would have to get COVID in order for the school to be legally mandated to act in our best interest. That’s 780 more people being exposed to a deadly virus which, at this moment, has killed over 2.5 million worldwide.
The looser restrictions also read as the worst days are behind us, and may signal to people that fewer guidelines equal increasing safety. Hanging out with friends has become a calculated risk this year, and a false sense of security might lead to students and faculty taking more risks socially. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if everyone throws caution to the wind, we’re gonna end up with our very own COVID spike and a personal shout-out in a strongly worded email from Haynie. University administration has stated that it’ll be maintaining its “enhanced” measurements and so far it hasn’t been a complete catastrophe, but we at Jerk want to urge everyone to stay on their toes and not let up. It’s true, the worst days are behind us. Let’s keep it that way.