Week 8 Update, Vice President for Student Life

Happy Monday, Students!

Welcome to Week 8 of spring semester. I hope you are continuing to do well and that midterms were positive for you.

As you no doubt know by now, we have decided to pause our lifting of the mask mandate for this week. With the uptick in cases in our residential students over the weekend, it seems prudent to continue wearing our KN95s to make sure we are doing everything that we can to curb community transmission and protect our most vulnerable community members.

Keeping the mask mandate in place doesn’t mean we can’t have fun! Several student organizations—with support from the Office of Student Engagement, ASB, the Dean of CAS, and the VPSL Office—hosted exciting events over the past week. The return of the beloved food trucks as well as the Roaring Twenties-themed off-campus dance were huge successes. I know students have been very anxious to socialize, have an opportunity to destress, and connect. The pandemic has made that very challenging, and I was glad to see us return to these activities and look forward to more to come.

In terms of our reporting regarding COVID-19, as I alluded to earlier it was a very busy week. And, as students begin to engage in more social activities, there is always the chance that we will continue to have some positive cases. We will of course monitor our community transmission rates very closely and make adjustments as needed. But like most of the country, we are moving to a place of living with COVID and learning to adjust and pivot when necessary. Here is the latest:

• COVID-19 cases: The college tested a total of 70 individuals the week of March 11, 2022. Of those, we had a total of 7 total positive cases for an overall positivity rate of 9.46%.

It remains important for us to be vigilant, follow good mitigation efforts, and until it is announced differently, continue to wear your high-quality mask when indoors.

All the best,

Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan
Vice President and Dean of Students