More than 8,000 Cal Poly students move onto campus this week. What will it look like?
More than 8,000 Cal Poly students are expected to move into on-campus housing in San Luis Obispo next week for a second academic year with extra health and safety precautions in place due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
About 95% of those students are fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, according to the university’s Vice President for Student Affairs Keith Humphrey.
“Our students are amazing, resilient people,” Humphrey told The Tribune. “They’re stepping up and getting vaccinated at significantly high numbers. So they’re doing the things that they need to do to promote public health.”
Move-in is spread out over five days, beginning Tuesday. First-year students will move in on Sept. 14 and 15, and continuing students will move in Sept. 17 through 19.
Students are required to reserve a certain day and time to move in. The university is asking students to limit the number of people helping them move-in to two helpers, Humphrey said, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
All students must show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of them moving in and entering campus. They must also show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, or they will be subject to biweekly COVID-19 testing, according to the university.
Students will have passes on their phones that show different colors if they say they have symptoms of COVID-19, have skipped a required COVID-19 test or haven’t submitted vaccination records. Students may be locked out of many university services such as the library, their classes, campus dining or even campus housing if they do not comply with the vaccine requirement.
Campus dorms will be nearly full, with many students in rooms with two or three roommates.
“We’re not at 100%, but at 8,098, we’re pretty close,” Humphrey said.
Masks required in indoor public spaces
Some university housing, such as the red brick dorms, won’t be completely full. Historically those dorms have held three students per room, but will house only two students this year, Humphrey said.
All students, regardless of vaccination status, will be required to wear masks while indoors in public, shared spaces, Humphrey said.
“In the common areas, living rooms and study spaces and kitchens. Common bathrooms, unless, of course, if you’re brushing your teeth or showering or things of that nature,” Humphrey said of examples where students need to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. “Any place where other people can be, you need to have a face covering on when you’re inside.”
Humphrey said students can take off their masks when in their dorm room as long as the door is closed. If students want to keep their doors open, they need to wear masks, he said.
University Housing resident advisers (RAs) — student employees tasked with enforcing Cal Poly’s housing policies — must carry out the similar “COVID police” duties that some told The Tribune last academic year drove them to quit.
“Policy enforcement has always been important and balancing it with the community building things that you do in terms of programming and events. And they weren’t able to do as much of that as they wanted last year,” Humphrey said. “So it felt lopsided to some students. But, you know, I think they’re going to do a great job this year. We seem to have a really great group of RAs.”
The university has set aside 62 beds for students to quarantine or isolate should they test positive for COVID-19. Two of those beds were occupied as of Sept. 10, according to the university’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Should a student in a dorm room test positive for COVID-19, they will be moved to an isolation room for 10 days, or until they test negative for the virus. Their roommates, if unvaccinated, must quarantine in their room and monitor for symptoms while testing regularly as they would be anyway.
If the COVID-positive student’s roommates are vaccinated, it’s business as usual, though Humphrey said they should monitor themselves closely for symptoms just in case.
“A key difference is we won’t quarantine an entire floor,” he said. “Last year, what students experienced was the entire floor that shared a public bathroom was quarantined in the event of a positive case. That’s not going to happen this year because we’re seeing such a high vaccination rate among students.”
While about 8,000 students will be living on campus at Cal Poly, as many as 14,000 other students may live off campus in San Luis Obispo and surrounding areas while taking in-person classes.
Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong recently told The Tribune that about 85% of Cal Poly classes are slated to be held in person this fall quarter.
That’s up from the 10% held in person last spring.
What happened with positive tests over summer
Already, Cal Poly has had trouble coordinating COVID-19 policies with practice.
When a student tested positive for COVID-19 during the summer Quarter Plus program, faculty weren’t notified by an official from the Environmental Health and Safety Department at Cal Poly of potential exposure to the virus, but rather by the Communication Studies Department chair.
Additionally, faculty first heard about the positive COVID case through word of mouth and were notified of potential exposure two days after the infectious student showed up to class.
After receiving an anonymous complaint on Aug. 26, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) “opened an inspection” into Cal Poly, according to Jeanne-Mairie Duval, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Industrial Relations.
Armstrong said although the university is concerned about the COVID-19 Delta variant and high coronavirus case numbers locally, there does not appear to be any indication of COVID-19 transmission in classrooms.
“I am very confident of our measures and steps that we took last year and what we’re doing even more this year in order to provide a safe environment,” he told The Tribune.
More than 2,000 students tested positive for COVID-19 during the last academic year. Since June 10, the university reports that 49 students have tested positive for the virus.
“As has been the case throughout the pandemic, Cal Poly is working in close consultation with local public health officials, the CSU and our own public health consultants to determine how best to operate with all campus community members’ health and safety top of mind,” wrote university Media Relations Director Matt Lazier in an email to The Tribune. “The university is monitoring the circumstances of the pandemic closely and will adjust campus operations as needed.”
