The Rise of Quarantined Students

Over the last month, Elon has seen its fair share of quarantined students and faculty. COVID-19 cases rose drastically over the last weeks of September, leading us into a phase of what the school deemed a “social hiatus”—Elon’s effort to reduce students' contacts with one another. Indoor seating in dining places was suspended, and the small number of visitors we were allowed in our living space was dwindled to none at all. With the rise of cases came the extreme number of quarantined students being displaced from their usual routine, either being forced to stay in their rooms or move to an off-campus hotel for the time being.

Considering that at one-point there being over 300 students in quarantine (drastically different numbers from our first interview with a quarantined student), The Edge wonders whether or not the treatment and support of students has been impacted due to the overflow of quarantines.

We spoke with Chloe Minnick, a sophomore who was quarantined during the peak of cases at Elon, due to one of her roommates testing positive for COVID. Chloe lives in an on-campus flat with four other roommates, all of whom were put into quarantine by Elon. “I received a call from the school telling us we had to go into quarantine immediately,” Chloe tells us. “I was able to stay in my flat with one other roommate and my other two roommates had to go to the hotel.”

“The Hotel” is a term we use frequently at Elon nowadays, as it stands for the hotels near campus that Elon rents rooms from for students to quarantine in. Luckily for Chloe, she didn’t have to experience living and staying at one of the hotels, as her flat was able to keep two out of the four roommates isolated from one another.

As for the meal situation, Chloe ran into some minor issues with Elon’s planning. “Elon did provide meals. However, I only got one meal a day due to my meal plan,” she says. “I didn’t have any issues getting the food except they would sometimes give us something completely different from what we ordered.” This isn’t that surprising, as we have seen this happen to other quarantined students from other colleges when cases start rising rapidly. Additionally, with the question of whether Elon stayed resilient in keeping their quarantined students physically and mentally healthy, Chloe also had some negative experiences with that.

“The school provided me with a daily point of contact who called me every day and asked how I was doing; however, it wasn’t much help,” she says. Chloe explained the one-minute phone call, in which they asked about her symptoms and health, but no inquiries were posed about her mental health at the time. Chloe ended with the summary, “Overall I would say Elon did not handle the situation all that well.”

Since reaching “Level 3 – High Alert” in accordance with Elon’s positive cases rate, a very large number of students have gone in and out of quarantine, meaning not every student could possibly have the same experience as those we have interviewed. Over the last week, cases have begun to diminish, and Elon has gone back to Level 1 alert, the same level we started the year at. With currently only 16 active cases and 63 in quarantine/isolation, it seems things at Elon have gone back to “normal” for the time being.

With only five weeks left in the fall semester, it will be interesting to see if cases will drastically rise again or if Elon has gotten their worst peak out of the way already.