SUNY Cortland students returned to campus this week for the spring semester, and the college’s officials are doing their part to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during the ongoing pandemic.
Fred Pierce, SUNY Cortland’s director of communications, said the college’s approach this semester is “keeping students and the community safe is similar to what we did overall in the fall (semester).”
“We’re focused on vaccination, mask-wearing and testing,” he said. “We’re also quickly isolating students who have tested positive.”
Pierce noted the college required students to take pre-arrival tests and rapid tests upon arrival before they returned to campus. Students had to submit a negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) COVID-19 test within 72 hours of their arrival to campus, or take a rapid test “virtually the same day as their arrival,” he added.
“You don’t want them to travel outside of campus and test positive here,” he said. “You want to keep them from happening.”
Pierce said masks are still required “in all indoor settings on campus.”
“We encouraged students to wear masks at all times on campus as well,” he said. He added that the masks worn on-and-off campus should be “well-fitted and snug.”
In terms of vaccination requirements, the deadline for students to receive their booster shot “depends on their eligibility,” Pierce said. This is dependent on when students received their second shot of the vaccine, he added.
“Some students won’t be eligible until after February because they got their other shots late,” Pierce said. “Once they are eligible, they have a month to get boosted.”
Despite the recent outbreak of COVID-19’s omicron variant providing a challenge for SUNY Cortland, Pierce noted it’s been “so far, so good.”
“We’ll be doing surveillance testing just like last semester,” he said. “Right now, we have very few people in our quarantine and isolation facilities.”
Pierce noted there has been “some frustration” with the students’ approach at off-campus settings.
“When they’re off-campus, we have the same limited ability to influence behavior than anybody else has,” he said.
Pierce said SUNY Cortland is “holding students accountable through student conduct for big parties (and other large gatherings).”
“Obviously we wish they wouldn’t congregate in closed-in spaces, but that’s not likely to happen,” he said. “We hope (students) wear masks, but some are going to and some are not going to.”
As of right now, Pierce is uncertain about the status of events like Spring Fling and the undergraduate/graduate commencements this semester. He noted events this semester will be “dependent on the situation (with COVID-19).”
“It depends on the numbers in the coming months,” he said.
Pierce mentioned that SUNY Cortland will continue to work closely with the Cortland County Health Department, SUNY and other campuses, and the New York State Health Department “to make sure we’re following the best practices and the most important things necessary to keep our community and the surrounding communities safe.”
“We have proven last semester that students can have a pretty full on-campus experience at SUNY Cortland if they follow those basic guidelines,” he said.
