The Future of COVID-19 at Kentucky
My Thoughts
By Zachary Reboletti
Student at University of Kentucky
August 28, 2020
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| Stickers displaying messages of "Stay 6 feet apart" can be found scattered around the ground around campus, encouraging students to maintain social distance to limit spread of the coronavirus. |
Many other large schools in the United States have started taking necessary action against the coronavirus by moving all classes to online. The most recent instance of this happening was a few days ago when University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill moved all of their classes online due to an outbreak just one week into the school year. I have friends that are apart of the Greek community at Indiana University in Bloomington and they have many concerns with facing the same consequences. Apparently, around 50% of all Greek life has been infected with the virus. Soon, they may even need to move out of their house and find other living arrangements. This could pose many problems for students participating in Greek life, especially my friend Gracie. She is very worried that she will have to move home, which is not a possibility for her because her mother has cancer and will have increased susceptibility to the virus is she brought it back.
Hearing all of these stories and knowing how important the social aspect of campus is for students (whether that be going to football and basketball games or participating in greek life and clubs), this definitely worries me. At this point, all of my classes have been moved to online. I have the opportunity to attend one class in person every Friday, and although I should be grateful that I have that opportunity, it just does not feel the same. At this point, I do not believe that we will go all online, but I do have my concerns that restrictions will become increasingly stringent on what we are allowed to do in person. Currently, we have stickers all over the floor around campus indicating how much distance we should be from each other (this is especially apparent in the food court because of limited ventilation indoors and increased virus spreading capabilities), yet I do not think that these are that effective. It seems like many students disregard them entirely, especially when busy or in a hurry. Along with this, I have heard of many dorms having parties during this time and getting busted by the Resident Advisors around campus. This is definitely not a good looking seeing as though we only have a week left before we are allowed to start visiting each other in different dorms. I just hope that the deadline (September 7) will not be rescheduled for a further date.
Either way, I am very lucky to even be able to be in a dorm right now typing this. Several of my friends are extremely distressed because they may not even be allowed to move on campus. My friend Eli is currently applying for a special housing at Michigan State University so that he may be allowed to stay on campus instead of doing his work online at home. He has already made friends and was very excited to go back to school, so we will see how that plays out in the coming days.
