The thought of living among sick undergraduate students consumed Saskia Van Wees’ mind Friday and distracted her from applying to jobs.
Van Wees, a 33-year-old UF Summer 2020 graduate living in UF’s graduate housing, has asthma, which puts her at high risk of suffering from severe illness if she gets COVID-19. The Corry Village resident has only left her apartment to buy groceries since March to avoid the virus, she said.
But Van Wees, like many other residents of UF graduate apartments, is concerned that her efforts to avoid COVID-19 will be hopeless now that students who might be infected could be moving in next door.
Students who come into close contact with individuals that tested positive for COVID-19 will quarantine in on-campus graduate housing, UF Housing wrote in an email sent to students Friday. Students who test positive for COVID-19 will be quarantined in dorms across campus or required to go home, UF Student Affairs Marketing and Communications Director Sara Tanner wrote in an email to The Alligator.
When asked what residence halls would house quarantined students, Tanner wrote that quarantine residence halls are scattered throughout campus to ensure students are conveniently located, she wrote. She did not respond to questions asking which residence halls would be used to quarantine students.
The email sent to on-campus graduate students comes after students like Van Wees called and emailed UF Housing and posted a petition Friday morning asking for quarantined students to not be housed among graduate students, according to a statement from the UF Mayors’ Council, an organization that advocates for on-campus graduate students.
Van Wees said she decided to stay at Corry Village after graduating with a UF doctoral degree in political science. But, after hearing UF will quarantine students in her complex, she scrambled to try to move out and signed the petition asking the university to house quarantined students elsewhere.
“They didn’t tell us,” Van Wees said. “I’m worried about the health of graduate students living in grad housing, and also the lack of transparency and warning about any of this.”
UF Chief Operating Officer Charlie Lane first announced the university would be designating about 136 on-campus and 150 off-campus rooms to quarantine students with COVID-19 during a UF Board of Trustees meeting in June. The quarantine dorms are part of UF’s reopening plan, which includes other COVID-19 safety measures like requiring students to wear masks and socially distance.
Zahra Razi, a Maguire Village resident and 34-year-old UF medical physics doctoral student, created the petition a few hours before the UF Housing email was sent, she said. It had more than 470 signatures as of Sunday evening.
Graduate students like Razi noticed in June that vacant apartments weren’t being listed for rent and that UF staff were moving beds into unfurnished vacancies, she said.
She spent Thursday and Friday worrying about her two-year-old daughter Sophia’s safety, she said. She could be exposed to COVID-19 while at Maguire Village’s playground because of the quarantined students, she said.
UF Housing directors were not responding to her emails after she asked if UF plans to quarantine students in graduate housing, she said, and UF was not being transparent with UF’s on-campus graduate students about its plans. So, she asked the university to include its residents in their decision through her petition.
A health care professional will determine if a student should quarantine, and students do not have to test positive before being quarantined, Tanner wrote. Each graduate apartment will include a private bathroom and air conditioning unit, and quarantined students will not be allowed to enter graduate communal spaces, according to the email sent to on-campus graduate students.
It is unclear where off-campus the university will quarantine students and if the number of rooms on- or off-campus has changed since Lane’s statement in June. Tanner did not answer questions regarding the number of available rooms.
Students with meal plans will have their meals covered if quarantined, said Eddie Daniels, assistant vice president for UF Business Services.
Students without meal plans can obtain food through the Hitchcock Field and Fork Food Pantry, he said. Food from the pantry will be free, UF’s Hitchcock Field and Food Pantry Program Coordinator Dina Liebowitz wrote in an email to The Alligator.
Isabella Nielson, an 18-year-old UF psychology freshman, moved into Hume Hall Wednesday, she said. Nielson said if she gets sick with COVID-19, she would prefer to stay in a quarantine dorm rather than return to her parents’ home in Colorado and risk exposing them.
She said she is concerned because UF has not announced which dorms will house quarantined students. She expects students to contract COVID-19 soon because other universities like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have had COVID-19 outbreaks that forced them to shift to remote learning a week after reopening, she said.
“The lack of communication has definitely been stressing me out,” she said.
A playground in Maguire Village
