ALISA OPPENHEIMER
News Editor
We’re so close to getting through all of our in-person classes.
There are only two weeks left before our campus becomes a complete ghost town, as students travel home for the holidays.
But the thought of large groups of students traveling back to all areas of the east coast could bring some concern.
Since the start of the pandemic, traveling has been a huge risk and we continue to see people avoiding travel while looking at the drastic impacts the virus has had on just the aviation industry alone.
We’ve seen thousands of canceled flights, empty planes and empty airports.
The same can be said for the railroad industry as well.
Fredonia has a total number of 4,433 undergraduate students, the majority of which are most likely traveling some distance home.
Avoiding the spread of COVID-19 may be a challenge, and being that we’re under similar circumstances, other SUNY schools will have to face this challenge as well.
In efforts to take precaution before students leave, SUNY announced a new policy regarding testing prior to departure.
The new policy requires that all students utilizing any on-campus facilities must test negative for COVID within 10 days prior to leaving.
Although Fredonia is requiring that students test a minimum of four days before leaving campus.
The campus was made aware of the revised policy by an email from Enrollment and Student Services.
The emails says: “This will allow for test results to be obtained prior to students leaving campus for the winter break.”
President Kolison also discussed the reasoning behind this.
“We want to do all we can to minimize the chance that Fredonia students are unknowingly taking the virus home to their families and friends,” he said.
With this, Fredonia has revised the testing schedule in hopes to make it more flexible for all students who plan on going home.
Now, instead of having to get tested between only the hours of 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., the school has provided a second window of time for testing, and longer hours.
For the week of Nov. 9, students can show up from the hours of 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. or 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
If a student’s scheduled testing time doesn’t meet this requirement, Fredonia urges students to reach out to pooltesting@fredonia.edu, or to call (716) 680-6073 as soon as possible.
Regarding our recent status in COVID considering pool test results and our COVID-19 Dashboard, it seems as though our number of positive cases has increased, but it should be noted that with the large increase in the number of people Fredonia is now testing, an increase in positive cases is expected.
According to Fredonia’s dashboard, on Wednesday night, Nov. 4, our positivity rate was at approximately 0.30 percent.
Currently, our positivity rate is at approximately 0.56 percent.
With the election, COVID has again made its presence known in over 120,000 Americans around the nation.
Although our campus positivity percentage may seem like a gradual increase compared to this, it’s still extremely necessary for everyone on campus to continue to take this virus seriously.
In the coming weeks we will all be excited to see our family and friends back home, but we must be responsible if we want to enjoy our time there.
For more information regarding COVID-19 on our campus, students can utilize the following resources: