It’s been two months since I said goodbye to my role as a VA, and I miss it every day.
Last year at this time, I was starting to repack all of my belongings in preparation to move into the dorms early for VA training. I’m sure this year’s VAs are doing the same right now, and I’m excited for them. For them to have all of those crazy, unique experiences.
However, as someone who lived in the residence halls, specifically Bergsaker, every year that I attended Augustana, I don’t think it’s a good idea for students to live there.
Granted, I say this as someone who graduated and will not have to live in the dorms. However, I also say this as someone who has many people I care about who will be moving into the dorms next month, including many of my former residents.
I felt a profound sense of loss having to move out of Bergsaker early and not getting to fully finish out my VA run, and I know so many students, especially seniors like me, felt the same way because of COVID. And so many students want to get back to Augie, to live their best college lives, to continue making memories that will last a lifetime. But right now, it’s just not safe.
Even with the decline in enrollment for freshmen, residence halls are crowded. I’ll speak for Bergsaker within this post because it’s where I have the most experience.
One communal nightmare after another
When you live with a roommate, if you want to remain six feet apart, you’d have to be on complete opposite ends of the room which just doesn’t work given that Berg rooms are split evenly down the middle—beds, desks, dressers and closets on both sides.
So, if the pair of roommates wants to sit at their desks and study at the same time, they won’t be six feet apart. When they’re sleeping in their respective bunks, they’ll be six feet apart but just barely. Social distancing in a dorm room is not feasible. There’s no argument or way around it; it is not possible.
Why doesn’t everyone get a single room? There aren’t enough. Even with fewer freshman students, there are not enough rooms for everyone to have a single. So, then, how do you decide who has to share and risk their health?
Let’s move on to the bathrooms. They’re communal. Each Berg bathroom has five toilet stalls while the number of students on a floor averages 30. The math there doesn’t add up. Additionally, there are only six sinks and only five shower stalls—same problem. All in all, social distancing in a bathroom would only be possible if students were assigned a bathroom time which is laughably wrong and impossible to enforce.
If all of that wasn’t enough, let’s talk about the hallways. I can stand in the middle of a Berg hall, reach my arms out and touch both walls; my arm span is most definitely not six feet. And since many students have classes at the same times, the halls are crowded at the same time which presents its own set of issues even if all students are wearing masks.
Let’s also consider that both freshman buildings (along with Tuve and East Halls) don’t have air conditioning. Even with the windows open and box fans on high, the air flow is minimal which can’t be healthy in a pandemic.
Bergsaker also has a communal kitchen and communal laundry room. Do I need to explain that one?
Now, all of the residence halls on campus have housekeeping staffs that work tirelessly to keep our buildings clean and safe. The housekeepers are angels, in my opinion. However, there are usually two housekeepers per building, and it takes them a full work day to clean the entire building. How are two people also supposed to constantly sanitize every surface of our communal residence halls? They already have to clean up after students who couldn’t care less about what they leave behind. Sanitizing the buildings to the level that would be necessary would be impossible for just two people. Even if Augie was to hire more housekeepers, the workload would be immense.
And the responsibility goes to…
There would need to be some strict regulations in place in order for students to safely live in residence halls. Masks would have to be required in the common spaces, surfaces would have to be sanitized almost constantly and students would have to actively practice social distancing. And who already enforces general policies in the dorms? That’s right, VAs do. And I guarantee that the responsibility of new COVID regulations would fall on their shoulders as well. Even if they weren’t specifically required, VAs usually have pretty strong urges to protect their residents so the guilt would weigh on them if they weren’t enforcing these regulations.
And don’t VAs do enough? If you don’t think so, read through some of my previous blogs.
VAs are on the front lines of every serious student issue that happens on campus. They see ten times more than any professional staff member sees. They have so much on their plates because they’re also students and people.
But not only that, consider the students in the residence halls who do everything right—they wash their hands, they stay six feet apart, they always wear masks, they sanitize their rooms. Now imagine that they contract COVID-19 because other students don’t follow the same rules. There will always be other students who think they’re immune and invincible. They’ll go to parties. They’ll cram themselves into dorm rooms. They’ll go out to restaurants. They’ll bring the virus back to campus, back to the residence halls and infect those who were being vigilant and careful. It’s not fair.
It’s similar to the students who don’t follow general policies in residence halls. Augie is a dry campus (“dry” campus), but each weekend brings plenty of students who think they can get away with drinking in their rooms. And nine times out of 10, they don’t get caught. They party the night away with no consequences. Meanwhile, in the room next door, their rule-following neighbor just wants to go to bed early but can’t because of the bass pounding through the paper-thin wall. Is this fair? No.
But you’ll never get every student to follow the rules. It’s just not possible. And it’s impractical to think that VAs, or really anyone, could enforce social distancing regulations in residence halls when alcohol and marijuana policies, for example, are often disregarded.
Common cold or COVID?
Residence halls are like breeding grounds for germs. I always say that I have a stronger immune system because I lived in a petri dish (aka Berg). When that very first freshman college cold hits, it hits hard. I always had multiple residents at a time coming to me, noses dripping and hacking up a lung, telling me they were pretty sure they were going to die.
Now imagine that scenario but instead of feeling like they were going to die from the common cold, they do die from COVID. I apologize for being morbid, but that’s our new reality.
Residence halls are not safe. Colds and flus spread like wildfire in the dorms, so why would the coronavirus be any different?
Usually this would be the part of the blog where I offer a solution, but this time, I can’t. No one can. And it’s hard—no one wants to be the one to take away anyone’s college experience. But when that first wave of sickness hits—usually in late September—this year it could be COVID-19. And this year, Augie could have a wildly low retention rate—not from students transferring or simply dropping out but from being hooked up to respirators and wishing they would’ve just stayed home.
Keeley Meier 