by Jara Reeder, Photo Editor
Calleb Mosburg, dean of student affairs, sat down with The News to discuss how the university is working to contain the spread of COVID-19 in residence halls.
Q: How are university housing officials working to contain the spread of COVID-19 in dormitories?
A: So they’re working directly with me so as soon as we have anybody identified as a positive case or direct contact with a positive case we’re working on the quarantine protocols that students need to quarantine in the dorms or they’re going home and staying off campus until we can get a negative test result.
Q: How can the coronavirus spread in dormitories?
A: Well if we don’t quarantine the cases that we know of that have been identified or if we don’t start working the quarantine procedures to have students quarantine or they are positive is isolated but have them In a location where they are not in contact with Another person they can potentially infect them. But get them to the location where we can Prevent it from going any further So everything that we’re doing in the dormitories which directly comes from communication from my office to Mr. Adair is our assistant dean of student affairs and recruitment he is working at communication to the head residents and RAs so that they are working to get everything and then everybody communicating in this what’s the biggest piece of this whole thing is just communication and making sure were communicating quickly and in officially to those that are involved in the situation.
Q: What are the practices you’re encouraging students to use?
A: So again mask, social distancing even in the dorms I mean as much as possible you know we have started the process and then as far as the dormitory you know they are writing tickets if they’re seeing students that are just continuously not have their masks properly on, their writing tickets and so where were forcing that continuously to make sure that we were working to mitigate any further spread if it. so that mask plays a big role in it but making sure the students are not congregating in other rooms because as we can tell if you have others that are coming into a room and into your congregating in one person test positive now you have all those people that were in there together talking in one room that would now have to be quarantine.
Q: How often are custodial crews cleaning dormitories?
A: We have custodial staff assigned to each of those dorms daily. We also have additional cleaning procedures that is done by an outside party that we have that’s coming in and helping sanitize and disinfect and do all sorts of things to help. We’re doing as much as we can with, I think a lot of great effort to make sure that we were disinfecting and cleaning it and taking care of things as much as you possibly can.