SEPTEMBER 28, 2022 • VOLUME 93 • ISSUE 4
The official student newspaper of Quinnipiac University since 1929
PHOTOILLUSTRATION BY CAMERON LEVASSEUR /PHOTOS BY CONNOR LAWLESS/CHRONICLE ARCHIVES, HARVARD ATHLETICS, CLARKSON ATHLETICS
Men’s ECAC Hockey preview: Mapping out Quinnipiac’s road to the conference championship p. 10 - 11
JACK SPIEGEL/CHRONICLE
NEWS P.2: SGA elections Students voted on their student govt. association representation in the fall 2022 SGA elections Sept. 20
ILLUSTRATION BY MARINA YASUNA
OPINION P.4: Time to BeReal Contributing writer Zachary Carter laments BeReal and social media’s hypocrisy
PHOTO BY JOHN HASSETT/CONTRIBUTED BY KICKLINE
A&L P.6: Kickin’ it with Kickline
QU’s Kickline team displays school spirit through high-kicking dance routines and friendships beyond the court
QU no longer tracking COVID cases on campus as cases rise in CT By CAT MURPHY Staff Writer
Quinnipiac University students and faculty members are voicing concerns about the university’s response to a recent spike in COVID cases in Connecticut. COVID cases in New Haven County, which encompasses Hamden and Quinnipiac, increased by 12.42% between Sept. 15 and 21, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although CDC data reveals that COVID cases in the county subsequently declined by 5.72% between Sept. 19 and 25, Dr. Ulysses Wu, the chief epidemiologist at Hartford HealthCare, Quinnipiac’s health services partner, said cases in the area will likely continue to increase in the coming months. “There will likely be another spike in cases once the weather gets colder,” Wu wrote in a statement to the Chronicle on Sept. 16. However, Quinnipiac no longer monitors COVID case rates on campus, Associate Vice Presi-
dent for Public Relations John Morgan said. “We do not have data on case rates because we are not conducting recurring surveillance testing and most tests are self-administered rapid tests,” Morgan wrote in an email to the Chronicle on Sept. 15. The university also no longer conducts contact tracing. Instead, students, faculty and staff who test positive for the virus are responsible for notifying anyone with whom they spent 15 minutes or more at a distance of less than six feet in the 24 hours prior to their test result, according to a Sept. 14 email to the Quinnipiac community. Some students voiced surprise with the university’s lack of monitoring. “I’m just surprised that they’re not tracking it since the past two years, they’ve definitely been on it,” said Qiana Torres, a junior sociology and interdisciplinary studies double major. Residential students who test positive for COVID are required to travel home to isolate themselves if they live in the region, according to the university’s fall 2022 isolation protocols.
Students who live beyond a three-hour drive of campus are allowed to quarantine in on-campus isolation dorms. Ashley Winfield, a junior psychology major, said she experienced issues with the university’s isolation procedures after testing positive for the virus on Sept. 26. Winfield lives in Connecticut, but her immunocompromised father’s pre-existing health conditions prevented her from going home to isolate. Although Winfield eventually received a quarantine dorm, she said the university did not initially seem to consider her situation an “extenuating circumstance.” “Everyone that I contacted…and explained my situation to didn’t seem to care about my health or my father’s health, and never mind other students at Quinnipiac’s health,” Winfield wrote in a statement to the Chronicle. “I had to fight with Quinnipiac for 5 hours to get a quarantine room when they weren’t even all filled up.” Although the university does not track test results, COVID testing is available by appointment
at Student Health Services. Students can also obtain free at-home COVID test kits from the vending machine located in the old Student Health Center building. “Quinnipiac University continues to follow COVID mitigation strategies based on community and public health guidelines to protect the health of our university community,” said Chief of Public Safety Tony Reyes, the chair of the university’s COVID Task Force, in a statement to the Chronicle on Sept. 26. However, students can obtain a maximum of three tests from the vending machine. Alice Mahon, a senior theater major, expressed frustration with the limited quantity of COVID tests available to students, saying that three tests only got her “through two weeks of the semester.” “I was just recently exposed this week,” Mahon wrote in a statement to the Chronicle . “Why am I being told that I can’t test at the health center? What are they there for?” See COVID Page 2