San Diego State has more confirmed cases of COVID-19 among its student population than any other local university.
Some homes in what’s called the College Area are rented out to students. They’re known as mini-dorms and lately, some students have been flouting health regulations, holding large, loud parties where people are jammed into relatively small spaces.
“We just think that it’s really irresponsible and ignorant of students to do that," said SDSU sophomore Esther Tsui.
Tsui wrote KPBS a few weeks ago to complain about San Diego State’s handling of the COVID cases among the student population. Since then, she said the university has been doing a better job.
In fact, after an initial outbreak once the fall semester started, the university said it’s had several days with no new cases over the last few weeks.
And since limited in-person classes began on Monday, they report no spikes and no cases at all connected with those in-person classes.
RELATED: SDSU Reports 14 New COVID-19 Cases For Total Of 1,120
“I have in-person labs now, so it’s just kind of something to be worried about when you know that, you don’t know who might have COVID and not know it cause they’re going to these parties,” Tsui said.
The school issued a statement reiterating that it now has jurisdiction to enforce health regulations against students off campus. The statement also said, in part, that since late August the school has issued more than 900 notices of alleged violations of student code of conduct policies, and that 110 of those were hand-delivered community notices to residences in the College Area.
The university contracts with Elite Security to keep an eye on the neighborhood surrounding the school. If security personnel come upon a party, they call San Diego Police.
As for Esther Tsui, she said those parties are still happening.
“I’ve been hearing a lot of, some of the parties have been going on, maybe not the house parties but like in the little apartment complexes, it’s been pretty loud outside ... it’s really frustrating and at this point I feel like there’s not a lot that we can do because you know those people, they’re just going to keep doing what they’re doing regardless of what we say," Tsui said.
