SDSU Students Greeted With Near-Empty Campus, Strict Rules On First Day

Speaker 1: 00:00 The fall semester starts today at San Diego state university. While most classes will be held online due to the coronavirus pandemic about 2,600 students moved into campus housing as universities across the country are learning careless young people. Socializing on campus is an ideal environment for a highly contagious virus to spread and warnings often go unheated. Joining me to assess the situation at SDSU is reporter Gary Robbins, who covers science and technology for the San Diego union Tribune. Gary, welcome back to midday edition. Good to hear your voice Mark. Well, a, you were on campus over the weekend, observing students. What did you see were most following social distancing rules and wearing masks? Speaker 2: 00:42 The only place that I saw people really following the rules was on college Avenue, Montezuma where like broken yolk and trader Joe's was once we got beyond that area, I saw very, very little of it. We were there between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM. Even over on the South side of PREPA student union on that green a green area. There are a lot of kids sitting in clusters, but virtually none were wearing masks and people were sitting, uh, close. You know, so there wasn't a lot of social distancing going on going on on a hot summer night. Speaker 1: 01:11 And the university has been clear in instructions to students who are coming on to campus now, right? Uh, what, what the rules should be and what you have to do to stay safe. They have been Speaker 2: 01:20 Hyper clear about it. Um, you know, uh, I spoke on Friday to Libby Skiles who is a director of the student health center and to care about or who is, um, she oversees residential education for their, for the dorms. And they kind of went back and explained all of the things that the university had done and the ways they had communicated, you know, from Eve, uh, through email and videos and how they reached out to parents. So they did a great deal, but I kind of walked away from the evening thinking a couple of things. I wondered how effective the messaging was. You know, the question becomes, how do you connect with an 18 year old who probably has never been away from home? Uh, who's been cooped up during the pandemic and suddenly aren't there on this wonders campus and their life is kind of beginning. Speaker 2: 02:05 How do you really get their attention? And this will sound maybe peculiar, but I think the answer was on television this morning. I saw this ad that everybody sees from Geico commercial, where a guy standing in front of a mirror, brushing his teeth and someone named DJ Khalid. Who's very popular among kids right now comes in and tells him how to brush his teeth more effectively. And it's sweet. And it's funny and it's meant to connect with people on, you know, in their own place. And I wondered why San Diego state and a lot of other universities aren't doing that. They're sending out messages, but are they speaking in the language of 18 and 19 year olds? Speaker 1: 02:41 One basic question, most classes are online. Why did SDSU allow some students to move into campus housing anyway? Speaker 2: 02:47 Well, there are some, there were some reasons. Um, there is good evidence over time that shows that if students are on a campus around people like themselves, particularly in their freshmen and sophomore years, it helps, um, stay in college longer. So, you know, we all remember what it's like, uh, at the beginning of college can be very difficult. So they're, you know, they do it because it creates a sense of stability and parent pattern and routine for students. That's very helpful. Um, and a lot of people, you know, dorms have always been there. And many of these, there are 2,600 students in the dorms. 2000 are freshmen. Many of them are from outside of San Diego. So it's not like they could commute here to take classes. They need a place to live and the dorm rooms are a good place to do that. Speaker 1: 03:31 Yeah. And that, as your story noted today, that represents about a third of the students normally housed on campus. Now we've seen cobot 19 outbreaks at college campuses around the country, the student newspaper, Notre Dame published a dramatic editorial about not wanting to write a bituaries how's the return to campus playing out nationally in general. Speaker 2: 03:51 So what's happening here is what's happening everywhere. This is actually just the latest example of it. I saw the stories from the university of North Carolina and something provocative that the student newspaper did there to grab people's attention after that happened. Um, I went to Northeastern in Boston. They're really worried. They've been kind of sending, sending out these threatening emails to students who said on social media that they intended to party. Notre Dame had the same problem, North Carolina state. These are good schools, Mark, and these are good kids. Um, but we're dealing with human nature. I mean, all the people listening to your broadcast, many of them went to college. Think back for a moment what that first semester was like and how it would have been difficult to catch your attention when a public service announcement about health. Speaker 1: 04:35 What did the students have to say? Uh, the ones that you were able to talk to? Speaker 2: 04:38 I had a conversation with Devin Watley. Oh, I think it was, yeah, it was yesterday and he's on the student newspaper. He was a senior, he's very engaged in the community there. And he came back to this whole thing saying, you know, it's going to take one thing to shut the university down. Speaker 1: 04:53 Right. And one expert you're quoted in your story said, well, most students follow the rules in the classroom. Not necessarily after 5:00 PM and residence halls and fraternities, a university prepared to take disciplinary action against students. You mentioned that was the case in a university back here. Speaker 2: 05:10 Yeah. You know, I talked to Kara Bower about that and she was very clear that the university would take disciplinary action if people did not a Bay, the rules in the dormitories. And she, you know, again, they were, they more preferred the soft stick, but the university made a point of saying that. And they also said that all students who went into student housing signed in a denim or COVID-19 in which they agreed to follow the policies of the university on this. So, you know, you're signing a document committing to it. But then in the end though, Mark, it comes down to Tuesday nights in September when there's an RA trying to take care of this or that. And how do you keep, watch over a dorm? You know, that has a lot of students in it. Can you police or parent what's actually going on in the dormitories? So while everybody to everything, how do you police it? Speaker 1: 06:00 It's a big problem. Now what's the plan at UC San Diego, university of San Diego, other local colleges. Speaker 2: 06:06 So over the past week or so, UC San Diego has done a really poor job of communicating, not only with the campus, but with the public on this issue. They have things online and that's as good as, as far as it goes. But you know, I've been trying to get some of their health officials to sit down and say, okay, you know, everybody everybody's read what happened at UNC and Notre Dame and whatnot, are you adjusting what you're doing and learning from what you're doing and how will you apply it? So for example, how will you enforce the wearing of mask in dormitories, even if you're going in to the bathroom indoors, how do you enforce that? And they haven't been willing to answer these basic public questions. It's kind of ironic because they're asking the public for money to fight COVID-19 and to our support a public health school, but they won't answer basic basic health questions. Speaker 1: 06:50 I've been speaking with reporter Gary Robbins of the San Diego union Tribune. Thanks Gary. Thank you, Mark.