The corona virus has proven itself to be a serious occurrence this year, and so on this campus. It has changed the way the entire campus operates, from not having any usable water fountains other than a select few, to wearing face masks around campus, and limiting the possibilities for athletes to train and compete on campus.
With this pandemic, the school has kept a close eye on the amount of cases, which I think is smart, but in turn has limited the possibilities of things that make this college a legitimate college.
So, when a few people end up testing positive for the corona virus and they are related to athletes, the school shut down all athletic practices and operations for an entire week. I do not think that the school should have shut down every sport, but the ones that were directly related to the cases. In turn, the whole week of no operations more or less felt like a “time out” to a small child rather than a safety protocol for college students.
In the week that all athletic activities had been suspended, there were a total of 20 cases, 7 of which were active, and 10 that were new cases. In the next week, the amount of cases was zero and then the week after that amount of new cases was also zero. This would actually tell us that suspending sports really didn’t do anything other than give athletes who may have injured themselves a week to recover and pushed every sports training a week later into the semester.
In addition, the president has said in his most recent video update on Covid-19 that, “I could not be more proud of each and every one of you we have asked a lot of you this semester”. In my opinion, with all of the constraints and regulations that are set up on this campus, it sounds like he is saying that he asked us to follow all of the guidelines versus saying if you don’t follow these guidelines, you will be kicked off campus and essentially lose a lot of money because you are losing in person classes, dorms, and meal plans.
With how this semester is shaping up, the restrictions on athletes for a week really had no impact on the total number of Coronavirus cases on this campus, as well as demonstrates that the athletic portion of this campus is not responsible for the spread of Covid-19.
By Duncan Newman
djnewman@vwu.edu