Adapting to Community Life During the Pandemic
Many COVID-specific changes were implemented to ensure the safety of the school community and the local community. Students and faculty will remain on campus to reduce transmission from outside sources, and any student or faculty that contracts the virus will isolate on campus to prevent spread to the surrounding area. Students may no longer submit Weekend Requests, and if there is a need to leave campus, students must apply for permission through the dean of community life. If students are to travel off-campus, they will need to participate in online classes and quarantine at home or in their designated location for up to 14 days, adhering to mandatory health safety protocols. Mr. Davis said, “The policy decisions around day students are largely a consequence of the attempt to create a ‘bubble’ around the campus, which the steering group sees as one of the best protections the campus community has against the spread of COVID-19. However, the bubble is not perfect: many employees who cannot work remotely must commute to campus, resident faculty partners work off-campus, faculty children go to local schools, and day students come and go. A secondary consequence is that these same steps reduce the chance that our repopulation of campus will cause a surge in the virus in northwest Connecticut, which has so far been only lightly touched.”
This year, dorm life is restricted to only on-campus, non-day students. In previous years, day students were assigned rooms, desks, and sometimes beds to call their own on campus. Now that the quarantine has lifted, day students will have dedicated study spaces in the library and locker space in the Mars Athletic Center, and will also participate in community-building activities by their affiliation with dorms. A few other changes include the removal of Co-Curricular Projects as an option for students, and the school has suspended any plans for interscholastic sports events to reduce virus-transmission risks until further notice.
Contributing writer Darina Huang ’23 interviewed Amber Bretz ’23, Mr. Michael Boone, instructor in physics and engineering and director of the EFX lab, Emilie Clitus ’24, Ms. Kristin Glasheen, instructor in Spanish, Amelia Kain ’23, and Nadia Puente ’21, about their transition to campus and in-person classes.
During Quarantine
“Being limited to a certain amount of people, while it seemed annoying at first, gave me more of an opportunity to become closer to people in my pod.”
After Quarantine: Mr. Michael Boone
“I’ve never met a group of students more excited for the first day of school.”
After Quarantine: Amber Bretz ’23
“I love walking through main hallway and seeing people I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to yet.”
