The Marquette Tribune
Opinions
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
PAGE 10
Editorial Board
Alexandra Garner, Executive Opinions Editor Hope Moses, Assistant Opinions Editor Aimee Galaszewski, Executive Director Benjamin Wells, Managing Editor of The Marquette Tribune Skyler Chun, Managing Editor of The Marquette Journal
Megan Woolard, News Executive John Leuzzi, Sports Executive Randi Haseman, A&E Executive Lelah Byron, Projects Editor
Eleanor McCaughey, Copy Chief Grace Pionek, Design Chief Izzy Bonebrake, Executive Photo Editor Andrew Amouzou, Station Manager of MUTV
Reese Seberg, Station Manager of MURadio Alex Rivera Grant, Editor of Diversity and Inclusion
STAFF EDITORIAL
Students are not security guards. Marquette University needs to reconsider its safety protocols for university housing in order to protect students’ safety and rights as student workers. Humphrey Hall and Carpenter Hall were open over winter break, but were staffed 24/7 by either desk receptionists or Safety Security Officers, university spokesperson Lynn Griffith said in an email. Students would enter the unlocked doors and swipe their IDs under the supervision of the staff at the desk. Griffith also said that when students return to campus, all of the entrances to the residence halls will be unlocked and staffed 24/7 by DRs or SSOs. While DRs often receive Title XI, Red Watch Band and FERPA training to become a DR in residence halls, the training is minimal and does not include active shooter training. DRs also often don’t receive retraining on a yearly basis.
Student safety at jeopardy
MUPD does offer active shooter training to those who request it on campus. This should be mandatory for students and SSOs working in university housing. This is an issue. Students should not be the last line of defense between an intruder and getting into the building. DRs are not security guards. Recently, two people were hurt after an active shooter fired multiple shots at a fight that broke out in a gymnasium at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina. Although the incident didn’t occur in a residence hall, it showcases that college campuses are not exempt from active shooter threats. Many front desks have panic buttons that DRs can press in case of an emergency, which would call the Marquette University Police Department. While this is an important safety measure, there should be more lines of defense. Rather than having to call MUPD after an incident has already occurred,
Marquette should implement more proactive and preventative measures. Additionally, not all of the panic buttons are in close reach to where the DRs sit, such as in Humphrey Hall. This inaccessibility makes the panic buttons largely ineffective if a threatening person were to enter the building. Students should not have to choose between their safety and having an on-campus job. Moreover, many of the SSOs don’t receive the same security training as security guards. Their duties consist of communicating which students are past visitation hours and assisting resident assistants with their final night tours. SSOs also talk with DRs when they transition at midnight about anything that needs to be addressed in the building. In addition to staffing the front desks with student workers or SSOs, Marquette should keep all residence hall entrances locked, requiring students to scan
their MUIDs to gain access. Other universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have several residence halls locked 24 hours a day. Residents living in these buildings either have to scan in with a key fob or their student IDs. While transitioning students out with SSOs during late hours of the night is helpful for making sure only residents are in the building after visitation hours, they deserve to be protected as well. Some academic buildings like Engineering Hall and Johnston Hall are locked after a certain time during the night, so students, faculty and staff who have connections to these buildings have to scan their MUIDs after they lock. Additionally, there is inconsistency across university apartments. Some are locked at night while others are not locked, and some are staffed while others are not. The Marq apartment building
also has a broken front door. Student safety cannot be left up to chance. Marquette students and families deserve better. Taking a serious look at Marquette’s safety measures is especially important with the recent increase in crimes on Marquette’s campus last semester. While MUPD and safety measures like the LIMO van services and BlueLights around Marquette’s campus are often main focuses of safety conversations, implementing simple changes to residence hall safety is essential. Having several and diversified lines of safety could protect students and SSOs in a preventative way as well. Safety should be a top priority for Marquette across all areas of campus. Preventing these issues from falling through the cracks could be the difference in protecting someone’s life.
COVID-19 safety measures cannot be performative again Laura Niezgoda Since the official start of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities across the United States have gone through transformations in the hopes of providing a “safe” environment to educate students. Over 68 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the U.S. since cases first started being tracked in the country two years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Jan. 19. As undergraduate students begin a new semester this week, Marquette University has taken action against COVID-19 in an effort to create an environment that protects the “health, safety, and well-being” of its students. However, instead of ensuring the health and safety of the students, Marquette’s actions appear to be performative and regressive. In the COVID-19 climate that students now find themselves in due to the omicron variant, the return to a normal, in-person college experience seems far away. These actions consisted of delaying the start of a second semester, canceling in-person retreats such as
the LeaderShape Institute and requiring all students to upload proof of COVID-19 booster by Feb. 1. Along with these measures, Marquette extended its mask policy inside the classroom, residence halls and other public spaces across the university. The self-reported symptom tracker, COVID Cheq, must be shown in order to enter spaces such as the dining halls and library. Contract tracing, which tracks COVID-19 exposures in classrooms and extracurriculars, and different modalities for classes, such as the option to go online for a class, are also aspects of Marquette life that supposedly help to protect students’ safety. Every action that Marquette attempts to take in ensuring the safety of its students is not actively enforced or effective on campus and is merely a performative act of public statement. These protocols include the mask mandate, COVID Cheq and delaying the start of the spring semester. In its most recent announcement on COVID-19 protocols for campus, the university did not specify if students who fail to comply with these policies will receive any punishments. Last semester, the measures that Marquette took against COVID-19
were minimal in comparison to the previous academic year. Social distancing protocols were done away with, allowing students to sit next to their friends in the dining hall, library and other locations. Masks were worn irregularly by residents in residence halls in the fall semester, despite constant encouragement and non-punitive documentation by resident assistants. This also occurred in public spaces like the library, where there was little direct enforcement by staff and instead passive reminders like signs and announcements. COVID Cheq was often seen as a joke by students, as memes came out on the Barstool Marquette Instagram page. It showcased the inefficiency of the COVID Cheq, as a student just responds “no” to a question asking whether or not they are diagnosed with COVID-19. The hope of delaying the start of the spring semester was to provide more time to students to get the booster shot, as well as allow time for the omicron variant to pass its peak. The omicron variant, while it will infect most of the vaccinated, is a less severe version of COVID-19 in comparison to the delta variant. This knowledge presents hope, but frustration as well.
Photo by Josh Meitz joshua.meitz@marquette.edu
Marquette University is requiring everyone regardless of vaccination status to wear face masks in shared indoor spaces on campus during spring 2022
Omicron infects many, but the level of hospitalizations and deaths have been lower in comparison to the caseloads. Along with this, those who do reach that severity of illness with omicron are largely unvaccinated. Along with this, COVID-19 largely does not hospitalize or cause death in the majority of cases among college-aged students, despite being the group that accounts for most of the cases, per the CDC. In the U.S., people ages 18-29 only account for .61% of total deaths from COVID-19. Enforcement is not a priority to neither Marquette nor Milwaukee. The City of Milwaukee issued a mask mandate Jan. 18 that lasts until March 1, but acting Mayor Cavalier Johnson said that enforcing it is not a priority. These performative measures not only cause discord among
the divided groups but also do little to stop the spread of COVID-19. With 117 confirmed COVID-19 cases last week, and the university classifying cases as “red” in the status on the COVID-19 Dashboard, it is essential Marquette takes real action. If Marquette’s values lie in protecting its student body, it must uphold that through enforcement of its COVID-19 protocols. This semester already looks different from the last and time will tell if Marquette will stop being performative.
Laura Niezgoda is a sophomore studying communication studies and criminology and law studies. She can be reached at laura.niezgoda@marquette.edu
