NEWS

Vinson Health Center located in the Bruce and Graciela Redwine Student Wellness Center, March 9.

PHOTO BY RYAN CLAYTON | THE WICHITAN

VACCINATION SITE MASKS STAY ON

EMILY BEAMAN REPORTER

Midwestern State University has been approved by the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) to aid with vaccination efforts. MSU joins other vaccine providers in Wichita County in starting a waitlist for persons who qualify for phase 1A and 1B of the vaccine, along with those who are eligible under the expanded qualifications that began on March 3.

Keith Williamson, the medical director at the Vinson Health Center submitted an application for MSU to become a vaccination site on October 8, 2020. Five months later, the Texas government officialized the campus. However, MSU is still waiting to receive doses of the vaccine.

“[The delay] could be a combination of things…. We’re still restricted in our [vaccination] supply to Texas. The North Texas zone has a Super-Vaccination center at the Texas Motor Speedway, and they get 2030,000 vaccines every week. Because that’s in our region, it could be sucking up some of the vaccine supply,” Williamson said.

He also theorizes that because vaccine doses are given out by the state, the government may associate “Student Health Center” with the student body, who are not yet considered in any of the phases, although many staff, faculty and students do meet the criteria. Williamson has ordered 1,000 vaccines that are yet to be approved, but only has 200 people on the waiting list.

“If I end up with vaccines in my freezer and not enough names, I’m going to start contacting teachers and other people in the community. I will work my fingers to the bone to get vaccines into people, with a priority towards the campus community,” Williamson said.

Once the vaccines arrive at MSU, the Health Center will begin to distribute 50-100 around the clinic every day. Towards the end of the vaccine’s shelf life, they plan to set up a drivethru on campus to distribute more, and they hope to offer them throughout the summer as well. While COVID-19 infection numbers are dropping, Williamson is hopeful MSU’s community will reach 70% vaccination by late summer to reign in a “normal” fall semester.

“It is getting better. It’s a characteristically seasonal virus, so I think we’ll drop to a seasonal low through the summer and may see another wave in the late fall,” Williamson said.

This announcement also comes shortly after Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order to fully reopen the state and lift the mask mandate on March 10. However, a Postmaster sent out on March 8 announced face coverings will still be required along with social distancing and reduced occupancy on MSU campus.

“We knew from our campus community that it was important to keep these measures, and we knew [along with] our own experiences that our community is doing the right thing,” Keith Lamb, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management said.

Lamb, who also co-chairs the Return-toCampus task force and sits on the Incidence Management Team, said that both groups were working alongside faculty, staff and students to reach decisions for campus safety.

“All three bodies... their majorities said to keep the current measures in place. They feel safe and feel like they’re working,” Lamb said.

However, MSU doesn’t intend to keep the mask mandate indefinitely. Since fall of 2020, MSU has been in operation Phase III, a modified campus where operations return to mainly in-person, with restrictions. The Return-toCampus task force was reactivated to review the necessary criteria to move to Phase IV, a normal campus where all operations return to normal with no restrictions. Even when the decision is made to move towards Phase IV, it will take time.

“It’s not like we can hit a switch and go back to normal. The other part [of the task force] is to lay out what it looks like when we decide to scale back up to Phase IV.... We’re gonna have to do some things sequentially,” Lamb said.

President Biden’s call for states to open up vaccine eligibility to all adults by May 1 may speed up the process if enough students, faculty and staff get vaccinated. One of the major factors in assisting that would be herd immunity. The World Health Organization says varying diseases need anywhere from 70-95% of people vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Currently, Wichita County has 15.9%.

“Herd immunity is a moving target. If [it] magically happens at 70%, we’re still a long ways from that,” Lamb said.

While acknowledging many on campus are eager to return to “normal”, Dr. Lamb expects a new “normal” to be reached where some students and faculty continue to wear masks and even utilize the digital world differently.

FLOODING IN FAIN

STEPHANIE ROBLEDO | THALIA DOE NEWS EDITOR | REPORTER

On March 8, students and faculty were asked to evacuate the Fain College of Fine Arts building. A corroded water pipe had burst causing a flood and a small electrical fire.

“There was an air handler on the second floor above the tool crew area in the scene shop area and there it’s filled with chilled water. One of the lines, the controller lines, had a drain on it that rusted out and broke,” Kyle Owen, associate vice president of facilities, said. “It started dumping the chilled water on the floor. There are a couple of drains in that mechanical room but as we learned they drained some water but not the volume waters we had going down it because of the break, so it starts spilling over.”

The water caused a flood in the B building and extended to areas of the C building. While handling the water, smoke started coming out of room B124, because a small electrical fire had begun. The uninterruptible power supply (UPS), a device that provides battery backup when the electrical power fails, in the IT closet was still charged when it got wet causing it to start smoking. The fire was short-lived as recruiting coordinator Andrew Brinkman put out the fire with a fire extinguisher.

“Ninety percent of the area that was flooded was on concrete floors which [was] clean[ed] with custodian equipment pretty easily. In the carpet area we’ll dry those out but there’s one room, the drawing studio. It has some tiles that are damaged, but that should be replaced [March 10] and cleaned up. However, the piano lab is of concern; the discharge of the power extinguisher created a pretty good cloud of material throughout the room,” Owen said.

The damage to the piano lab is still to be determined. The room is not in clean conditions due to stopping the fire, but it will be professionally cleaned. Once clean, all the equipment will be connected and tested.

“The piano lab area has a backroom which is not part of the lab, it’s part of a room where IT stores network equipment. Most of the damage actually happened in that room, in the network equipment room, and that equipment was gone,” Martin Camacho, dean of Fain College of Fine Arts, said. “It became unserviceable immediately during the flood, luckily IT reacted very fast. My understanding is that they used spare parts and we are up in running already 24 hours after this incident happened which is great.”

A room in the art department, usually used for independent study, was affected by the flood as well. The damage was very minimal since they managed to save the artwork in the room. No art classes were canceled that day.

“We were really fortunate that we did not sustain a lot of major damage, luckily, it was in a studio space that we didn’t have a lot of electronics or high tech equipment so that was really fortunate,” Leah Gose, chair of Juanita and Ralph Harvey School of Visual Arts, said. “There are a few things that we might need to take a look at like some lockers that were on the floor just to see if that was damaged, but most of the damage that we sustained was ceiling tiles you know just from getting wet and waterlogged and some insulation that could not be repaired so we were really fortunate.”

The incident was early in the morning and some faculty had yet to arrive on campus. Nonetheless, the response was immediate and the situation was quickly controlled.

“I’d probably say that I was alerted by this very early in the morning, and I communicated to facilities the situation immediately. I was still off-campus cause I was alerted by this before work time. By the time that I got here a few minutes late, the response was unbelievable. Facilities were here responding immediately, IT was already here responding immediately,” Camacho said.

Police and firefighters had also arrived at the scene. Camacho said he was impressed by the response time the incident received as it was quick.

“My overall impression is that number one we were very lucky because the potential damage could have been very large and the actual damage appears as of today very minimal. That’s number one and number two as I just mentioned, [I am] really, extremely happy with the way in which all units, all relevant units, responded to the incident and that really made a difference,” Camacho said.

PHOTO BY LISA THAMES | THE WICHITAN Soaked insulation padding coming out of the ceiling of the old MNG studio in the B-wing of the Fain College of Fine Arts, March 8.