FALL 2021

3 FALL 2021: A RETURN TO NORMALCY

Crowd cheering at an MSU football game (pre-COVID19), Oct 27, 2018.

AMOS PERKINS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

MSU Texas will be returning to Phase IV for the Fall 2020 semester, which means the campus will largely operate as it did before the COVID-19 outbreak starting Monday, Aug. 9.

“Masks will not be required [next semester]. Certainly, anyone who’s more comfortable wearing a mask, we support, we want them to do that.... Distancing won’t be required; some classes will still do that, clearly, because the class schedule has already been published and people have already registered and all that,” Keith Lamb, vice president of student affairs, said.

Moving to Phase IV

MSU looked at the number of students tested for COVID-19 whose tests came back positive, the number of available hospital beds in Wichita Falls, the total number of cases locally and statewide and the continued rollout of COVID-19 vaccines before making the decision to revert to Phase IV. These same factors will be monitored to see if the university needs to return to Phase III.

“We’re still watching everything, we’re still watching the data and we’re still seeing what CDC recommendations are, local state and national conditions and you know, our goal is to keep the campus safe.... The other thing we’ll be looking at really closely are the number of people that have immunity, either naturally or through vaccination. That’s going to be important,” Lamb said. campus. Their distribution hit a significant hurdle when all Johnson and Johnson vaccines were temporarily recalled. When the vaccine was released again, students were less eager to get vaccinated.

“Of course, I had [the Johnson and Johnson vaccines] for four days and we gave 300+ shots.... They halted it for 10 or 12 days, right in the middle of our prime time. They released it just in time for finals weeks. [Students] weren’t like, ‘Yeah I wanna take my calculus final, while I’m feeling sick from the COVID shot.’ We moved maybe a dozen, two dozen shots in the full 10 days after they released the Johnson and Johnson vaccine,” Keith Williamson, Vinson Health Center medical director, said.

Making the decision

While the decision to return to normalcy was made by President Shipley and the president’s cabinet, advisement and planning were provided from the Return to Campus Task Force. The task force was instructed with thinking of ways to prepare the campus for reopening and to ensure that it is flexible enough to return to lower phases in case of emergency.

“We made the announcement [earlier in the semester] that we’ll stay in Phase III through the summer with the goal of going to Phase IV without a date attached to it. At that point, the Return to Campus Task Force began working on what the runway needed to look like to get up to Phase IV because we’ve been operating at less than Phase IV... for over a year now, and so it’s not as easy as just saying we’re going to Phase IV one day and the next day we’re at Phase IV. [The task force looked at] what processes need to be put in place, how long will those take, etc.... We want them to keep the flexibility in case there’s a surge [in cases] after we go to Phase IV in case we need to go back to Phase III, so that is not burdensome on the students,” Lamb said.

PHOTO BY BRIDGET REILLY | THE WICHITAN

Changes to campus

MSU’s campus will look different next semester. Along with much of the preventative signage coming down, Lamb also thinks there’s a possibility the campus makes other changes, such as investing more in water bottle refill stations rather than water fountains. As for Mustangs athletics events, Lamb says restrictions such as maximum capacity and having to preorder tickets are largely out of the university’s control.

“A lot of [athletics restrictions] will depend on what the NCAA and Lone Star Conference require in the fall.... Most of [the signs] will come down. There may be some that stay. We won’t necessarily have the directional signage that say ‘exit this door,’ ‘enter this door.’ We won’t have the signs that say mask required... but I would think we’d still have signs reminding people how to stay healthy,” Lamb said.

Risks of returning

Despite the university continuing to offer vaccines, Williamson thinks returning to campus could still be risky. He thinks a spike in cases could appear later into the semester due to student interaction with each other. Such an occurrence happened on a small scale when the number of cases on campus jumped from between zero and two to 13 due to graduation parties.

“[Going to Phase IV] is a gambler’s choice right now, because if I had evidence that 7580% of the students were immunized, I would say ‘Heck yeah, it’s going to be fine,’ but we don’t have that evidence.... I think we’ll be fine going into the beginning of the semester with low levels of activity... and then they’re going to get together and around October 15 to November 15, we’re gonna have a sudden surge, and it’s just going to build, because if you’re not immunized you’re dry timber for the forest fire,” Williamson said.