News: RA’s face new COVID-19 challenges Page 6
Opinion: Embracing new normal facilitates growth Page 9
Sports: Athletes across the U.S. join social justice movement Page 11
Life: HBO show “I may destroy you” explores closure Page 19
Old Gold&Black
WAKE FOREST’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1916 VOL. 107, NO. 2
T H U R S DAY, S E P T E M B E R 3 , 2 0 2 0 “Cover s the campus like the magnolias”
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Wake Forest begins random testing The university will conduct roughly 500 tests per week for COVID-19 on campus BY AINE PIERRE Contributing Writer pierav20@wfu.edu
Graphic by Renting Cai and Olivia Field / Old Gold & Black
Wake Forest University’s quarantine procedures provide for quarantine and isolation on and off-campus. However, it is unclear what the requirements are for students to move to the school’s quarantine location.
University quarantine protocols lack clarity
Students voice their concerns about unclear quarantine procedures BY RAFAEL LIMA News Editor limara17@wfu.edu Undergraduate student testing and selfquarantine have been one of the main points of Wake Forest University’s Our Way Forward plan to a successful in-person semester, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Students are expected to cooperate with health and university authorities in self-reporting symptoms and aiding contact tracing efforts to prevent a huge surge of COVID-19 cases on campus that would end the semester prematurely, akin to the outbreak of cases at UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State. “Contact tracers are designed to be high-rapport people to create a trust relationship. ‘Honors system’ is an interesting word to use because if students aren’t truthful in that process we will lose control pretty quickly,” said Vice President for Campus Life Penny Rue. “That is one of
the things [emphasized]. Contact tracing is not punitive, no one is in trouble. We just want the best for you. We are trying to keep the community safe, please help us with that.” The university has also invested significantly in quarantine facilities, with its official quarantine location capable of housing 380 students at a time. Thus far, students seem to be cooperating with university officials, as all the 29 positive tests currently on the university’s COVID-19 dashboard have been reported by students who have independently sought COVID-19 tests off-campus and subsequently notified university authorities of their results. “People have been very forthcoming. I think people watched what happened at Chapel Hill and we just don’t want to do that. We don’t want to be one week in and closing down. So, there’s a pretty high level of investment [from students] for now,” Rue said. Yet, some students seeking out help from Student Health Service (SHS) have encountered diverging and confusing messages from the university in what is an already complicated quarantine process on its own. Junior Emily Ziereis explained that one of her friends she was in close contact with, who
Wake Forest University officials have announced the start of random COVID-19 tests this week with about 500 random tests expected to be performed per week, according to Vice President for Campus Life Penny Rue. The university has so far conducted a total of 33 tests based on symptoms over the first week of classes, all of which were negative. The university’s 29 reported tests as of Sept. 2 were conducted off campus with students’ independent resources, Rue explains. Random testing was introduced and implemented this week with the advice of top infectious disease experts at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to Rue.
See Testing, Page 6
Tracking history of race at WFU The Old Gold & Black looks back at 117 years of racial relations at Wake Forest
requested to remain anonymous, started suspecting that she and her boyfriend had COVID-19 symptoms on Tuesday, Aug, 25. Both took a COVID-19 PCR test off-campus from CVS and reported their situation to SHS on the same day. Her friend’s results would not be ready by Thursday, Aug. 27, but that was not the version Ziereis heard from the SHS contact tracer when contacted by Wake Forest. “On Wednesday, [Aug. 26] at about 4:35 p.m., my roommate and I got a call from Student Health saying that someone we had contact with had tested positive. Meanwhile, our friend in question, who thought she had COVID-19, told us she had not gotten her results back from CVS, nor had her boyfriend,” Ziereis said. “We didn’t really ask more questions, we were kind of freaked out and we went to the [Wake Forest quarantine hotel] room by like 6:30 p.m. So, that was our first night there.” Ziereis recounts that she and four other friends got contacted by an SHS contact tracer and moved to the quarantine location between Wednesday and Friday, Aug. 28, despite no positive COVID-19 result from the friend who originally reported to SHS.
Editor’s Note: the following article contains strong content and imagery related to issues of race that may upset some readers. Reader discretion is advised. Throughout the 20th century, the Wake Forest University yearbook, the Howler, published explicitly racist images and text. Racist illustrations were used to portray the university’s law and medical schools, athletic teams, and student organizations. Blackface images were printed regularly in association with greek organizations. While disturbing and frequently grotesque, these images are a valuable source for understanding the extent to which racism permeates the university’s social and academic structure.
See Quarantine, Page 6
See Timeline, Page 4-5
BY JACK PORTMAN Opinion Editor portjt17@wfu.edu