With the Thanksgiving holiday and break fast approaching, students are wondering about Drury’s official stance on classes resuming in-person. In the weekly update, sent on Oct 29, the Drury University COVID-19 Response Team stated “classes will resume in-person on Monday, November 30 for the final two weeks of the semester. Some classes may move online after Thanksgiving. Students will be notified of this change in the class syllabus or by the faculty member in writing by November 6.”

The ambiguity of the statement has thrown professors off-kilter as well. Faculty members have been making these tough decisions since the statement came out, and no two classes have the same format anymore.

Dr. Rich Schur, Director of the Honors Program, has “told two classes to meet virtually” after the holiday to accommodate final projects, while other classes will still meet in-person “due to the nature of that course material.”

Lucas Pham, a Computer Science major and senior, has only had “firm decisions from those classes which are conducted online already.” The uncertainty concerns him. “With cases breaking a record 100,000 new cases a day as of Thursday with no sign of subsiding,” he said, “the risk of infection and transmission is staggeringly high.”

Pham is right. In Missouri during the last seven days, there have been 18,883 new cases, per the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) COVID-19 data page. New York has only seen 9,783 new cases and Illinois has seen 53,579 (the most cases), to give some perspective. And according to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department’s dashboard, there have been a total of 10,959 cases in the state, with 164 individuals currently hospitalized.

Pham goes on to say that, were he given an option, he believes it is in the “best interest of the Drury community to remain online, or at least, allow students the option to stay home if they don’t feel safe returning to campus.”

When asked if a survey were released to the campus population which he would prefer, Schur felt as though he didn’t have a good answer. He does, however, feel that the Drury administration has taken faculty concerns and suggestions very seriously. “I serve on the COVID-19 Student Health and Public Safety Committee and staff have brought a lot of different concerns and questions to the committee.” There are even SGA representatives on the committee “who have done a great job of bringing student questions and concerns to the committee.”

Meanwhile, Pham felt that the administration has “failed to address the concern of students who are wary of returning in-person after break, or numerous complaints of the administration falsely fining people for not taking COVID tests last month.”

There have been instances of students being unaware that they have missed a scheduled asymptomatic test and being fined at least $50. They have not been verified as of the writing of this article.

Pham followed up with “if a student feels the need to be tested, they should have the option to go to the weekly COVID testing, even if they were not aware of coming in direct contact with a confirmed positive test.” He is adamant in his stance that “if the administration insists on having in-person classes after break, they should implement testing on ALL students upon returning.”

Every student and every professor have had to face their own challenges with the looseness in Drury’s official statement. It can be frustrating to navigate and understand things right now. The main thing to remember is to watch your distance, wash your hands and wear your mask.

What are you thoughts about Drury’s statement? Do you agree or disagree with it?