As omicron spreads on campus, local universities and colleges face COVID-19 in its ‘junior year’

Stock photo of students at Dixie State University, St. George, Utah, March 18, 2021 | Photo courtesy of Alex Santiago/DSU, St. George News

ST. GEORGEOn Jan. 10, students, faculty and staff began a new semester as instruction resumed at universities around the state of Utah – just in time for a nationwide surge both in COVID-19 transmission and hospitalizations attributed to the infectious omicron variant of the disease.

Stock photo of an at-home COVID-19 testing kit | Photo by Michele Ursi/iStock/Getty Images Plus, St. George News

Jon Anderson, Southern Utah University provost, said school officials started watching the uptick in cases about a week and a half before classes started.

“We did not fully anticipate the effects of omicron, but overall I think we’re in a very good place.”

SUU and its St. George neighbor, Dixie State University, had planned for the eventuality but were still surprised by just how contagious the new variant turned out to be. With more flexible testing capacity and instruction methods (also known as modalities), SUU administrators and faculty did their best to weather the first couple weeks of classes, Anderson said.

At least 661 students, faculty and staff at SUU have tested positive for COVID-19 since Jan. 3, according to data shared by the university. These numbers represent both positive cases tested on campus as well as self-reported positive cases. By comparison, only 51 members of the campus community either tested positive or reported a positive test from Nov. 29 to Jan. 2, and the university recorded just 141 cases in the first three weeks of the fall 2021 semester.

Dr. Garyn Gulbranson, director of the Booth Wellness Center at Dixie State, said the situation has been similarly difficult for the DSU community. 

“We are kind of on par with a lot of other institutions throughout the state of Utah,” he said. “For context, we had about 48 cases in our first week of classes last year (in fall 2021).” 

Gulbranson said in the first week of school, they had approximately 77 positive cases, although he didn’t specify if those numbers include both tests on campus and self-reporting.

“Fortunately, we’ve not had any students or staff or faculty or wherever who have gone to the hospital,” he said, “so that’s positive.”

Students and faculty chat outside the McDonald Center on Dixie State campus. The campus community has seen a significant rise in COVID-19 cases similar to the surge seen across the nation, St. George, Utah, Jan. 20, 2022 | Photo by Ammon Teare, St. George News

Case numbers were not available going back to Jan. 3 as they were with SUU; however, the Booth Wellness Center has reported an additional 90 cases since Jan. 18, for a total of 167 positive cases since the semester began. 

The effects of the new variant are certainly visible to – and impacting – students as well, in addition to the inherent chaos of adjusting to a new class schedule and course load.

“One class in particular that first day of class was a full, full classroom,” said Addy Dabb, a DSU freshman. “In fact, there were chairs brought in from other classrooms because there were too many people.”

Dabb said the class hasn’t been that full since.

“I realize that some people probably dropped and things like that, but even the professor said she’s gotten so many emails about students out with COVID,” she said. “At one point I think every row had one or two chairs empty because of kids with COVID.”

University contact tracing got involved before classes even began thanks to the post-holiday surge in infections, something that came as a surprise to SUU senior Caitlin Henderson.

“The school is responsible for letting everyone know via email if someone in your classes tests positive for COVID, and it was funny that this semester before school started I got two emails saying that people in my classes had COVID,”  Henderson said. “And I was like, ‘We’re not even in classes. I don’t know why you’re sending this to me.’ But there has been a significant increase in those emails.”

Though Dixie State offered voluntary vaccination clinics several times in 2021, university officials ultimately decided not to mandate vaccinations as some other Utah universities have, St. George, Utah, date unspecified | Photo courtesy of Dixie State University Marketing and Communication, St. George News

While the scope of the current situation is apparent to students and staff and well documented by available data, members of the campus communities remain divided on its severity and possible solutions.

The semester’s start marked the beginning of COVID-19 vaccination requirements for several schools around the state, including the University of Utah, Weber State University and Salt Lake Community College. 

Meanwhile, institutions of higher education in Southern Utah opted to forgo the requirement, though both SUU and DSU, as well as Dixie Technical College and Southwest Technical College, all strongly encourage students to get vaccinated.

DSU Institute of Politics Director Vince Brown said that although he was only speaking as a professor and from personal experience, not as a university representative, he’s fairly confident the university did not establish a mandate primarily because of the broad exemptions established by the Utah Legislature.

“The exemption that exists in Utah … it’s big enough to drive a Mack truck through,” Brown said.  “So the reasoning is there’s no teeth on the mandate. I think the state telling the universities what they can and can’t do to maintain the health and safety of their students, faculty and staff is probably misguided. I think it’s a misstep.”

From observing his classes and his interactions with community members, Brown said the majority of Southern Utah residents and local students are opposed to mask and vaccine mandates, though the prevailing attitudes flip when it comes to upper division students – at least in Brown’s political science courses.

Stock image | Photo courtesy of the CDC, St. George News

“My personal view is that we should – at every step and every phase – encourage vaccination,” he said. “And I can tell you as someone that has a legal background that we have about 116 years of jurisprudence that says that vaccines can be mandated. Vaccinations work.”

In contrast, some members of the faculty and student body at Dixie State celebrate the state’s intervention and the subsequent protections from a university-imposed requirement. 

McGarren Flack, assistant professor of foundations in the DSU art department, said his views were shaped in part by his experience teaching and his work as a paramedic in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak.

“I’m grateful that the state has decided that institutions of higher education can’t require masks or mandate the vaccine and that it’s open to the public to be able to make that decision,” Flack said. “I love that aspect of it because of the freedom there for people to choose what they want to do with their bodies or their masks or whatever. Not that I’m anti-vaccine or anti-mask; I’m anti-removal of rights.”

Only about 10% of students in Flack’s classes wear masks regularly, he said, even though it’s highly recommended. He said he does not wear a mask himself and that the focus should be on cultivating antibodies to the virus, whether that’s through natural immunity or vaccination.

L-R: Noah Flikkema and Addy Dabb say they wish their classmates and fellow students at Dixie State University took more precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, St. George, Utah, Jan. 20, 2022 | Photo by Ammon Teare, St. George News

Students continue to grapple with these issues in discussions in classrooms, on campus grounds and even in their living spaces. Dabb said the differences in opinion and expectations can be frustrating.

“I understand there’s kind of a political side to forcing masks, and I can understand both sides of that, but I just wish there was a little more humanity about it,” she said. “There’s the argument that only 1% (of people) are dying, but that ends up being a lot of people in the grand scheme of things. I just wish it was taken a little more seriously.”

Noah Flikkema, another DSU freshman, said the contradictory messages from the university as an institution occasionally clash with the behavior of individual administration and faculty members. 

“Even though we have signs at the entrance of every building saying masks are strongly recommended, sometimes even faculty don’t wear them,” Flikkema said. “I would love it if I could see every student masked up, trying to take precautions for themselves and also for others around them. I have lost people due to COVID, so when I see people not taking it seriously, it really hurts.”

Other student concerns shared with St. George News generally focused on communication from administration. Some students requested clarification on quarantine rules for on-campus housing and living spaces shared by multiple roommates, while other students asked for more information about vaccination resources and possible availability through the university.

Campus resources for testing sites, health protocols and vaccine information can be found through the SUU and Dixie State websites, as well as updated case counts for students and university employees.

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!