Elizabethtown College announced in a COVID-19 campus update email Monday, April 21 that interhall visitation would be permitted starting Thursday, April 15. In an email sent a few weeks earlier Monday, March 22, the COVID-19 Task Force said that they would not permit interhall visitation at that time but would instead continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation and revisit their decision in a few weeks.
Since the College has reopened campus, it has employed intentionally cautious COVID-19 mitigation strategies, including restrictions on interhall visitation, which have resulted in much more success than similar institutions. Throughout the semester, the COVID-19 Task Force has been reviewing students’ requests to allow interhall visitation. The Task Force explained that their core reasons for allowing interhall visitation are the increased surveillance testing rate for students now at 25 percent; sustained compliance to other mitigation efforts such as completing the Daily Digital Health Report, wearing face masks and social distancing; more readily available access to the COVID-19 vaccine and the lack of spread of COVID-19 on campus in comparison to local and state levels. For all of these reasons, the Task Force feels more comfortable with allowing interhall visitation now than earlier in the semester.
The Task Force has also established some guidelines for interhall visitation. Students need to wear face masks when visiting their friends in other residence halls; these masks can be removed when the door is shut and other that room’s residents are present in the room. Commuters, remote students and outside guests are not allowed to visit residence halls, and the capacity of any residence room will be that room’s occupancy plus one. For example, a double room in one of the residence halls will now have a capacity of three. Students will also need to wear face masks when in common areas or lobbies of residence halls.
“[Interhall visitation] does pose a new risk, however we will monitor our contact tracing data to identify if there is any correlation between any potential spread of COVID-19 with students visiting others in residence halls,” the Task Force said.
If students follow the mitigation strategies presented above for interhall visitation, the Task Force believes that the risk of transmitting COVID-19 will be greatly reduced. The Task Force also hopes that interhall visitation will have a positive impact on students’ social and mental health, as many students have felt disconnected and secluded during the semester.
Students have already been taking advantage of the new freedom in the form of interhall visitation by visiting and spending time with friends in each other’s residence halls. Hopefully, interhall visitation can provide some stress relief for students as the semester comes to an end and finals week begins.
“I’m really glad Etown is now allowing interhall visitation,” fifth-year occupational therapy Hannah Paymer said, “I think it will motivate students to stay on campus to hang out with their friends instead of constantly leaving campus and coming back.”
However, the Task Force also said that interhall visitation would be suspended if the College experienced a sudden significant increase in on-campus positive student COVID-19 cases and in students requiring quarantine. This would be the appropriate mitigation strategy if the increase in cases was found to be linked to interhall visitation.
In regards to interhall visitation continuing for the Fall 2021 semester, the Task Force will be reviewing that decision over the summer, with an announcement being made well before the start of next semester.
