Yahoo Finance 'A very unsafe environment': Liberty University student discusses on-campus coronavirus outbreak
Liberty University has joined a handful of colleges that have been forced to shift to online learning as the fall semester kicks off due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
The private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia has ordered a campus-wide quarantine that will go into effect on Aug. 30 and expire on Sept. 10. Prior to the fall semester beginning on Aug. 24, the school did not have a mask or vaccine mandate in place.
"To me, it's just been a very unsafe environment," Robert Locklear, a 21-year-old journalism student at Liberty, told Yahoo Finance. "We're seeing thousands of students from literally all over the country gathered together with zero restrictions... you're on the bus with 50 other people packed together, you're in the cafeteria with hundreds of other people, you're passing in the hallways and coming in very close contact with no one wearing masks."
Liberty's COVID-19 dashboard noted 159 active COVID-19 cases, out of which 124 were students. The university has around 15,000 students and 5,000 faculty or staff on campus. The dashboard was last updated on Aug. 25.
Liberty University sees 'chaotic' start to semester
Liberty's temporary pivot to remote learning follows schools including Rice University in Houston, University of Texas in San Antonio, Rhode Island College in Providence, and others who have changed plan ahead of fall semester.
Many others are watching nervously as positive cases tick up.
Locklear, who got vaccinated in the spring semester and moved back in on Aug. 21, noted that this year has been "pretty chaotic" also in part because Liberty's freshman class grew. In May, a Liberty University spokesperson told one outlet that the university is on track to have as many as 500 more incoming residential students than last year.
Furthermore, despite the recent surge of the highly contagious Delta variant, Locklear said masks were largely out of the picture.
"I've hardly seen any at all, for the past week, maybe five or six every day, out of literally hundreds of people," he said.
Colleges dangling perks to boost vaccinations
Other schools have dangled cash incentives to persuade students to get vaccinated.
For instance, Norfolk State University recently started offering $500 to students who show proof of vaccination by September 20. Oklahoma Christian University also ran a sweepstakes for vaccinated students, which included AirPods, Xboxes, and more. (California colleges instituted vaccine mandates.)
Some schools re-started regular testing, such as Stanford University, but that effort will be another Herculean task given how colleges handled last year's outbreaks.
"Looking at past semesters, last spring, only about 8% of institutions tested at what we would consider to be an adequate level of testing," Chris Marsicano, assistant professor of educational studies at Davidson College, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). (Testing once weekly, using high-quality tests, was considered for adequate for that analysis.)
Back in Lynchburg, the 21-year-old Locklear said this entire episode was a little disconcerting given Liberty's Christian mission.
"I just think it's a case where people should be looking to the values that they truly believe in," he said. "That's a major, major problem, especially for Liberty, because they're supposed to be caring more for others."
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Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.
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