Will the University Close Soon?

 As my mom came home in tears from moving my freshman brother into his dorm, I gave her a hug and jokingly said, "Don't worry, he'll get sent home in three weeks." This was a month ago, and he is still living in his dorm. It may not be the college experience he was looking forward to, but he is still on campus.

I feel as if many students approached the semester with the same mindset as I did: we would move onto campus, be there for a week or two, and pack up and leave as cases soared. Social media depicted this exact situation at other universities around the country, including UNC Chapel Hill and Notre Dame. However, a month into school, I am starting to believe more and more that a university shut down won't be occurring, or at least not as soon as expected. Whenever I go onto campus to go to the library, I see people social distancing, wearing masks, and using hand sanitizer. Many classes have also reduced the capacity of students that can attend at one time, which further promotes social distancing. Living off campus, I don't see everything occurring and all of the steps being put into place, but when I do go on campus to study or go to class, I am pleasantly surprised to see the enacted policies and students following them.

As a student who is not on campus every day, it is easy to feel out of the loop on the pandemic updates. Fortunately, Eli Capiluto has sent out a link that allows all students and staff to keep up with the live cases, students in quarantine, and the recovered cases. I have found this very helpful in being aware of the university's current standing with COVID. The day I am writing this blog post, there are 432 active cases of COVID-19 at the University of Kentucky. Though this number may seem big, it is far smaller than I expected. I have been checking the active case count for the last few days, and it has seemed to remain fairly consistent. This has fed into my confidence that students will be allowed to stay on campus for longer than most of us anticipated.

The link to see the live COVID stats for the university is https://www.uky.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-data-dashboard?j=259221&sfmc_sub=147809236&l=21_HTML&u=8047059&mid=10966798&jb=20.