Madison F. Smith

By Madison Smith
Date: March 2021

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott Arizona, is handling the pandemic differently than the University of Connecticut According to Nathan Hawk, a residential freshman at the Daytona Beach campus, said about the testing on campus, “Now and then they’ll do tests but most of the time it is at your discretion.” Hawk also says, “I try to go every two weeks at least.”

Compared to UConn the testing for commuter students, if they have any classes that meet in person, they had to get tested for COVID-19 every week of February. UConn has also made it starting on March 1 that students will be randomly selected throughout the spring semester. The Student Health and Wellness, SHAW, website says “Off-campus students with an on-campus commitment will have access to five (5) self-requested surveillance tests in addition to any testing requested by SHaW. Off-campus students without an on-campus commitment will have access to three (3) self-requested surveillance tests in addition to any testing requested by SHAW.” This means that any students who are concerned that they might have caught the Coronavirus can get tested through the school instead of getting tested through a drive-up testing site.

For both schools, this semester is better than last semester because they knew what they were doing they figured out the problems from the fall semester and fixed them, so testing was easier and smoother. Hawk said this about Riddle “I feel like they are doing better this semester than they were last because the COVID test things are more often…”  This is a good thing because that can lead Riddle to know where the hotspots are if there are hot spots. When asked if he were to change one thing about how Riddle is handling the pandemic Hawk says “I think it would be a good idea if everyone tested once a month…” If Riddle did test once a month then they would help protect the students, staff, and faculty better. UConn did this with the commuter students and did random pool testing for the residential students. Pool testing if you were not aware is when you collect a whole residential hall and it takes a spit test and then all of the spit goes into a test tube and gets shaken around and it will tell whether or not that residential hall has COVID or not.

If you have any more questions about COVID-19 go to UConn Student Health and Wellness or the Embry Riddle Health and Wellness.