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Mines Sees Uptick in Coronavirus, Bans Guests from Dorm Rooms

As of yesterday afternoon, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology reported fifteen cases of coronavirus among students and two among faculty. 103 Mines community members are in quarantine or isolation, with 32 of those in campus residences. In response to that level of infection, Mines says it is at Level 3 of the four levels the Board of Regents has laid out for face mask rules. At Level 3, everyone at Mines has to wear face masks in any public indoor space.

An increase in self-reported cases among students has led Mines to ban guests from dorm rooms:

“As the current COVID-19 situation is fluid, changes to the guest policy are subject to change,” the housing office said in an email. “We will communicate these changes through emails, signage, and on the South Dakota Mines website.”

The university updated its residential COVID-19 guest policy to Level Four and told students to begin complying with the following rules as of 5 p.m. Wednesday night:

  • No guests are authorized.
  • Only students assigned to a specific apartment, suite or room may be in their assigned space.
  • Masks are not required within one’s assigned space.
  • Students in their building are considered a resident of their floor or wing, and a guest in all other residence halls.
  • Visiting other residence halls to utilize kitchens, laundry rooms and study spaces is allowed.
  • Common areas (such as the first floor Placer lounge and the PC Commons) are available for use only to the residents of these spaces [Morgan Matzen, “Mines Ends Dorm Guest Policy as ‘Number’ of Covid-19 Cases Come from Students Who Gather in Private Rooms,” Rapid City Journal, 2020.09.09].

Not being able to have as many people over to your (rented, state-owned) apartment is a bummer. But so is unchecked spread of a costly pandemic. University life isn’t back to normal, and to get back to anything resembling normal, our universities will have to continue restricting gatherings and taking other precautions to contain coroanvirus.

8 Comments

  1. I wonder of the SDSU tyranny will make it onto infowars.com

    Gotta love them college students .. they are informed, the cat is out of the bag, the toothpaste is out of the tube.

    Anyone attending university in the last 25 years should be PISSED and ready to tar and feather (proverbially, but literally wouldn’t hurt my feelings personally) really bad globalist administrators in “the club”.

  2. leslie

    College students are 19. Kudos Brookings!!!!!!

  3. mike from iowa

    I wonder of the SDSU tyranny will make it onto infowars.com

    If it does it won’t be in recognizable form or based in reality.

  4. leslie

    You are not from the US are u.

  5. leslie

    …John Dale. Four dots to end a sentence :)

  6. leslie

    Russian-aligned troll, eh!

  7. John

    Imagine what would have occurred had the Mines president possessed a STEM degree and believed in . . . science.

    It’s past the time to discharge the presidents of Mines, State, and the U for malpractice – and to replace the regents for their collective and individual near-criminal neglect. Imagine the gall of the 3 institutions offering science, nursing, and medical doctor degrees . . . ain’t no preventative public health practiced here. And we wonder why the US is becoming a 3d world nation. The US now has healthcare outcomes and an education system comparable with that in Albania.
    https://www.socialprogress.org/?compare=ALB
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-drops-to-no-28-on-this-global-well-being-index-2020-09-10?reflink=MW_GoogleNews
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/united-states-social-progress.html

    If only someone could have seen the college COVID crisis coming . . . https://www.profgalloway.com/uss-university

  8. Debbo

    The most bizarre aspect of this pandemic is that the people clamoring loudest for it to end are the ones whose behavior is prolonging it.

    Oh, the irony!

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