On October 3, President Seidel sent an email to the UW community and said students who are not taking the weekly COVID-19 tests will not be allowed on campus for anything. Some students said this is not threatening enough to persuade the UW community to take the tests though.
“I don’t see the point in taking COVID tests if I won’t be on campus,” said a student who wishes to stay anonymous.
The anonymous source said they have not taken any COVID-19 tests this semester and doesn’t think they need to because all their classes are online and they live off campus.
Seidel said in his email that students who do not take COVID-19 tests will not be allowed on campus for in person classes, seek in person student services or participate in activities. Seidel said this may seem harsh but that it is not due to what is at stake.
The anonymous source said they ignore the weekly emails to schedule a time to take the COVID-19 test. The university only said that they cannot go on campus until they take a test, which they said was not very persuasive.
Luke Foering, an environmental systems science major, said the testing through the university has been done very well. He said he personally doesn’t know anybody who doesn’t take the COVID-19 tests but said testing twice a week was too much.
“Going once a week was enough for my schedule,” said Foering.
Foering said Laramie in general does not seem to be taking COVID-19 too seriously. He said the consequences for not taking the required testing through the university though should be more severe such as taking away football games.
“Disregarding our COVID-19 requirements not only puts other people, including more vulnerable faculty and staff members, at risk; it threatens the ability of fellow students to complete necessary in-person coursework to continue progress toward their degrees,” said Seidel.
Seidel said the university has administered 16,000 tests since the summer plus hundreds of tests administered at Student Health and external providers. However, hundreds of students have not responded to “personalized emails” to schedule times to take COVID-19 tests or have not shown up to complete the test.
Some students have not received emails to take COVID-19 tests from the university though.
“I took the very first test before coming back to school but I haven’t had to test since then,” said education major Jenna Kellar. “I’m not sure why honestly, maybe I just got lucky and wasn’t randomly selected, maybe it is because I’m all online.”
Kellar said she doesn’t think she needs to take the weekly COVID-19 tests though.
“I don’t have any in person classes so I’m never on campus so I don’t see a huge reason to get tested,” said Kellar. “If I was exposed I would. The only weird thing is how often my friends get tested versus how I’m never tested and we go to the same school.”
Kellar said she doesn’t think it is a mistake on the university’s part not selecting her for COVID-19 testing but said it is just inconsistent on their part.
