University of Wyoming students and faculty are unenthusiastic about going to the football game this Friday in person due to COVID-19 related concerns and limited stadium capacity.
“I don’t think this is the sort of event I would feel comfortable going to,” said Kailee Behunin, an Anthropology student.
Behunin is not planning on going to the game and did not try to get a ticket.
“I think that the majority of the people going to the event won’t be students and I have no idea if they’re tested regularly or if they’re adhering to social distancing practices or if they will even be willing to wear masks. I’ve been socially conditioned at this point to be afraid of large gatherings of people,” said Behunin.
Beau Brown, a Marketing and ENR Student, is also not planning on going to the game on Friday.
“It doesn’t really sound that appealing to me, none of my friends are going,” said Brown. “I think there is a lack of anticipation—I didn’t know about it until yesterday.”
“I think the idea of the game excites students, but at the same time I don’t think they’re necessarily excited for the actual game—I think their excitement comes from things starting to go back to normal,” said Brown.
Brown predicts the Cowboys will win against Hawaii, and said he might go to games in person later in the season.
A professor in Economics, Amber Brown, said “I think our team will play just as hard and do just as well without the fans—they will probably miss the fans, but once they’re in the game I think their focus is so good they will play just as well as they would normally.”
Professor Brown is not planning on going to the game, but is going to watch it on TV to avoid a large number of fans.
She hopes UW sells enough tickets to fill the COVID-19 adjusted capacity, but “there have been certainly a lot of games across the country where they haven’t sold all the tickets that are available.”
Behunin doesn’t believe the university should have the football games open to the public.
“I think it is unreasonable considering the fact that many students are having their classes cancelled,” said Behunin. “I actually had the labs for my class cancelled the same day I got the email to sign up for a ticket to the football game.”
Behunin’s lab for her Intro to Biological Anthropology class was cancelled due to a suspicion of a COVID-19 outbreak from in-person labs.
“If it is not safe for us to educate students, it is certainly not safe to entertain them with football,” said Behunin.
Students are concerned the contact tracing program won’t be enough to contain an outbreak triggered by the football game.
“The contact tracing program in my opinion is already insufficiently done,” said Behunin.
“At an event that size with that many people we do not have in our contact tracing program, there is no way they would catch everyone—which means it would be an outbreak we have no control over except for the student population,” said Behunin.
“I hope that if there were outbreaks related to the game that they would seek to do something about that,” said Behunin.
