The message below was sent by Eleanor JB Daugherty, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs & Dean of Students, to students on all campuses on February 23, 2022
Subject: ROYGBIV: Managing COVID and the Color Coded System
Hi there, Huskies,
I had a great meeting with my advisory group last week (you are all welcome to come to a meeting). They reminded me that it would be helpful to talk about masking and our current orange status.
I know that many of you are hoping to transition to yellow, where masking is optional, so I want to spend some time talking with you about how we think about masking.
We meet regularly as a university-wide team and discuss three things: care, confidence, and context.
Care: This is an important time for us to discuss the presence of illness on campus and the care we provide. That includes the number of positive students but also the degree to which the contact tracing shows us that we have effectively contained exposure and spread to others. This can never be done perfectly, and the University is invested in ensuring that we are safely managing the presence of illness on campus. As you know from the dashboard, we continue to report a notable number of covid cases and I’m grateful to the medical team for their hard work in containing spread.
Confidence: We know that vaccination (including boosters), masking, and symptom checking works. Those have been successful prevention strategies for us. When vaccination rates are high (including boosters), along with mask compliance, we feel more confident about our ability to be a healthy community. We also gain (or lose) confidence as we evaluate wastewater on campus and identify the presence of COVID – often early on before symptoms develop.
Context: Context matters. This includes the level of COVID-19 across our campuses, hospitalization rates in the state, and presence of variants both domestically and abroad.
Within the last few days, all of these factors have been trending in a good direction. However, COVID is not over. We continue to have a notable number who are testing positive and require isolation or are impacted by quarantine because they are not fully vaccinated and/or boosted.
We are also very attentive to the recent direction of the Governor and the anticipated guidance that will follow for state agencies (such as UConn). When we receive that guidance, we will continue to assess our current position and make appropriate changes.
UConn is both a place for work and a home. My focus is ensuring that we continue to be a safe place for you to live and learn. I’m hopeful these indicators are pointing us in the right direction.
All my best,
Eleanor JB Daugherty, EdD
she/her/hers
Associate Vice President and Dean of Students
P.S. My advisory also reminded me that it was Anthony’s birthday and I forgot to say anything (sorry).
For more information, contact: Janice Canniff at janice.canniff@uconn.edu