Is Being Back Worth It?

Too Soon? Who Knows.

To be completely blunt and realistic, online school was not the easiest thing to adjust to over the past academic year. With brains fried, attention spans fractured to a minimum, learning new software and not being able to get a full tuition’s worth of education is just the icing on the cake on how horrible online school was.

Now it’s 2021 though, and school is back in session and for the most part, fully in-person. When the world slowly started to open up, mask mandates disappeared. Things were getting back to normal. Most venues, including restaurants, bars, arcades, and sports stadiums were allowing up to almost full capacity. Now, we’re here, in September, and COVID cases are starting to rise again now that there is a strange new strain of COVID known as the Delta Variant raging around. However, Auraria Campus is dedicated and committed to being open and most, if not all, classes to be fully in-person unless said otherwise.Students are required to wear a mask whenever indoors outdoors it is not required.

As much as it is great to be back on campus and interacting with friends that have only been seen on a tiny Zoom screen for the past year and a half, it’s too soon to say that it is safe to be back. Granted, Auraria Campus sent out an email to students and faculty to sign a proof of vaccination form which required those to enter the dates in which both shots were administered. Yet on the other hand, there was a vaccination exempt form, where students and faculty can sign a waiver to either not show proof of vaccination or because they have not been vaccinated.

This is where it gets tricky, especially because it is not enforced to wear masks outdoors on campus. Yes, it has been known and stated that even when vaccinated, people can still get COVID—it would just not be as severe as getting it when not vaccinated—but it’s less of a risk. It’s a person’s choice to get vaccinated, but just know the risks and safety precautions for those around and oneself. One of the safety precautions, thankfully, to keep a COVID-free environment is that those who did sign the vaccination exempt form have to get a COVID test every week as stated in an email from Auraria Campus.

All in all, this topic is tricky because there are so many pros and cons as to why students should be either on or off campus. No one wants to go back to Zoom classes. It’s a nightmare to focus and learn new things. What’s worse though: Online school or catching COVID?