On Friday, January 14, the university announced that residential students who test positive for COVID-19 may be required to isolate in their assigned rooms, rather than relocating to dedicated isolation accommodation at Stony Island Hall. In an email sent Friday to all students living in college housing, Associate Vice President for Campus Life Richard Mason and Interim Executive Director of Housing & Residence Life Heath Rossner wrote that UChicago is also considering students whose Housemates who have tested positive for COVID-19 to move to nearby accommodations. “These alternate housing options are located either on campus or very close to campus and are provided at no additional cost,” Mason and Rossner wrote.
According to a Resident Assistant (RA) present at a meeting of Housing & Residence Life (HRL) staff at Renee Granville-Grossman Residential Commons West on Wednesday, the university floated the idea of using nearby hotels for housing to be used by students. The RA, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from HRL, said the interim senior assistant director of residence life at Granville-Grossman, Jessica Beaver-Hollman, told Granville-Grossman’s housing staff that the university Consider hotel accommodation if current quarantine facilities face additional stress.
The university reported 481 new COVID-19 cases in its Jan. 6 weekly update and 469 cases in its Jan. 14 update — the two highest new case counts since reporting began — but only 13 students were in as of Jan. 14 Quarantine accommodation on campus. Currently, the former Stony Island dorm is the only quarantine housing location on campus. According to an email from the university, Stony is currently operating at a capacity of 120 people. Some students Those who have been isolating in Stony have reported that the building’s 4-person apartments currently sleep 6 people at a time.
University spokesman Jeremy Manier declined to clarify whether the additional accommodation would be offered at local hotels, writing in a further comment to The Maroon: “The alternative accommodation would include both vacant dorm rooms and additional rooms in close proximity to the include campuses. Manier added that students in any type of alternative accommodation would still have access to their meal plans for the duration of their move.
This wouldn’t be the first time the university has approached her local hotels to accommodate students. In Fall 2020, single rooms have been allocated on designated floors at the Sophy Hotel on East 53rd Street and the Hyatt Place Hotel in Harper Court leased available exclusively to UChicago students at monthly rates of $2,300 and $3,000, respectively.
Another Granville-Grossman RA, who attended a meeting of Renee Granville-Grossman East employees on Thursday, January 13, which also discussed the hotel housing plan, said they felt the hotels could have a better Solution might offer than the local isolation policy.
“No one there [the] Apartment staff like the idea of on-site isolation. We have RH [resident heads] with young children who cannot be vaccinated, so the idea of sick people living among us in our building and potentially infecting other people and making them really sick is terrifying,” they said.
The RA added that as a member of the housing staff, she was struggling to keep up with university decision-making during the pandemic. “I wasn’t clear what the plan was, really, and that seems to be a pattern through all this Omicron stuff,” they said. “Nothing is planned. Nothing is clearly communicated. We’re all floating around waiting to see what the university does next.”
