'What's the Point?': After Outbreak, Some Chico State Students Question Continuing Online

When 18-year-old Catrina Maguire moved into her dorm at CSU Chico in mid-August, she was very much looking forward to the traditional college experience.

Her final semester of high school had been abruptly interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. And when everything went online, she ended up finishing the school year from her home in San Francisco’s Sunset District that she shares with her parents and five siblings.

“And I don’t even have, really, a functioning desk,” she said.

Suffice to say, Maguire was yearning for some independence and grateful to be among the select students able to live on campus.

In May, California State University Chancellor Timothy White announced that most of the system’s 23 campuses would continue to offer classes primarily online for the fall 2020 semester.

But in an announcement in June, CSU Chico President Gayle Hutchinson said the university still planned to offer a limited number of in-person classes and would provide single-room residence hall accommodations for just over 1,000 students — less than 50% of typical occupancy. By August, the school had further reduced that ceiling to just 750 students, or about one-third of normal occupancy.

From the get-go, though, it was clear to Maguire that the traditional college experience wouldn’t be in the cards this year.

To encourage social distancing, students were required to sign up for three-hour blocks of time over two days to move into their dorms. They were each allowed only one guest — in Maguire’s case, her mom — to help them haul boxes and furniture to their rooms.

Maguire eventually got settled in her dorm in Shasta Hall ahead of the beginning of classes on Aug. 24. And while campus life wasn’t exactly what she had once considered normal, she was adjusting.

“We had to wear masks, even in our dorm hallway, so that was a little weird, but I kind of knew to expect that,” she said. “I was still able to meet people outside and get food with them and just make sure we kept enough distance.”

Then, less than a week after classes started, she got an email from administrators announcing that the university would immediately begin transitioning to fully online classes because of a COVID-19 outbreak on campus. And that meant students like Maguire who had just moved into their dorm rooms would now have to pack up again.

The Outbreak

In a press conference held over Zoom on Sept. 1, CSU Chico President Gayle Hutchinson said the school had followed state and federal guidelines and done everything it could to prevent the coronavirus from spreading across campus. That included limiting the number of in-person classes, significantly reducing the on-campus student population and enforcing social distancing and mask rules.

Hutchinson said the school was put on alert when Butte County public health officials began seeing a sharp increase in cases among young adults.

The county reported a total of 557 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases at the end of August among 18- to 24-year-olds in Butte County, a dramatic increase since the beginning of the month. Most cases were from the Chico area.

“This increase in cases comes just over one week after the start of the CSU, Chico fall semester,” officials said in a recent press release. “While BCPH [Butte County Public Health] cannot confirm that all cases associated with people ages 18-24 in Chico are college students, the increase in cases does coincide closely with the start of school and the influx of a large number of college-age students.”

On Aug. 25, the school informed students and faculty of two new confirmed positive COVID-19 cases on campus. A few days later, five additional cases were reported, and then nine more after that, bringing the total number of cases that had been identified on the campus since the beginning of August to 36, officials said.

“And when we look at exposure to those particular cases, then we knew that exponential growth would require us to do something to protect public health, and that something was to make everything go virtual and to vacate our residence halls,” Hutchinson said.

Students were initially given one week to leave the dorms and find other housing options — a short time frame to find a new apartment in a notoriously tight housing market. University officials say they’ve been trying to accommodate students who need more time, and those who are unable to go home will be able apply for “hardship housing,” allowing them to stay in another residence hall on campus.

“We know that (there are) students who are interested in living with us because they, for whatever reason, can’t go home or don’t have a home to go to,” Hutchinson said. “We have housing-insecure students, students who are former foster youth. So we’re absolutely helping those folks.”

The school has received 115 applications for hardship housing so far, she said, but most students have opted to go home.

Maguire is among them.

“I need to feel some sense of security right now,” she explained. “Like, not having a graduation, not finishing senior year traditionally. And then having a semi-traditional freshman year and then getting that taken away. … I need some familiar surroundings right now to be able to clear my head.”

Who’s to Blame?

Some have been quick to blame actions by students for the recent spike in new cases, pointing to CSU Chico’s longstanding reputation as a “party school.”

But Maguire said it was inevitable.

“To be honest with you, parties or not, I think it would have happened because we’re all accessing the same door handles. We’re all using the same bathrooms. We’re all going to pick up our food from the same spot,” she said.

And while she acknowledges that partying may have played a part, she also notes that the university did not require testing or quarantining when students arrived.

“It’s kind of like, socializing or not, how could you expect no COVID cases to come from this?” she said.

Juanita Mottley with WellCat Health Center on campus said the university has been requesting coronavirus test kits, but has been unable to get them due to high demand from hospitals and public health departments.

Some have suggested that because the coronavirus can be carried asymptomatically, students might have brought the virus with them from home. But with so many venues for the virus to spread, university officials say it’s too soon to determine how exactly it got on campus.

“There are many variables. There could be people who are symptomatic and did not know it,” Mottley said. “And … whenever you start traveling and (have) people moving around, that’s going to increase the risk as well. So I think there’s too many variables to say directly what caused the spike in cases here in Butte County.”

Ultimately, it’s not productive to try to place blame on individual groups of students, said Lindsay Briggs, a CSU Chico public health professor.

“We could point out the students who were partying or point at the people who weren’t wearing masks or people who didn’t know that they were sick, but that’s actually not the root cause of all of this,” Briggs said, pointing to systemic failures to appropriately address the virus at the national level.

The ‘New’ College Experience

With her first foray into college — and the independence that comes with it — on hold for now, Maguire is trying to make the most of the situation. She’s working on getting a foldable desk and finding a quiet space at her parents’ house where she can study in peace.

But as for what comes next, Maguire’s not sure. She has scholarships for this semester and plans to finish her classes. But after that, she’s not certain she’ll stay at the school.

“If I’m not here in person … I have the thought, like, what’s the point? Especially spending the money,” she said. “What’s the difference between Chico State online and community college online?”