Dionte Berry
News Editor
[email protected]

With COVID-19 vaccination rates rising, pandemic precautions are not as stringent as they were last year. However Calloway County is still in a highly transmissible zone, and although there is a vaccine safety net there the risk remains.

Students are not the only campus demographic being potentially exposed to COVID-19, faculty and staff can be potentially exposed as well. Professors come into contact with sometimes hundreds of students a day while teaching. These are the same people who have families they go home to that they could possibly infect.

For some professors, social media has become a tool to share their feelings about COVID-19 prevention.

History Professor David Pizzo took to Twitter in the beginning of the fall semester to share how COVID-19 has already invaded his department.

“It’s day two. Dept is so COVID-ravaged I had to man the front desk for several hours, half a dozen students out with COVID exposure,” Pizzo wrote. “A colleague who runs one of our programs in France had a stroke, but could not get a real hospital bed. Dead. The first of many I fear.”

The Twitter thread received a lot of attention and is just one way that professors have shared their feelings.

Assistant Professor of English Ray Horton commented on The News’ Facebook concerning indoor masking on campus.

“A vaccine requirement would be better and has been implemented at other colleges, and universities across the country, but this is a good step forward,” Horton wrote.

After being back to classes for  five weeks, Horton said he wishes there were more steps being taken to slow the spread of COVID-19.

“I’ve been told that one of the things holding us back from that is that all state universities in Kentucky want to be able to take action together. When Murray State implemented a mask mandate, it was within around a day of other universities in Kentucky implementing mask mandates,” Horton said. “I imagine if a vaccine mandate goes into place, it’ll be because all the universities of Kentucky got on the phone together. I would like to see us act on our own, because of how deeply in the red we are here in Calloway.”

Although he is happy to be back in class Horton said the risk of COVID-19 is hindering his teaching.

“One wrong move, and I’m bringing this deadly virus back home to my kids. There’s this weird tension where if I’m able to kind of get in the zone in the classroom and really concentrate on what we’re doing I’m extraordinarily happy to be back,” Horton said. “Then there’s a minute I drift out to realize the reality of where we are, and we’re in the red zone.”

Horton’s way of teaching is interactive and group oriented, but with COVID-19 he’s altered his teaching style in order to lessen COVID-19 transmission possibilities.   

Compared to last  fall, Horton said it is almost as if people are putting on blinders to avoid seeing the problems and spread of COVID-19.

Horton has two children who are not yet old enough to get vaccinated, and the last thing he wants to do is bring back COVID-19 and accidentally infect them. To defend against the virus, Horton is vaccinated and always wears a N95 mask while teaching.

In response to COVID-19, Horton wishes a vaccine mandate were put in place, but sees the incentives as a step in the right direction.

“The incentive is better than nothing. I’m glad they’re doing it, I really do applaud everybody in the Student Government Association who’s been taking the lead, who are really working hard to encourage their peers to get vaccinated,” Horton said.

However, Horton looks to other schools that have more stringent policies and thinks Murray State could benefit from more COVID-19 protocols.

Horton said a possible new protocol could be  routine COVID-19 testing so there can be a better picture of what the case rates on campus look like.

With the vaccine card uploads, Horton questions whether the percentage of uploads will be reflective of actual campus numbers, and if that information will ever be made public regarding the vaccination rate.

“One of the first questions I had for my department chair when the semester began was, ‘Will we ever get any information about what percentage of the campus is vaccinated?’ ” Horton said. “Because Calloway County we know is maybe around 50%? Is Murray State also the student body like around 50%? Or is it more like, you know, 85%?”

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Michelle Panchuk also said more needs to be done in order to combat COVID-19. Panchuk is unsure if incentives will be enough to get Murray State to an 80% vaccination rate.

“I think that many of the people who still remain unvaccinated today are unvaccinated because they have either ideological or scientific concerns about the safety of the vaccine,” Panchuk said. “If someone is either not convinced that COVID is real, or at least not a real health threat or they think that the vaccine poses a threat to their health, I have doubts that the incentives are going to overcome that sort of reason.” 

Since the beginning of the semester, Panchuk has been exposed a couple of times and has had to get tested as a result. Like Horton, she also wears a N95 mask while teaching.

Despite having to get tested multiple times, Panchuk was glad to finally see her students in-person.

“I am so happy to be back in the classroom. Teaching on Zoom wasn’t as difficult as I thought that it would be and it went much better,” Panchuk said. “It’s not the same as being in the classroom, feeling the energy from students getting the sort of visual cues from body language about how students are interacting with the information.”

Panchuk compared her classes from Fall 2020 and Fall 2021. Most of her classes were on Zoom and now many of her classes hardly have any empty seats, but Calloway County is still a red zone the only difference is the vaccine roll out.

With the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine being FDA approved, Panchuk thinks it would be a good step for the university  to issue a  vaccine mandate.

“We already have vaccine mandates for colleges and schools around the country, it wouldn’t be unprecedented to require vaccines in order to attend an institution of education,” Panchuk said.

Along with Horton, Panchuk would like to see more transparency when it comes to the reporting of vaccine percentages, so there could be a firmer idea of what precautions need to be taken.

Panchuk said students have an important voice that will be listened to when it comes to the pandemic.

“The student population has a really important voice and role to play as we seek to get these sorts of changes made,” Panchuk said. “I think that students who are concerned about the current situation could do a lot by using their voice to express what they think the university needs to be doing to keep them safe.”