In spite of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases due to the fast-spreading omicron variant, Alma College has elected to continue using their incredibly lax set of COVID restrictions from the previous semester, rather than the more robust set of guidelines from the fall of 2020. Students are terrified to attend class in-person for fears of getting infected, and yet are often left with no other alternative lest they flunk their course. We believe that the college should return to using a stricter set of COVID restrictions not unlike those used in 2020 for the safety and well-being of its students, its staff, and the state of Michigan as a whole. This would include:

Requiring Instructors to Offer an Online Option for Their Courses
As of time of writing, professors are allowed to require courses to be in-person only, even in scenarios where there is very little benefit for doing so. Many lecture-based courses that could easily be taught over Microsoft Teams--as they were in fall of 2020--instead necessitate physical attendance, or only allow virtual attendance for those who have already tested positive for the virus. This puts students and professors alike in unnecessary danger, and does little to mitigate the spread of a variant that is at its most contagious two days before symptoms appear.

Offering Take-Out Options at Hamilton Commons
COVID-19 spreads more easily when you don't wear a mask, and it's hard to do so while you're eating. Students who would rather eat in the relative safety of their dorms are instructed to spend their "Munch Money" on take-out from other restaurants instead, but $400 is not early enough to last an entire semester, especially when Sodexo's meal plan is required for students who don't want to forgo their scholarships. It's insulting and it's absurd. Hamilton Commons should provide cardboard take-out boxes so students can eat safely, instead of charging an obscene $5 dollars for the privilege, or being told to eat elsewhere.

Meaningfully Enforcing Existing Rules
It's all too common to see students walking around campus without wearing masks, and the fact that doing so is permissible in a state where as few as 56% of individuals are fully vaccinated is insane. The most that RAs and Hall Directors can do is politely remind people to put their masks on--a token gesture at best when there are so many on campus who refuse to protect themselves and their classmates from a deadly disease.

Frankly, there are many among us who think that nothing short of a college-wide vaccine mandate will be enough to protect the school, but the sad reality is that it is too politically messy for us to expect the college to do so. What we should expect is for the college to do the bare minimum to protect its students and staff, and politely ask them to do so.