Due to recent events, I feel the need to voice my concern, echoed by others, to a serious injustice.  I understand COVID-19 is causing a lot of anxiety for all of us, but this should not mean that our student body turning on each other.  The “COVID-19 Concerns – Community and Individual Behavior Report Form” is causing more harm than good for our school community. 
 
Asking students to police each other is not encouraging unity to help us all get through this pandemic.  Inconsistency, mis-use and mis-trust have resulted.
 
Here is a story of two Colby-Sawyer students who were just removed from their off-campus housing for doing what Residential asked of them for back-to-campus arrival protocol.  Stocking up on food because the Dining Hall was not going to provide for them.
 
Samantha Mohammed and Anna Allen are leaving campus this Saturday, Feb. 20, for an incident that most certainly could have been a warning if only the facts were clearly heard and understood.  In your heart do you truly believe Sam and Anna should be revoked of their housing contract for doing what the school asked of them and stocking up on a two-week supply of food for quarantine?  New London is an approved area CSC can go to.
 
As per an email CSC sent out to the student body and families on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 at 1:49:13 PM CSC stated, “Students who live in the college owned houses and are not on the meal plan should plan ahead to stock up on groceries to last them through the quarantine period.”  Sam and Anna are roommates who live in London House.  Besides living off campus, they are out-of state-students.  Anna is a student from across the country and arrived late the evening before.  She had the ordeal and stress of flying during COVID to arrive in New London.  Both Anna and Samantha arrived at 1am on campus January 17, 2020 when the stores were closed.  The logistics of travel should be considered.
 
I’m sure CSC didn’t expect students to bring a two-week supply of food in their suitcase on a flight from California or had enough room in their car for all those groceries along with all their other school necessities on a long drive to campus.  Most off-campus students had to buy food locally before they could start their quarantine.  What needs to be considered here is their arrival, check-in and shopping all had to happen on Jan. 18.
 
Anna and Sam were reported as being in Hannaford’s buy food for their quarantine.  Other students were in Hannaford’s doing the same thing.  Not all of them were reported.  Obviously, the student that reported them, should also have received the same treatment because she was there at the same time doing the same thing but did not.  This has turned students against student and is not right.
 
Another matter to bring up is how individuals might have interpreted CSC’s instructions from the Wednesday, January 6, 2021 email.  Personally, I felt it had vague information on when quarantine actually started.  The email stated, “Students will be tested on January 19 and will be quarantined in their residence halls through January 25.”  I interpreted that to means our quarantine will start after our test on January 19.
 
This brings me back to the COVID-19 Concerns – Community and Individual Behavior Report Form.  For the students that report other students, what are their consequences for breaking the same rules?  Do you keep them around to be the school’s eyes and ears, looking for infractions? 
 
I can personally tell you there were incidents that were reported about sexual assault and horrific behavior from a fellow student that CSC did nothing about to make me feel safe, while this student stayed on campus after these allegation.  Yet CSC kicks out two students for buying food in preparation for their quarantine, at your instructions to stock-up on food.  That is not right.  This is all wrong.  This is a big disappointment.
 
This morning on WMUR-TV reported, ‘The CDC said this is not the time to travel” in relation to the concerns of the more contagious COVID Variant.  Colby-Sawyer is sending three of their own students off campus and having to travel back home to Connecticut and California due to them stocking up on food in preparation to the school imposed two-week quarantine.  Is that right?  How can these students be successful in their academics while they are “homeless” and stress over yet another crisis during these unprecedented times or forced to go remote?  These are good people, and should remain on campus as part of our caring and compassionate community. 
 
It would be safer for all involved to have the students remained in the controlled environment and able to live in their campus housing.  Now they will have to travel daily back to wherever they end up living to campus, go to classes but between classes to have to sit in an approved campus building instead of the safety of their campus housing.
 
Can Colby-Sawyer College really afford to lose more nice students, especially when your retention rate is so low?
 
I urge you to revisit this case and look at the human factors to it and reverse your decision.  Listen to your students; you are not hearing them and their concerns.
 
I also ask that you do not encourage students to take policing their fellow students into their own hands. It is breaking down our community.

Bring Sam and Anna back home to Colby-Sawyer College.