Bring back the Covid-19 Dashboard! Call to petition for parents, students, teachers, and staff: 

Students at Bucknell have experienced a rise in Covid cases during the onset of the school year. The process of even acquiring an at-home Covid test is disorganized and unpredictable. The school does not provide PCR tests. Many students are forced to rely on other students to supply them with Covid tests. There is no tracking, regulation, or required testing for students. Students are forced to communicate by word of mouth about who has Covid, how bad it is, and what to do if you test positive.

Bucknell administration has no protocols in place to get infected students food, except to rely on these students’ friends, roommates, or even the infected students themselves to walk to the cafeteria and take food to-go. This puts all of us - fellow students, staff, and the entire Bucknell community at risk of exposure.

Bucknell provides no outside housing for infected students. They must share all the same facilities as non-infected students, and their roommates are forced to sleep in the halls or other people’s rooms, OR face the risk of getting Covid themselves while sharing a dorm with someone who has Covid. Sick students, especially first years (who aren’t allowed cars on campus) have no way of safely getting to a pharmacy for basic health resources (Kleenex, cold medicine, cough drops, etc.). 

Additionally, Bucknell has no easy or accessible process for infected students to participate in class when they are out sick due to Covid. Professors are not even provided with the technology to Zoom students in and Zoom has been deleted from Bucknell computers. They are not required to Zoom students in when they are out sick for Covid and are actively discouraged from Zooming students into class.

Bucknell prides itself in being a small, close-knit school, but the administration’s refusal to acknowledge the depth of the problem makes students feel alone, isolated and invisible. Most importantly, there is no way of tracking who has Covid. The first step to securing the safety of our students is to make the numbers VISIBLE, make the health of students a priority. We want to see the numbers. Sign your name to advocate for student health and to bring back the Covid dashboard. Make the numbers visible!!

Student quotes 

"As a student I wish that the university would have published COVID data starting week 1, when we got here. I fell I may have been able to better protect myself if I had known when cases were rising..." -TC

“Due to the lack of support from Bucknell I endangered myself and those around me. I had to be around others in my dorm, bathrooms, and the cafeteria, potentially spreading covid to those around me. I had extreme fatigue, headaches, nausea, and poor appetite but I still had to walk to the cafeteria to get food and over exert myself doing work in order to not fall behind.” -MAW

“During my time in quarantine I felt like I had to prioritize my academic work and standing instead of my own health for fear of falling behind. Only 2/5 of my teachers actually showed compassion for my situation and allowed me to continue to follow along with the rest of the class through Zoom. The rest simply wished for me to get better without providing any help, even though I asked for it”. -ES 

“I didn’t like that I had to lie about symptoms to get a test. I didn’t like that they were making me stay in my room with the possibility of infecting my roommate.” - ML