Over the past two weeks, seats have become noticeably empty as students continue to test positive for COVID-19. These students then begin the isolation period, creating a noticeable decline in class attendance. As the semester has continued, some students have taken notice.

“I’ve just noticed a lot of my classmates haven’t been there recently,” Evi Rizas ’23 said.

For the majority of their time at Loyola University Maryland, the upperclassmen have dealt with COVID-19 and its ramifications, and are optimistic about this upcoming year’s normalcy.

“I feel like this year has been the first normal year, fully,” Ailish O’Boyle ’24 said. “We’ve come a long way for sure.”

Once students heard that more of their peers have been testing positive, there has been some mixed reactions, but many students are not shocked.

“I’m not too surprised, I feel like just everyone coming together, usually somebody gets sick, but I guess this year it happens to be COVID,” Josh Glatman ’24 said. “With all of these people sort of coming together again [and] socializing, it’s about what I expected.”

With the largest freshman class in Loyola history, campus is more active than ever, which is also causing some COVID-19 concerns for some students.

“When I found out that Loyola accepted, I believe the number is over 1300 freshmen, I knew that something with COVID would happen again,” Goldy Lomotey ’25 said. “It was either COVID or monkeypox, because I know monkeypox is becoming a thing now, so it was kind of expected but I was hoping it wouldn’t happen.”

After dealing with COVID-19 on campus for multiple years, many students feel that the number of active cases on campus is not a concern.

“I feel like since we’ve been going through it for about three years now, we’ve all gotten a good handle of it even though it comes and goes a lot of the time. I feel like we shouldn’t worry about it anymore,” O’Boyle said.

Although some students are optimistic, other students are afraid of the situation growing out of control and forcing the university to close as it did for the fall semester of 2020.

“I’m just worried about everybody getting sick…if the school shuts down for COVID and everybody goes home, my mom lives in Georgia so I can’t take public transportation, especially if I’m sick. I won’t have anywhere to go,” Lomotey said. “One of my friends is an international student and he just wouldn’t be able to go home.”

As of Sept. 20, the university has not made any public statements regarding the number of active cases on campus.

When asked for comment, Julie Sanz, the Director of the Student Health Center said, “While optics may seem one way, we by no means have a COVID outbreak happening at Loyola… We certainly have active cases on campus but nothing that would classify as an outbreak.”

Although students have their concerns, they agree that the Student Health Center is doing its best to handle COVID-19 on campus.

“There’s not much to do,” Rizas said. ”They’re not doing much, but there’s also not much to do.”

For more information on COVID-19, visit Loyola’s website for campus resources and the CDC’s website for national updates. 

Featured image courtesy of Katie Roessel