Students, staff and community members gathered outside of College Hall at Smith College in Northampton. Flowers were laid out across the entryway at the front of the campus. Large camping tents were pitched just behind the gates. A banner reading “DIVEST FROM WAR INVEST IN PEACE” hung from a window of College Hall. Students inside peered out from the windows.
Photo by Rosemary Geib ’23.
Pictured above, Smith College’s Campus Center, where students test for COVID-19 twice weekly.
By Anoushka Kuswaha ’24 & Tara Monastesse ’25
News Editors
With the COVID-19 pandemic looming over the world since 2020, many institutions have strived to manage a “normal” working life while still maintaining the health, safety and well-being of their communities. This is applicable to each institution in the Five College Consortium, all of which are working within their respective communities to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
For the Mount Holyoke College administration, controlling the spread of COVID-19 was about continuing to care for one another as a community, as stated in a letter from the Health and Safety Committee published on Sept. 14. Smith College described its continuation of its COVID-19 preventative measures as “build[ing] on [the] success” of previous years, as written on their website’s COVID-19 policy page.
While each Five College community has taken measures to accommodate the third year of the pandemic, their strategies have varied. Some of the colleges within the consortium have also rapidly shifted their policies as the academic year commenced. Smith College’s current policy of mandatory twice-a-week asymptomatic testing contrasts their anticipated Fall 2022 COVID-19 policy from an Aug. 1 letter to the community, which did not forecast requiring asymptomatic testing.
Currently, all members of the Consortium also require mask-wearing indoors, with the exception of the University of Massachusetts Amherst whose policy is described as “mask welcome.” All of the Five Colleges also require community members to be up to date on vaccination boosters.
Members of the Consortium have gradually gone back to weekly mandated testing for asymptomatic students. Hampshire College and Smith College are both mandating twice-weekly testing until further notice, as per the institutions’ COVID-19 policy websites. UMass Amherst readily offers symptomatic testing to all of their students, with a charge going to the student’s health insurance, as per the university’s Public Health’s Preparation website, last updated on Aug. 17, 2022.
Like Mount Holyoke College, some members of the Five College Consortium — UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College — are also advising their students to isolate in place should they test positive for COVID-19 and cannot arrange off-campus isolation housing, as stated by each institution’s COVID-19 informational websites.
Amherst College has been operating at level one of its four Campus Operating Status Levels, described as “Enhanced COVID-19 Precautions,” since Aug. 12.
Amherst College currently maintains a publicly-available COVID-19 dashboard on its website, which displays active cases from students, staff and faculty. Free COVID-19 testing at Amherst College has remained optional for students beyond the initial test administered to students upon moving back onto campus.
As of Sept. 13, a KN95 mask is required on Amherst’s campus in most indoor spaces, including classrooms, dining locations and the COVID-19 Testing Center.
“It’s really nice, because the college is distributing [KN95 masks] for free,” said Anna Leake, a junior at Amherst College, in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. She noted, however, that the mask requirement is sometimes enforced inconsistently outside of the classroom, stating that “It doesn’t seem as hard and fast a rule as it has been in previous years.”
“I’m happy that we’ve — in some ways — been able to transition back to pre-COVID times,” said Leake. “But I’m also wondering if we’re doing it too quickly, or at least without enough clarity as to what the rules are.”
““I’m happy that we’ve — in some ways — been able to transition back to pre-COVID times. But I’m also wondering if we’re doing it too quickly.”
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Mount Holyoke’s mask mandate, originally slated to last until Sept. 16, has been extended to at least Sept. 30. In a letter to the community issued on Sept. 14, the Health and Safety Committee attributed the decision to “a high volume of COVID-19 student cases currently being managed by our campus health center.”
An email to the College community on Wednesday Sept. 21 identified 51 known cases among students, as well as 4 among employees. These numbers were stated to reflect the previous 7 days, and will be updated weekly in future “MHC This Week” emails.
“I definitely think they should bring back testing at least once a week, and isolation housing for people with roommates,” Sophie Simon ’25, a student who recently tested positive for COVID-19, said in an interview. Simon, who was unable to receive a free PCR test on campus due to having outside insurance, instead obtained her results from a local pharmacy. “There isn’t a lot of accessibility for testing right now, and if they’re going to get rid of the mandatory weekly testing, they should at least give you access to rapid tests. I think that would definitely prevent the surge in [COVID-19] cases that are happening, especially now, just so people know earlier on that they have [COVID-19], or that they’re spreading it.”
Currently, students on the College’s health insurance plan can obtain up to eight self-test COVID-19 kits every 30 days.
In an Oct. 22 email obtained by Mount Holyoke News, Rachel Alldis, associate dean of students and director of Residential Life, officially announced to all students currently living at Hampshire College that they would be moving to the Mount Holyoke campus for the spring semester. The email confirmed that Mead Hall, the residence hall struck by lightning in August, will open in January for student housing.
Students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst led protests on their campus this weekend in response to allegations of sexual assault made against fraternity Theta Chi. A post on the anonymous social media app Yik Yak alleged a first-year student at the university had been drugged and assaulted by a member of the fraternity at a Theta Chi party on Saturday night, Sept. 18. The following Sunday, Sept. 19, around 300 people gathered outside the fraternity house to protest the member’s involvement in the sexual assault allegations.
As students return to in-person classes and campuses across the country, colleges and universities have implemented COVID-19 measures to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff. Mount Holyoke College updated students before the fall semester with new measures to follow — several of which are subject to change depending on the situation in the area and on campus. The other colleges and universities within the Five College Consortium also released their new COVID-19 policies. Although many of the same measures are followed across each of the five campuses, there are some differences between the schools.
