MUNCIE — From Notre Dame, Purdue, to IU, plans to contain Covid-19 on college campuses across Indiana are already being put to the test. On Friday, Ball State University President Geoffrey S. Mearns warned students classes could go remote for the rest of the semester if “students do not change their behavior.” A total of 372 students have tested positive as of this story being written.
Mathias Miles is a BSU Senior majoring in Telecommunications. He tells WRTV, the number of positive cases doesn’t surprise him. "I live right off campus and I have heard people's music playing loudly. I've seen crowds of people walking about some of them not wearing masks,” Miles said
Although he would like to finish his last year at Ball State on campus, Miles says he’s not kidding himself. He thinks it’s only a matter of time before students are forced to do remote classes until the end of the semester.
In his statement to students, President Mearns let them know the steady increase of cases are not linked to academic classrooms or spaces, or the residence halls, but rather poor personal choices some students are making, primarily off campus. He told them the decisions they make over this weekend will determine the steps he takes next.
Miles says most students he sees are following the coronavirus safety guidelines. "I would say it's like a 75, 25 split. For the most part, students are taking it seriously. They're going out masked. They're using the hand sanitizer throughout the campus,” Miles said. “However, I actually had a friend of mine who said he was driving through campus and on his three minute drive, he counted 27 people without a mask on.”
The positive cases being counted at Ball State are from the tests they’ve done through a partnership with IU Health and self-reporting. You can view their Covid-19 dashboard by clicking this sentence.
